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Dickens, Charles

"Master Humphreys Clock"

You, sir, will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe
there IS such a word in the dictionary as hairdressers.'
'Well, but suppose he wasn't a hairdresser,' suggested Sam.
'Wy then, sir, be parliamentary and call him vun all the more,'
returned his father. 'In the same vay as ev'ry gen'lman in another
place is a Honourable, ev'ry barber in this place is a hairdresser.
Ven you read the speeches in the papers, and see as vun gen'lman
says of another, "the Honourable member, if he vill allow me to
call him so," you vill understand, sir, that that means, "if he
vill allow me to keep up that 'ere pleasant and uniwersal
fiction."'
It is a common remark, confirmed by history and experience, that
great men rise with the circumstances in which they are placed.
Mr. Weller came out so strong in his capacity of chairman, that Sam
was for some time prevented from speaking by a grin of surprise,
which held his faculties enchained, and at last subsided in a long
whistle of a single note. Nay, the old gentleman appeared even to
have astonished himself, and that to no small extent, as was
demonstrated by the vast amount of chuckling in which he indulged,
after the utterance of these lucid remarks.


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