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Introduction
John Macky published Travels Through England in 1714. It takes the form of letters supposedly written by a foreign tourist while in England, and sent home to his friend abroad. The preface declares frankly that Macky’s purpose is to help his reader appreciate an Englishman’s liberties under the benign King George I, in contrast to the wretched oppression on the Continent. Here, he describes a leisurely day in London.
I AM lodged in the street called Pall Mall, the ordinary residence of all strangers. If you would know our manner of living it is thus: We rise by nine, and those that frequent great men’s levees* find entertainment at them till eleven or, as in Holland, go to tea-tables. About twelve the beau monde* assembles in several coffee or chocolate houses, the best of which are the Cocoa Tree and White’s Chocolate-houses, St James’s, the Smyrna, Mrs Rochford’s and the British Coffee-houses; and all these so near to one another that in less than an hour you see the company of them all. We are carried to these placed in chairs,* which are here very cheap, a guinea a week, or one shilling per hour, and your chair-men serve you for porters to run on errands. [...]
If it is fine weather we take a turn in the park till two, when we go to dinner, and if it be dirty,* you are entertained at picquet or basset at White’s,* or you may talk politics at Smyrna, or St James’s.
* A levee (from the French word for getting up) was a reception of visitors just after rising from bed. The word was also used for formal receptions of visitors by men of fashion at other times of the day.
* A phrase phrase literally meaning the beautiful world, i.e. people of fashion.
* That is, a litter, typically a box carried on horizontal poles by two or more men.
* That is, if the weather is wet and windy.
* Pi(c)quet and basset are card games. Piquet was a game of ordinary risks for ordinary people, whereas basset was so perilous that only the aristocracy could afford to sit down to it. In France, so many noble families had been brought to ruin that basset had been regulated, but in Macky’s day the Parliament in Westminster had not yet taken an interest. If Macky’s tourist was playing basset, he must have been a man of substance — when the game began, at any rate.
Précis
John Macky, in the person of a foreign tourist, described a day in early eighteenth-century London. He rose at nine, and at once climbed into a sedan chair to be carried off for a series of social engagements with fashionable people in the city’s numerous coffee-houses, punctuated by a turn in the park or a game of cards. (58 / 60 words)
John Macky, in the person of a foreign tourist, described a day in early eighteenth-century London. He rose at nine, and at once climbed into a sedan chair to be carried off for a series of social engagements with fashionable people in the city’s numerous coffee-houses, punctuated by a turn in the park or a game of cards.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, although, because, despite, if, just, not, otherwise.
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