Note 57 — A West-Countryman’s Visit to London.

There seems to be no doubt whatever (assuming the story to be a true one) that the Captain’s greatest disaster—his losing his old “leathern pouch,” as he called it, occurred on the platform of the Paddington Station, when, in his great hurry to get away, he tumbled so violently over the trunk; and being in the habit of carrying his “pouch” in the inside breast-pocket of his coat, the probability is, that it escaped from thence in consequence of the sudden jerk it received. He, as a matter of course, being a Cornishman, took very little—if indeed any—notice of the fall, for (with an air of triumph) he recovered his perpendicular, and started off—as observed before in the poem—in which the direction of Edgware Road. As regards the disappointment and dismay which the Captain met with afterwards as to the recovery of his watch, that was what might have been expected by any shrewd person, because it was very natural that some sharp individual would have observed the “vertisement,” and would, as a matter of course, take some such a step as, unfortunately for Joseph, turned out to be the case.