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My purpose was, in a whimsical kind of masque which the good-humour of the season justified, to awaken some loving and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land. CONTENTS. A CHRISTMAS CAROL tº º THE CHIMES . . . . . . . . . . . 77 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH . . . . . . . 157 THE BATTLE OF LIFE . . . . . . . . . 241 THE HAUNTED MAN o e º e º º ºr º . 321 A CEIRISTMAS CAROL, IN PROSE. BE IN G. A. G. HO ST STORY OF CHRISTM A. S. amº-º-º-º-º-º-º: STAVE ONE. M A R L E Y'S G H O ST. |MARLEY was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon ‘Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door- nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know, how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business 2 2 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. on the very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain. The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or noth- ing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Ham- let’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak mind. Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him. Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed noise, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that biew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only One respect. They often “ came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did. gº Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When * A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 3 will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock. no man or woman ever once in all his life in- quired the way to such and such a place of Scrooge. Even the blindmen’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!” But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call “nuts” to Scrooge. Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, º º on Christmas Eve—old *# sat busy in his counting- " ' ' ' ' ' house. It was cold, Tbſea R, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court out- side, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already—it had not been light all day—and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large Scale. * The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so --- * & "A" & " -4. 22@ very much smaller, that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk carſe. In with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be neces- sary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the can- dle; in which effort, not being a man of strong imagi- nation, he failed. “A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the VOICE of Scrooge's nephew, 4 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. y who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach. ‘‘ Bah!” said Scrooge. “Humbug!” He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again. sºns, *Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge's nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?” “I do,” said Scoorge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.” - “Come, then,” returned the nephew, gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.” Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug!” “Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew. “What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months pre- sented dead against you? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with * Merry Christmas,” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!” “Uncle!” pleaded the nephew. “Nephew!” returned the uncle, sternly, “keep Christ- mas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.” “Keep it!”, repeated Scrooge's nephew. “But you don’t keep it.” “Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!” “There are many things from which I might have de- rived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” re- turned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its Sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it .# * - * : * A CHRISTMAS CAROL. º 5 can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, for- giving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not an- other race of creatures bound on other journeys. And, therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!” The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Be- coming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for- €V eI’. “Let me hear another sound from you,” said Scrooge, “and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situa- turning to his nephew. “I wonder you don’t go into Parliament.” “Don’t be angry, uncle. Come ! Dine with us to- In Orrow.” *~...----------- **-** ~ *** ***** * * *- : -, -, - Scrooge said that he would see him—yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first. “But why?” cried Scrooge's nephew. “Why?” “Why did you get married?” said Scrooge. “Because I fell in love.” “Because you fell in love!” growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. “Good-afternoon!” “Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming In OW P’’ “Good-afternoon,” said Scrooge. “I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why Cannot we be friends?” “Good-afternoon,” said Scrooge. ‘‘ I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so reso- lute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!” * Good-afternoon!” said Scrooge. “And A Happy New Year!” v.A " " -- tion. You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir,” he added, 6 º A CHRISTMAS CAROL. “Good-afternoon!” said Scrooge. His nephew left the room without an angry word, not- ithstañding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for ºffé returned them cordially. . . “There's another fellow,” muttered Scrooge, who overheard him ; “my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I’ll retire to Bedlam.” r r a . - This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, ..pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him. “Scrooge and Marley's, I believe,” said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?” “Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,” º replied. “He died seven years ago, this very night.” “We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,” said the gentleman, present- ing his credentials. It certainly was ; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word, “liberality,” Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the creden- tials back. “At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usu- ally desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of Common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of com mon comforts, sir.” - - “Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge. “Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again. “And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?” . “They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.” “The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge. A. CHRISTMAS CAROL. * 7 “Both very busy, sir.” *. * “Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I am very glad to hear it.” “Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” re- turned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, ; Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down Or?” - “Nothing!” Scrooge replied. “You wish to be anonymous?” “I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since y ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.” “Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.” “If they would rather die,” said Scrooge. “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Be- sides—excuse me—I don’t know that.” “But you might know it,” observed the gentleman. “It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good-afternoon, gentlemen!” . . Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him. Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that peopſe ran about with flaring links, proffering their ser- vices to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremu- lous vibrations afterwards, as if its teeth were chatter- ing in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted 8 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings Sud- denly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers’ and grocers’ trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Man- sion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow’s pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby Sallied out to buy the beef. Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good St. Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, in- stead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of One scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christian carol; but at the first sound of * ** - - ----- ~~~ Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done. ..- * ** – “Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?” he lººded in a faltering voice. & 4 t is.” * “I—I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge. “Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “ you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-mor- row, when the bell tolls One.” *** *** -. “Couldn’t I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?” hinted Scrooge. “Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third, upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remem- ber what has passed between us!” When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its 8,I’Iſl. The apparition waſked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spéctre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped. Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear; for On the raising of the hand, he became sensible of con- fused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamenta- tion and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a mo- *** -- ~~, * , 3 - 18 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. ment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak,"dark night. Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out. The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be gutlty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been per- sonally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ancle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below upon a door- step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had Tost the power forever. - Whether these creatüres faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their Spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home. Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say “Humbug!” but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant. A. CHRISTMAS CAROL. 19 STAVE TWO. THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS. WHEN Scrooge awoke, it was so dark that, looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighbouring church Strück the four quarters."So he listened for the hour. To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regu- larly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve! He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve, and stopped. “Why, it isn’t possible,” said Scrooge, “that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!” The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of , the world. This was a great relief, because “Three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Eben- ezer Scrooge or his order,” and so forth, would have become a mere United States’ security if there were no days to count by. crooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought. 20 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and pre- sented the same problem to be worked all through, ‘‘ Was it a dream or not?” Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three-quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was pâssed; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power. The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his lis- tening ear. - “Ding, dong!” “A quarter-past,” said Scrooge, counting. “Ding, dong!” ‘‘Half-past!” said Scrooge. “Ding, dong!” “A quarter to it,” said Scrooge. “Ding, dong!” “The hour itself,” said Scrooge, triumphantly, “and nothing else!” - He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy. One. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found him- self face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am stand- ing in the spirit at your elbow. . It was a strange figure—like a child: yet not so like a child as like an Óld man, viewed through some super- natural medium, which gave him the appearance of hav- ing receded from the view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet *~~~~< * **** ** A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 21 the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscu- lar; the hands the same, as if its hold Were of uncom- mon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. Tt wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singu- lar contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was "doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm. "T †ven this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with in- creasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered, now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant, at an- other time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs with- out a head, now a head without a body: of which dis- solving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever. “Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Scrooge. ‘‘I am I?’ V. The yoice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a dis- tance. - “Who, and what are you?” Scrooge demanded. ‘‘ I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” “Long Past?” inquired Scrooge observant of its dwarfish stature. “No. Your past.” Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered. “What!” exclaimed the Ghost, “would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not 22 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow!” Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or any knowledge of having wilfully “bonneted'’ the Spirit at any period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what business brought him there. “Your welfare!” said the Ghost. Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said imme- diately: * * “Your reclamation, then. Take heed!” It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm. - ‘‘Rise! and walk with me!” . It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that he had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman’s hand, was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit made towards the win- dow, clasped its robe in supplication. º º a mortal,” Scrooge remonstrated, “ and liable to fall.” - - “Bear but a touch of my hand there,” said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, “and you shall be upheld in more than this!” … -- As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, win- ter day, with snow upon the ground. “Good Heaven!” said Scrooge, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. “I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!” - - The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man's sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 23 one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares, long, long, forgotten. * → • *- : “Your tip is trèmbling,” said the Ghost: “And what is that upon-your-eheek?” - Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would. “You recollect the way?” inquired the Spirit. “Remember it!” cried Scrooge with fervour; “I could walk it blindfold.” “Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!” ob- served the Ghost. “Let us go on.” e They walked along the road. Scrooge recognising every gate, and post, and tree; until a little market- town appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it. “These are but shadows of the things that have º, said the Ghost. “They have no consciousness Of us.” The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and his heart leap up as they went past! Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and by ways, for their several homes! What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done to him? “The school is not quite deserted,” said the Ghost. Q & à solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there Still.” Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed. They left the high-road, by a well-remembered, lane, and soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows J.Nº 24 A CHRISTMAS CAROL broken, and their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and Strutted in the stables, and the coach-höuses and sheds Were Overrun with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state within; for entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too much to eat. They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he had used to be. ~~~~~~, Not a faient echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the pannelling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty storehouse- door, no not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears. The spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man in foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at: stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his ºl, and leading by the bridle an ass laden with WOOOl. - “Why, it’s Ali Baba!” Scrooge exclaimed in ecstacy. “It’s dear old honest Ali Babal Yes, yes, I know. One Christmas time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And Valentine,” said Scrooge, “ and his wild brother, Orson; there they go! And what’s his name, who was put down in his drawers, asleep, at the gate of Damascus; don’t you see him! And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii: there he is upon his head! Serve him right. I’m glad of it. What business had he to be married to the Princess!” To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on such subjects, in a most extraordinay voice between laughing and crying; and to see his heightened & - Çı. | ura- A. CHRISTMAS CAROL. 25 and excited face; would have been a surprise to his business friends in the city, ifidèëd:--~~~~~ “There’s the Parrot!” cried Scrooge. “Green body and yellow tail, with a thing like lettuce growing out of ‘’Tºº the top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he e. called him, when he came home again after sailing , ” round the island. “Poor Robin Crusoe, where have 25, you been, Robin Crusoe?” The man thought he was , , ” dreaming, but he wasn't. . It was the Parrot, you know. '^c, There goes Friday, running for his life to the little "", creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!” & Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his $3. usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, “Poor boy!” and cried again. * ~ *. “I wish,” Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket; ārra looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff: ‘‘ but it's too late now.” ' ' ' , , “What is the matter?” asked the Spirit. “Nothing,” said Scrooge. “Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should-like to have given him something; that’s all.” The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying as it did so, “Let us see another Christmas!” * * Scrooge's former self grew large at the words, and the room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct: that everything had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays. He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly. Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and, with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards the door, - It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting im, and putting her arms about his neck, and often kissing him, addressed him as her “Dear, dear brother.” “I have come to bring you home, dear brother!” said the child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. “To bring you home, home, home!” “Home, little Fan?” returned the boy. 4. 