Having done this justice to his
wounded feelings, he retired underground; where, in company with a swarm
of black beetles and a kitchen candle, he employed his faculties in
cleaning boots and brushing clothes until the night was far advanced.
Benjamin was supposed to be the real name of this young retainer but he
was known by a great variety of names. Benjamin, for instance, had been
converted into Uncle Ben, and that again had been corrupted into Uncle;
which, by an easy transition, had again passed into Barnwell, in memory
of the celebrated relative in that degree who was shot by his nephew
George, while meditating in his garden at Camberwell. The gentlemen at
Todgers's had a merry habit, too, of bestowing upon him, for the time
being, the name of any notorious malefactor or minister; and sometimes
when current events were flat they even sought the pages of history for
these distinctions; as Mr Pitt, Young Brownrigg, and the like. At the
period of which we write, he was generally known among the gentlemen as
Bailey junior; a name bestowed upon him in contradistinction, perhaps,
to Old Bailey; and possibly as involving the recollection of an
unfortunate lady of the same name, who perished by her own hand early in
life, and has been immortalised in a ballad.
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