Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens

As soon as it was generally known in the National Hotel, that the young Englishman, Mr Chuzzlewit, had purchased a ‘lo-cation' in the Valley of Eden, and intended to betake himself to that earthly Paradise by the next steamboat, he became a popular character. Why this should be, or how it had come to pass, Martin no more knew than Mrs Gamp, of Kingsgate Street, High Holborn, did; but that he was for the time being the lion, by popular election, of the Watertoast community, and that his society was in rather inconvenient request there could be no kind of doubt.

The first notification he received of this change in his position, was the following epistle, written in a thin running hand--with here and there a fat letter or two, to make the general effect more striking--on a sheet of paper, ruled with blue lines.