Old-Fashioned Stories (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TIM SWALLOW-WHISTLE, THE TAILOR; "EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY." TIM SWALLOW-WHISTLE, the tailor, lived at Horn- castle, a thriving little agricultural town in the centre of Lincolnshire, and now well-known even to the verge of Europe for its prodigious yearly horse fair, to which Russ and Pruss, Netherlander and Austrian, Frenchman, Swiss, and Italian, with even, at times, the turban'd Turk, may be beheld flocking to purchase from the rare show of steeds: " but let that pass !" Tim was not one of your fashionable tailors, it is true, but he was reckoned " an uncommon neat hand " at his trade. Indeed, old Cocky Davy, who was a very emperor amongst the Lincolnshire tailors, always declared Tim to be the cleverest apprentice that ever received his indentures at his hands. Old Cocky?he was so termed on account of the particular loftiness of his carriage?Old Cocky had one especial maxim; it was, " Strike your needle dead, you dog; and make your thread cry ' twang !'"?and no one apprentice that ever sat upon Davy's shop-board so fully gratified his master by the gallant and complete style in which he fulfilled this maxim, as did Tim Swallow- whistle. Cocky Davy was often heard to say?ay, and to swear it too, when in his cups?that it did his heart good to see the masterly manner in which Tim used to strike the cloth. And then, for finishing a button-hole, "Good heavens!"?CockyDavy would declare in the White Swan parlour, when the clock was on the stroke of twelve?" why, Tim could turn the thing off his fingers with every cast of the thread as regular and exact as if he had worked it by geometry;" and then Cocky would thump his pewter tankard with vehement force upon mine host's white wooden table, and call to have it refilled for the last time that night. It may easily be guessed...