In that case, I
should say that the sheriff's men were in "pursuit of knowledge;" that
is, hunting after _you_; but Latin, you remember, was always an
inverted sort of stuff, and that '_pro_' alters the whole
signification. The paper says they've '_entered_ a _nolle
prosequi;_' and the 'entered' explains the whole. 'Entered a nolle'
means, have entered on the knowledge, got a scent; you see it is law
English; 'pro' means 'how,' and 'sequi,' 'to give chase.' The amount
of it all is, Tom, that they are on your heels, and I must go to work
and send you off, at once, two or three hundred miles into the
interior, where you may laugh at them and their 'nolle prosequis'
together." [*]
[Footnote *: There is said to be foundation for this story.]
Sweeney laughed heartily at this story, though he clearly did not take
the joke, which I presume he fancied lay concealed under an American
flash language; and he proposed by way of finishing the day, to carry
me to an entertainment where, he gave me to understand, American
officers were fond of sometimes passing a few minutes. I was led to a
Wapping assembly-room, on entering which I found myself in a party
composed of some forty or fifty cooks and stewards of American
vessels, all as black as their own pots with partners of the usual
colour and bloom of English girls I have as few prejudices of colour
as any American well can have; but I will confess this scene struck me
as being painfully out of keeping.
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