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Smollett, Tobias George, 1721-1771

"The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle"

"
The painter, who had by wry faces testified his abhorrence of
the sow's stomach, which he compared to a bagpipe, and the snails
which had undergone purgation, he no sooner heard him mention the
roasted pullets, than he eagerly solicited a wing of the fowl;
upon which the doctor desired he would take the trouble of cutting
them up, and accordingly sent them round, while Pallet tucked the
table-cloth under his chin, and brandished his knife and fork with
singular address: but scarce were they set down before him, when
the tears ran down his cheeks; and he called aloud, in a manifest
disorder, "Zounds! this is the essence of a whole bed of garlic!"
That he might not, however, disappoint or disgrace the entertainer,
he applied his instruments to one of the birds; and when he opened
up the cavity, was assaulted by such an irruption of intolerable
smells, that, without staying to disengage himself from the cloth,
he sprang away, with an exclamation of "Lord Jesus!" and involved
the whole table in havoc, ruin, and confusion.
Before Pickle could accomplish his escape, he was sauced with the
syrup of the dormouse pie, which went to pieces in the general
wreck; and as for the Italian count, he was overwhelmed by the sow's
stomach, which, bursting in the fall, discharged its contents upon
his leg and thigh, and scalded him so miserably, that he shrieked
with anguish, and grinned with a most ghastly and horrible aspect.


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