LYNN SHRIMPS 99 



ludicrous description of some persons who had been dupes 

 of a hoax, announcing that a man would walk on the 

 water from Lynn to Cambridge/ many of whom were 

 then in the room. Such thino-s did not o-ive me a favour- 

 able opinion of the intellectual acquirements of. a com- 

 munity among whom I had a very good chance of taking 

 up my abode for some considerable time. 



Nevertheless, I continued on the box, and did not, as I 

 had expected, meet with any hindrance or interference 

 from my predecessor. I could not boast of my coach 

 being overloaded, except with packages of those little 

 crustaceans so much in favour with the Londoners, and 

 commonly called Lynn shrimps ; Avhile the down coach, 

 hung round with empty baskets on a sultry day, would 

 emit an effluvium that was very uninviting to the gentry, 

 who in consequence would rather choose some circuitous 

 route than thus have their olfactory organs offended. 



Still, it sometimes happened that I was accompanied 

 by some of the more youthful members of the upper ten 

 thousand. One morning in particular, I remember, three 

 of them, who in the exuberance of their spirits, on leaving 

 the Charterhouse, treated me with a portion of them, 

 double-distilled. Their good looks, good tempers, and, 

 with this exception, good manners, Avould not allow me to 

 be angry, although the liquid accidentally fell on the skirts 

 of a coat I liad donned for the first time that morning ; 

 and the circumstance Avould have fled my memory had it 

 not been the first of my acquaintance with one of the 

 three since grown to eminence and distinction in his 

 neighbourhood, from whom the author has received many 



' One Zachariah Whitmore ; a trick of some wag in the University. 



