Having taken lodgings at haphazard, he left his trunk there,
containing all his worldly effects, and sallied forth to see the town.
After sauntering about the streets until a late hour, he thought of
returning home, when, to his confusion, he found he had not acquainted
himself with the name either of his landlady or of the street in which she
lived. Fortunately, in the height of his whimsical perplexity, he met the
cawdy or porter who had carried his trunk, and who now served him as a
guide.
He did not remain long in the lodgings in which he had put up. The hostess
was too adroit at that hocus-pocus of the table which often is practiced in
cheap boarding-houses. No one could conjure a single joint through a
greater variety of forms. A loin of mutton, according to Goldsmith's
account, would serve him and two fellow-students a whole week. "A brandered
chop was served up one day, a fried steak another, collops with onion sauce
a third, and so on until the fleshy parts were quite consumed, when finally
a dish of broth was manufactured from the bones on the seventh day, and the
landlady rested from her labors." Goldsmith had a good-humored mode of
taking things, and for a short time amused himself with the shifts and
expedients of his landlady, which struck him in a ludicrous manner; he
soon, however, fell in with fellow-students from his own country, whom he
joined at more eligible quarters.
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