1831,] The Steam-Boat ; a Paper of my Uncles. 281 



The next cargo which came alongside was the family of the Gobble- 

 tons, being seven in number. Mr. Gobbleton, a selfish, dull, opinionated 

 ignoramus — a kind of oracle among his own peculiar clique — a man of 

 maxims, whose first of duties was to himself — the idol of Mrs. G. — the 

 disgust of most other persons — and an unprecedented glutton. The fair 

 two-thirds of Mr. Gobbleton — for she was twice his size, was an 

 unusually simple, acquiescent, vulgar, good soul, who doated on dress, 

 her progeny, and JMr. Gobbleton ; a woman who was, however, always 

 in what is elegantly termed " between a fluster and a muck." This 

 disposition was considerably augmented by the bustle of the embarka- 

 tion ; and Mrs. G., who had taken, with her ponderous dimensions, the 

 seat of honour most appropriately at the stern, conferred a ludicrous 

 appearance on the boat, the after-part of which was well nigh sub- 

 merged, while the head was erected in the river like an alligator's on a 

 midnight survey. The " little loves" — in number five — were the 

 universal horror of their whole acquaintance ; so much so, they were 

 always named expressively " those Gobbletons !" a phalanx of ill-bred, 

 petted, petulant, unruly gormandizers. The loves inherited the great 

 perfection of the father ; and nature had kindly anticijjated their darling 

 predilection, by gifting the uncomely curmudgeons with a stupendous 

 range of mouth, which, in its impression on a cake, or slice of bread and 

 butter, left such an elliptic gap, as antiquarians would, on any piece of 

 petrified comestible, have learnedly assigned to the redoubted jaws of the 

 gigantic ages. 



The approach was admirable. IMr. G., the model of sapient tacitur- 

 nity ; his lady, scattering the zephyrs round a bonnet — which might 

 well have formed a fellow to the helmet of Otranto — with a fan, in all 

 respects a rival of a Malabar cajan — and the " proles Gobbletoniana" 

 sitting round and setting at their hares, in the shape of a prodigious 

 basket, stored to superfluity with such alluring preparations, as would 

 link together the ordinary meals appointed for the day's support. When 

 they reached the steam-boat, Mr. Gobbleton was seriously employed in 

 settling a dispute among " the loves ;" originated, it appears, by an 

 incipient distribution on the Tower stairs, by which the flagrant injury 

 had been inflicted on a jjet of eight years old, of having had a pie 

 with one plum less in its enclosure than his younger brother's. This 

 arrival in the vessel was notified, in no long time, by the screams of 

 these delightful children ; some of whom had tumbled over ropes or 

 packages, or otherwise incurred the inconvenience of a vessel in disorder, 

 by scampering about, and looking everlastingly behind them. 



Every variety almost of human nature was on board. An enormous 

 man and his long slender wife were the last accession to our party. The 

 male was the suinmum maximum of corpulence, his lady the tenue 

 exemplum of exility — the gentleman asleep ; his mate a lynx, all watch- 

 fulness and care. Miss Biddlecombe, looking on the slumbering mass, 

 declared it was a case of syncope — Mr. Botherby, all point as usual, re- 

 plied " in his opinion, it was much more like the figure of antithesis !" 

 " I have heard that twenty times before," said JMiss Jack. Mr. Lark, 

 the name of the stout gentleman, as we afterwards learned from his own 

 narrative, was a very early riser ; he was r.ither the original than the 

 picture of somnolency and contentment. His posture was always such 

 as to invite his old antagonist — sleep. His legs were crossed about the 

 ancle, and his hands, which he with tUfiiculty brought to meet above the 



