It is absolutely necessary that I should here, with more than usual
formality, introduce the reader to an intimate acquaintance with the
character of Sir Hurricane.
Sir Hurricane had risen in life by his own ingenuity, and the
patronage of a rich man in the South of England: he was of an
ardent disposition, and was an admirable justice of peace, when the
_argumentum baculinum_ was required, for which reason he had been
sent to reduce two or three refractory establishments to order and
obedience; and, by his firmness and good humour, succeeded. His tact
was a little knowledge of everything (not like Solomon's, from the
hyssop to the cedar), but from the boiler of a potato to the boiler of
a steam-boat, and from catching a sprat to catching a whale; he could
fatten pigs and poultry, and had a peculiar way of improving the size,
though not the breed of the latter; in short, he was "jack of all
trades and master of none."
I shall not go any farther back with his memoirs than the day he chose
to teach an old woman how to make mutton-broth. He had, in the course
of an honest discharge of his duty, at a certain very dirty sea-port
town, incurred the displeasure of the lower orders generally: he
nevertheless would omit no opportunity of doing good, and giving
advice to the poor, gratis. One day he saw a woman emptying the
contents of a boiling kettle out of her door into the street. He
approached, and saw a leg of mutton at the bottom, and the unthrifty
housewife throwing away the liquor in which it had been boiled.
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