[The Town Traveller by George Gissing]@TWC D-Link book
The Town Traveller

CHAPTER V
16/23

He often lamented that this kind of establishment was growing rare, passing away with so many other features of old London.
More fastidious, Greenacre could have wished his egg some six months fresher, and his drink less obviously a concoction of rinsings.

But he was a guest, and his breeding did not allow him to complain.

Of the funeral he shrank from speaking; but the few words he dropped were such as would have befitted 'a genuine grief.

Gammon even heard him murmur, unconsciously, "poor Bolsover." Having eaten they wended their way to a little public-house, with a parlour known only to the favoured few, where Greenacre, after a glass or two of rum--a choice for which he thought it necessary to apologize--began to discourse upon a topic peculiarly his own.
"I couldn't help thinking to-day, Gammon, what a strange assembly there would be if all a man's relatives came to his funeral.

Nearly all of us must have such lots of distant connexions that we know nothing about.
Now a man like Bolsover--an aristocrat, with fifty or more acknowledged relatives in good position--think how many more there must be in out-of-the-way places, poor and unknown.


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