26 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. “Yes!” said the child, brimful of glee. “Home, for good and all. Home, forever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home’s like heaven. He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him. Once more if you might come home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach to bring you.' And you’re to be a man!” said the child, opening her eyes; “and are never to come back here; but first we’re to be together all the Christmas long, and have the merriest time in all the world.” “You are quite a woman, little Fan!” exclaimed the boy. She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head; but being too little, laughed again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, towards the door; and he, nothing loth to go, accompanied her. A terrible voice in the hall cried, “Bring down Master Scrooge's box, there!” and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster himself, who glared on Master Scrooge. with a ferocious condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and his sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best-parlour that ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold. Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments of those dainties to the young people: at the same time sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of “some- thing” to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman, but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster good-bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove gaily down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray. “Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might º withered,” said the Ghost. “But she had a large eart!” “So she had,” cried Scrooge. “You’re right. I will not gainsay it, Spirit, God forbid!” A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 27 “She died a woman,” said the Ghost, ‘‘ and had, as I think, children.” *~~~ “One child,” Scrooge returned. “Trüe,” said the Ghost. “Your nephew!” “Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly, “Yes,” . Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and re- passed; where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Christmas time again; but it was evening, and the streets were lighted up. The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if he knew it. . … -- **- : * : * ~ . .” -- “Know it!” said Scrooge. “Was I apprenticed here!” They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he &īād been two inches taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excite- ment: “Why, it’s old Fezziwig'ſ Bless his heart; it's Fezziwig alive again!” * - Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his capacious, waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his organ of benévo- lence; and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice: & “Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!” Scrooge's former Self, now grown a young man, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-'prentice. “Dick Wilkins, to be sure!” said Scrooge to the Ghost. “Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!” “Yo ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig. “No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, “ before a man can say Jack |Robinson!” You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at it! They charged into the street with the shutters—one, two, three—had 'em up in their places—four, five, six— 28 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. barred 'em and pinned ’em—seven, eight, nine—and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses. * Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. “Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!” Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as Shug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room as you would desire to see upon a winter's night. In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk and made an orchestra of it, and tuned , like fifty stomach-āches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast, Substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezzi- wigs, beaming and tòveable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in tº-º; In came the housemaid, with her cousin the baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular friend, the milkman. **. the boy from over the way, who wāSTSūspécted of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but One, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after an- other; some shyly, some boldly, Some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them | When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, “Well done ſ” and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter especially provided for that purpose. But, scorning rest, upon his reappearance he instantly wº- # A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 29 began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the 9ther fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a Ushūţeſ, and he were a brān-new-marresolved to beat him out of sight, or perish. - There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, .#. was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince pies, and plenty. of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after-the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind | The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.” Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking. ‘v But if they had been twice as many—ah, four times— , Old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that’s not high praise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have predicted, at any given time, what would become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance—advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place-Fézziwig “cut”—cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger. - When the clock struck eleven this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side the door, and shaking hands with every per- som individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the two 'prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left º their beds, which were under a counter in the back- SnOp. During the whole of this time Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the & 30 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. scene, and with his former self. He corroborated every- thing, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of fits former self and Dick were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear. “A small matter,” said the Ghost “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.” “Small !” echoed Scrooge. The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two appren- tices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig; and when he had done so, said: “Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money : three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?” “It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his lat- ter self. “It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insig- nificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up; what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.” * ºr- ife felt the Spirit's glance. and stopped. “What is the matter?” asked the Ghost. “Nothing particular,” said Scrooge. “Something, I think?” the Ghost insisted. “No,” said Scrooge. “No. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. That’s all.” is former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air. “My time grows short,” observed the Spirit. “Quick!” This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restièss motion in the eye, which showed the pâssion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the grow- ing tree would fall. lº- A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 31 He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past. “It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.” “What Idol has displaced you!” he rejoined. “A golden one.” “This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as pov- erty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!” 49 “You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently. “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?” “What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have grown SO much wiser, what then! I am not changed towards ou.’ She shook her head. & 4 Am I?” - “Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good sea- son, we could improve our wordly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.” T- “I was a boy,” he said impatiently. “Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,” she returned. “I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.” “Have I ever sought release?” “In words. No. Never.” “In what, then?” & “In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in Your sight. . If this had never been between us,” said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him, 32 A. CHRISTMAS CAROL. º mº, would you seek me out and try to win me now? n, no!” • He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said, with a struggle, “You think not.” ~~. . . . ... ----, -- " " ' “I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered, “Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strông and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yes- terday, can even I believe that you would choose a dow- erless girl—you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain : or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.” He was about to speak; but, with her head turned from him, she resumed. • “You may—the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will—have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen l’’ She left him and they parted. “Spirit!” said Scrooge, “show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?” “One shadow more!” exclaimed the Ghost. “No more!” cried Scrooge. “No more. I don’t wish to see it. Show me no more!” But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced him to observe what happened next. They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty. The consequences were uproarious beyond belief but no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the ss=-w:-r- “s. -* r > --~~~~~~ * A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 33 mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and the latter; soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be one of them! Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I wouldn’t for the wealth of alſthe world have crushed that braided hair, and torn it down; and for the pre- cious little shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off, God bless my soul! to save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold young brood, I couldn’t have done it; I should have expected my arm to have grown round it for a punishment, and never come straight again. And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to. have let loose waves of her hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price; in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value. - ~ - -- - - - - - But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and plundered dress was borne towards it in the centre of a flushed and boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, who came home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter! The scaling him, with chairs for ladders, to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown- paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round the neck, pommel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The shouts of wonder and de- light with which the development of every package was received! The terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll's frying-pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter! The im- mense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy, and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike. It is enough that, by degrees, the children and their emotions got out of the parlour, and, by one stair at a time, up to the top of the house, where they went to bed, and so suijači 4 34 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his own fireside; and when he thought that such an- Other creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have called him father, and been a spring-time in ºwinter of his life, his sight grew very dim IITOtee Cl. T “Belle,” said the husband, turning to his wife with a Smile. “I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.” ** Who was it?” “Guess!” “How can I? Tut, don’t I know,” she added, in the same breath, laughing as he laughed. “Mr. Scrooge.” “Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office-window; and as it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world. I do believe.” “Spirit!” said Scrooge, in a broken voice, “remove me from this place.” * “I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost. “That they are what they afé, dönot blame me!” “Remove me!” Scrooge exclaimed. “I cannot bear it!” He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face in which, in some strange way, there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it. “Leave rae!” Take me back. Haunt me no longer!” In the struggle—if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost, with no visible resistancé on its own part was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary— Scrooge observed that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the extinguisher-cap, and by a Sud- den action pressed it down upon its head. The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he could not hide the light, which streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground. He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 35 by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He gave the cap a parting Squeeze, in which hºrs-Hand relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep, STAVE THEREE, THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITs. AWAKING in the middle of a prodigiously tough Snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to con- sciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding a conference with the second mes- senger despatched to him through Jacob Marley's inter- vention. But, finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every one aside with his own hands, and lying down again, estab- lished a sharp look-out all round the bed. For he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise and made Ile I'V OllS. - © - Gentlemen of the free and easy sort, who plume them- selves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to man- slaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of Subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don’t mind calling on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange ap- pearances, and that nothing between a baby and rhi- noceros would have astonished him very much. Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, When the Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing Came. All this time, he lay upon his bed, the very core 36 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. and centre of a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consola- tion of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think—as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unques- tionably have done it too—at last, I say, he began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full pos- session of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door. The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed. It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley’s, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a Kind of throne, where turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies, plum puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glow- ing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge, as he came peeping round the door. “Come in!” exclaimed the Ghost. “Come in! and know me better, man!” A CHRISTMAS CAROL. . 37 Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them. & “I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look upon me!” . Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one sim- ple deep green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure that its capa- cious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its spark- ling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained deméanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it; and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust. - “You have never seen the like of me before?” ex- claimed the Spirit. - “Never,” Scrooge made answer to it. “Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later years?” pursued the Phantom. “I don’t think I have,” said Scrooge. “I am afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?” “More than eighteen hundred,” said the Ghost. “A tremendous family to provide for,” muttered Scrooge. The Ghost of Christmas Present rose. “Spirit,” said Scrooge submissively, “conduct me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it.” “Touch my robe!” Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast. Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, pud- dings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a 38 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. rough, but brisk and not unpleasant, kind of music, 1,. Scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence it Was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snowstorms. The house fronts looked black enough, and the win- dows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of Snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons; furrows that crossed and re-crossed each other hun- dreds of times where the great streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles de- Scended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chim- neys in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest Summer Sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain. For the people who were shovelling away on the house-tops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to One another from the parapets, and now and then ex- changing a facetious snowball—better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right, and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waist- coats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic Opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Span- ish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton shyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced de- murely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, male. in the shopkeepers' be- nevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were A CHRISTMAS CAROL. se piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fra- grance, ancient walks amongst the woods, and pleasant shufflings ancle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the Oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though mem- bers of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement. - The Grocers'! oh the Grocers’! nearly closed, with per- haps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales, descend- ing on the counter, made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, Or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were So grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices So delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar, as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the coun- ter, and came running back to fetch them, and commit- ted hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fas- tened their aprons behind might have been their own, Worn Outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose. But soon the steeples called good people all to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the Streots in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores of by- 40 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable peo- ple, carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker’s doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good- humour was restored directly. For they said it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was! In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's oven; where the pave- ment smoked as if its stones were cooking too. “Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?” asked Scrooge. “There is. My own.” “Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?” asked Scrooge. “To any kindly given. To a poor one most.” “Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge. “Because it needs it most.” “Spirit,” said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, “I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people's opportunities of innocent enjoyment.” “I” cried the Spirit. “You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,” said Scrooge; “wouldn’t you?” “ I” cried the Spirit. - “You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?” said Scrooge. “And it comes to the same thing.” “I seek!” exclaimed the Spirit. “Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,” said Scrooge. “There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “ who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our maine, who are as Strange to us, A CHRISTMAS CAROL. - 41 and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.” Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on, invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had observed at the baker's), that not- withstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place with ease; and that he stood be- neath a low roof quite as gracefully and like a Super- natural creature as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall. And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous. hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to Scrooge's clerk's; for there he went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinklings of his torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen “Bob” a week himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name; and yet the ghost of Christmas Present blessed his four- roomed house! * Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in rib- bons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for six- pence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and getting the corners of his mon- strous shirt collar (Bob's private property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks. And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker’s they had smelt the goose, and known it for their own; and basking in luxurious thoughts of Sage and Onion, these young Cratchits danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he (not proud, although his collar near choked him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan lid to be let out and peeled. 42 - A CHRISTMAS CAROL. “What has ever got your precious father, then?” said Mrs. Cratchit. “And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Mºhº warn’t as late last Christmas Day by half an nour!” ºre's Martha, mother,” said a girl appearing as she Spoke. “Here’s Martha, mother!” cried the two young Cratchits. “Hurrah! There's such a goose, Marthal” “Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!” said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and ºng off her shawl and bonnet for her with officious Z623, i. - - “We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,” replied the girl, “ and had to clear away this morning, mother!” “Well! never mind so long as you are come,” said Mrs. Cratchit. “Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!” “No, no! There's father coming,” cried the two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. “Hide, Mar- tha, hide!” So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three foot of comforter exclusive of the fringe hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, -to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame! . - “Why, where's our Martha?” cried Bob Cratchit looking round. - “Not coming,” said Mrs. Cratchit. “Not coming!” said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant. “Not coming upon Christmas Day!” Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke, so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper. “And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content. “As good as gold,” said Bob “ and better. Somehow 3. if : § * * * ~ * * \!!) '%'. }. ##. # * --> § ſ ---* i '. ; --~ º, - - - - * - y -* -. — — . . . . T ~~~" > 22422/s-Fazvi-----~~ __T-- ~~~--- sº “HE HAD BEEN TIMI's ISLOOD-HORSE ALL THE WAY FROM CHURCH, AND HAD come HCME RAMPANT.” Christmas Books. A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 48 he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.” Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty. His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool beside the fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs—as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby— compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer, Master Peter, and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high procession. Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered plmenomenon, fo which a black swan was a matter of course—and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the pota- toes with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not for- getting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. \ At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long-expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of deligint arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried “ Hurrah!” There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tender- ness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes 44 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room—too nervous to bear witnesses—to take the pudding up and bring it in. Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose—a sup- position at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed. * Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry- cook's next door to each other, with a kaundress's next to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half or half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top. Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly, too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing. At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers and a custard-cup without a handle. - These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well A CHRISTMAS CAROL. As as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed: “A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless US 17' - Which all the family re-echoed. “God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all. He sat very close to his father's side, upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him. “Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, “tell me if Tiny Tim will live.” - “I see a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, “in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, care- fully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future the child will die.” “No, no,” said Scrooge. “Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.” “If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had bet- ter do it, and decrease the surplus population.” - Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by he Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and griet. “Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have dis- covered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that, in the sight of Heaven, you are more worth- less and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh, God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronounc- ing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!” - - Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling Cast his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them Speedily, on hearing his own name. “Mr. Scrooge!” said Bob; “I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!” “The Founder of the Feast,indeed!” cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening. “I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.” - - 48 , , A CHRISTMAS CAROL. “My dear,” said Bob; “the children! Christmas Day.” “It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said she, “On which one drinks the health of such an odious, Stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know #: i. Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor ellow 2° D “My dear,” was Bob's mild answer. “Christmas ay.” - “I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s,” said Mrs. Cratchit, “not for his, Long life to him! A merry Christmas and a happy New Year! He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!” The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it. , Scrooge was the Ogre of the family. The men- tion of his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full five minutes. - After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man of business; and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from between his collar, as if he were deliberating what particular investments he should favour when he came into the receipt of that be- wildering income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a miiliner's, then told them what kind of work she had to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how she meant to lie a-bed to-morrow morning for a good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at home. Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some days before, and how the lord “was much about as tall as Peter;” at which Peter pulled up his collar so high that you couldn’t have seen his head if you had been there. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and by-the-bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed. . - There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 47 their shoes were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last. By this time it was getting dark and snowing pretty heavily; and, as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in lºitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness. There, all the children of the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were shad- ows on the window-blinds of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur- booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to Some near neighbour's house; where, woe upon the single man who saw them enter—artful witches, well they knew it—in a glow. - But, if you had judged from the numbers of people On their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house expecting company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed, though littlo kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas! And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where mon- Strous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed; or would have done so, but 48 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. sº for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night. “What place is this?” asked Scrooge. “A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels g the earth,” returned the Spirit. “But they know me. ee!” A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assem- bled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children, and their children’s children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that sel- dom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song; it had been a very old song when he was a boy; and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again. The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thun- dering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth. Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water—rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed. But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in A CHRISTMAS CAROL. . 49 their can of grog; and one of them—the elder too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be—struck up a Sturdy song that was like a gale in itself. Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood be- side the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations ; but, every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some by- gone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for one another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him. It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness Over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death : it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognise it as his nephew's, and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving affability! “Ha! hal” laughed Scrooge's nephew. “Ha, ha, ha!” Tf you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blessed in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaint- a, Il CG. It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is , infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contor- tions: Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being not a bit be- hindhand, roared out lustily. 5. 50 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. “Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!” - “He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!” cried Scrooge's nephew. “He believed it, too!” - “More shame for him, Fred!” said Scrooge's niece, indignantly. Bless those women! they never do any- thing by halves. They are always in earnest. She was very pretty; exceedingly pretty. With a dim- pled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed—as no doubt it was ; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head. Altogether she was what you would have called provok- ing, you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly sat- isfactory. ‘‘He’s a comical old fellow,” said Scrooge's nephew, “ that's the truth; and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.” - “I’m sure he is very rich, Fred,” hinted Scrooge's niece. “At least you always tell me so.” “What of that, my dear!” said Scrooge's nephew. “His wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good with it. He don’t make himself comfortable with it. He hasn’t the satisfaction of thinking—ha, ha, ha!—that he is ever going to benefit Us with it.” “I have no patience with him,” observed Scrooge's niece. Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the same opinion. - “Oh, I have!” said Scrooge's nephew. “I am sorry for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims! Himself, always: Here, he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us. What's the consequence? He don’t lose much of a dinner.” “Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,” inter- rupted Scrooge's niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have been competent judges, because they had just had dinner; and with the dessert upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight. “Well! I am very glad to hear it,” said Scrooge's nephew, “because I haven’t any great faith in these young housekeepers. What do you say, Topper?” A CHRISTMAS CAROL. .51 Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece’s sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no right to express an opinion on the subject. Whereat Scrooge's niece's sister—the plump one with the lace tucker: not the one with the roses—blushed, “Do go on, Fred,” said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands. “He never finishes what he begins to say! He is such a ridiculous fellow!” - Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was unanimously followed. “I was only going to say,” said Scrooge's nephew, “that the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can’t help thinking better of it—I defy him—if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year, and Say- ing, “Uncle Scrooge, how are you?” If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, that’s something; and I think I shook him, yesterday.” It was their turn to laugh now, at the notion of his shaking Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, he encouraged them in their merri- ment, and passed the bottle, joyously. After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical family, and knew what they were about, when they sung a Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp; and hºl among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing: you might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When this strain of music sounded, all the things that 52 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Ghost had shown him came upon his mind; he softened more and more; and thought that if he could have lis- tened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his . own hands, without resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob Marley. But they didn’t devote the whole evening to music. After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christ- mas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first a game at blind-man's buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tum- , bling over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went hel He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn’t catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against him (as some of them did) on purpose, he would have made a feint of endeavour- ing to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn’t fair; and it really was not. But when at last he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his con- duct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain cºin about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in office, they were so very confidential together, behind the curtains. Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind-man's buff party, but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner where the Ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her love to admiration with all the A CHRISTMAS CAROL. - §3 letters of the alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was very great, and, to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat her sisters hollow; though they were sharp girls too, as Topper could have told you. There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for, wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on that his voice made no sound in their ears, he Sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed right, too; for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut in the eye, was not ºper than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in his head to be. - The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this nood, and looked upon him with such favour, that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But this the Spirit said could not be done. “Here is a new game,” said Scrooge. “One half hour, Spirit, only one!” - - It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagree- able animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn't live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and estamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out: N “I have found it Out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!” “What is it?” Cried Fred. “It’s your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!” Which it certainly was. Admiration was the uni- versal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been “Yes; ” inasmuch 54 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have di- verted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way. •. “He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said Fred, “ and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, “Uncle Scrooge!’” “Well! Uncle Scrooge!” they cried. “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge's nephew. “He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it, neverthe- less. Uncle Scrooge!” Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that he would have pledged the uncon- scious, company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels. Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on for- eign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts. It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form. . the Ghost, grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that his hair was grey. “Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Scrooge. “My life upon this globe is very brief,” replied the Ghost. “It ends to-night.” “To-night!” cried Scrooge. A. CHRISTMAS CAROL. 55 “To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.” - The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment. “Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?” “It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. “Look here.” From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment. . “Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” ex- claimed the Ghost. They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. ‘Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine chil- dren, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. - “Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more. “They are Man's,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your fac- ...; purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end P’ “Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge. “Are there no prisons!” said the Spirit, turning on 56 A CHRISTMAS CAROL him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?” - The bell struck twelve. Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate,”he I’éIſle IIl- bered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, Coming like a mist along the ground towards him. STAVE FOUR. THE LAST OF THE SPIRITs. THE Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery. It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which con- cealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible, save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded. He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved. - “I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” said Scrooge. • h º Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its a, ]] (1. © “You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time be- fore us,” Scrooge pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?” The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received. Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused A. CHRISTMAS CAROL. 57. a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to recover. ‘. But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black. “Ghost of the Future ſ” he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear your company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?” It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them. ” - “Lead on!” said Scrooge. “Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!” The phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along. They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather seemed to spring up about them, and compass them of its own act. But there they were in the heart of it; on 'Change amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down, and chinked the money in their pockets, and con- versed in groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had seen them often. - The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk. “No,” said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, “I § know much about it either way. I only know he's ead.” “When did he die?” inquired another. “Last night, I believe.” e “Why, what was the matter with him?” asked a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large Snuff box. “I thought he'd never die.” “God knows,” said the first with a yawn. “What has he done with his money?” asked a red- faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the 38 A CHRISTMAS CAROL ºf his nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey- COC K. “I haven’t heard,” said the man with the large chin, yawning again. “Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn’t left it to me. That's all I know.” This pleasantry was received with a general laugh. “It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the same speaker; ‘‘ for upon my life I don't know of any- body to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and vol- unteer?” “I don’t mind going if a lunch is provided,” observed the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. “But I must be fed, if I make one.” Another laugh. “Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,” said the first speaker, “for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I’ll offer to go, if anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I’m not at all sure that I wasn’t his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak whenever we met. Bye, bye!” - Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit for an explanation. The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, think- ing that the explanation might lie here. He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business: very wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point always of standing well in their es- teem: in a business point of view, that fs; strictly in a business point of view. “How are you?” said one. “How are you?” returned the other. - “Well!” said the first. “Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?” - “So I am told,” returned the second. “Cold, isn’t it!” “Seasonable for Christmas time. You are not a skaiter, I suppose?” “No. No. Something else to think of. Good-morning!” Not another word. That was their meeting, their con- versation, and their parting. Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should attach importance to conversations appar- A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 59 ently so trivial; but feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was Past, and this Ghost’s province was the Future. Nor could he think of any one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could apply them. But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied they had some latent moral for his own improvement. he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expecta- tion that the conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these riddles easy. He looked about in that very place for his own image: but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out in this. . Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold. > They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slip- shod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cess- pools, disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime. with filth and misery. - Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low- browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal. were bought. Upon the floor within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would 60 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the cold air without, by a frousy curtain- ing of miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement. Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh. “Let the charwoman alone to be the first!” cried she who had entered first. “Let the laundress alone to be the second: and let the undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here's a chance! If we haven’t all three met here without meaning it!” “You couldn’t have met in a better place,” said old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth. “Come into the parlour. You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other two ain’t strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an’t such a rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I’m sure there’s no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! We're all suitable to our call- ing, we’re well matched. Come into the parlour. Come into the parlour.” The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair- rod, and having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night) with the stem of his pipe, put it into his mouth 3,973, lll. Twhile he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on the floor and sat down in a flaunt- ing manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the other two. “What odds then | What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” said the woman. “Every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did!” A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 61 “That’s true, indeed!” said the laundress. “No man more so.” - “Why, then, don’t stand staring as if you was afraid, woman, who's the wiser? We're not going to pick holes in each other's coats, I suppose?” “No, indeed!” said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. “We should hope not.” *† “Very well, then!” cried the woman. “That’s enough. Who's the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose.” “No, indeed,” said Mrs. Dilber, laughing. “If he wanted to keep ’em after he was dead, a wicked old screw,” pursued the woman, “why wasn’t he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.” “It’s the truest word that ever was spoke,” said Mrs. Dilber. “It’s a judgment on him.” - “I wish it was a little heavier judgment,” replied the woman; ‘‘and it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe. and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We knew pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It’s no sin. Open the bundle, Joe.” * But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this; and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder. It was not extensive. . A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve buttons, and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were sev- erally examined and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give for each upon the wall, and added them up into a total when he found that there was nothing more to come. “That’s your account,” said Joe, “ and I wouldn’t give another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who’s next?” Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar tongs, and a few boots. Her account was Stated on the wall in the same manner. “I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that's the way I ruin myself,” said old Joe. 62 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. “That’s your account. If you ask me for another penny, and made it an open question, I’d repeat of being so liberal, and knock off half-a-crown.” “And now undo my bundle, Joe,” said the first WOIII a...I’l. * Joe went down on his knees for the greater con- venience of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large heavy roll of Some dark stuff. “What do you call this?” said Joe. “Bed-curtains!” “Ah!” returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms. “Bed-curtains!” “You don't mean to say you took 'em down rings and all, with him lying there?” said Joe. “Yes, I do,” replied the woman. “Why not?” “You were born to make your fortune,” said Joe, “ and you’ll certainly do it.” ‘‘I certainly shan’t hold my hand, when I can get any- thing in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He was, I promise you, Joe,” returned the woman coolly. “Don’t drop that oil upon the blankets, now.” ‘‘ His blankets?” asked Joe. “Whose else's do you think?” replied the woman. “He isn’t likely to take cold without 'em, I dare say.” “I hope he didn’t die of anything catching? Eh?” said old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up. “Don’t you be afraid of that,” returned the woman. “I an’t so fond of his company that I’d loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah! You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won’t find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It’s the best he had, and a fine one, too. They’d have wasted it, if it hadn’t been for me.” - “What do you call wasting of it?” asked old Joe. “Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,” replied the woman with a laugh. “Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If calico an’t good enough, for such a purpose, it isn’t good enough for any- thing. It’s quite as becoming to the body. He can’t look uglier than he did in that one.” Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man's lamp, he viewed them with a A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 63 detestation and disgust which could hardly have been greater, though they had been obscene demons, market- ing the corpse itself. - “Ha, ha!” laughed the same woman, when old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. “This is the end of it, you see? He frightened every one away from him when #. was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha! “Spirit!” said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. “I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this!” - He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, an now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: On which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up which, though it was dumb, announced it- Self in awful language. The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedi- ence to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed: and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this IY) 2,1]. Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so caré- lessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge's part, would have dis- closed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to Withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side. Oh, cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy Command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal! No Voice pronounced these words in Scrooge's ears, 64 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard-deal- - ing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly - . . He lay, in the dark, empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child to say he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they j so restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think. “Spirit !” he said, “this is a fearful place. In leaving it I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go !” h ill the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the €3,01. - “I understand you,” Scrooge returned, “ and I would do it if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power.” - Again it seemed to look upon him. “If there is any person in the town who feels emo- tion caused by this man's death,” said Scrooge, quite agonised, “show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech Ou !” • . The phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a mother and her children were. She was expecting some One, and with anxious eager- ness; for she walked up and down the room, started at every sound, looked out from the window, glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly bear the voices of her children in their play. - At length the long-expected knock was heard. . She hurried to the door and met her husband; a man whose face was care worn and depressed, though he was young. There was a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress. He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for him by the fire, and when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer. - A CHRISTMAS CAROL. £85 “Is it good,” she said, “ or bad P’—to help him. “Bad,” he answered. “We are quite ruined P’’ . “No. There is hope yet, Caroline.” * “If he relents,” she said, amazed, “there is! Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has happened.” d º is past relenting,” said her husband. “He is ead.” - She was a mild and patient creature, if her face spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgive- ness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of her heart. “What the half-drunken woman, whom I told you of last night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a week’s delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid me; turns out to have been quite true. He was not only very ill, but dying, then.” “To whom will Our debt be transferred?” ‘‘I don’t know. But before that time we shall be ready with the money; and even though we were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a cred- itor in his successor. We may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline!” • Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children’s faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man’s death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of pleasure. : “Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,” said Scrooge; “ or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be forever present to me.” The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit's house; the dwelling he had visited before; and found the mother and the children seated round the fire. Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as Still as statues in One corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book before him. The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet! - - 6 66 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. i. ‘And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them.’” * - Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not go On? - The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to her face. “The colour hurts my eyes,” she said. The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim! “They’re better now again,” said Cratchit's wife. “It makes them weak by candle-light; and I wouldn’t show weak eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It must be near his time.” “Past it rather,” Peter answered, shutting up his book. “But I think he has walked a little slower than he used, these few last evenings, mother.” - They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once: “I have known him walk with—I have known him . with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast, in- eed.” “And so have I,” cried Peter. “Often.” “And so have I,” exclaimed another. So had all. “But he was very light to carry,” she resumed, intent upon her work, “and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble; no trouble. And there is your father at the door!” She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his com- forter—he had need of it, poor fellow—came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the two young Cratch- its got upon his knees and laid, each child, a little cheek against his face, as if they said “Don’t mind it, father.” “Don’t be grieved!” - Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleas- antly to all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, and praised the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would be done long before Sunday, he said. “Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?” said his wife. “Yes, my dear,” returned Bob. “I wish you could have gone. It would have done you good to see how A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 67 green a place it is. But you’ll see it often. I promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child!” cried Bob. “My little child!” He broke down all at once. He couldn’t help it. If he could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther apart perhaps than they were. He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room above, which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were signs of some One having been there, lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought a little.and composed himself, he kissed the lit. tle face. He was reconciled to what had happened, and went down again quite happy. They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother working still. Bob told them of the extraordi- nary kindness of Mr. Scrooge's nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, meeting him in the street that day, and seeing that he looked a little— “just a little down, you know,” said Bob, inquired what, had happened to distress him. “On which,” said Bob, “for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told him, ‘ I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit,” he said, ‘and heartily sorry for your good wife.” By-the-bye, how he ever knew that I don’t know.” “Knew what, my dear?” “Why, that you were a good wife,” replied Bob. “Everybody knows that!” said Peter. . :- “Very well observed, my boy!” cried Bob. “I hope they do. . ‘Heartily sorry,’ he said, ‘for your good wife. If I can be of service to you in any way,’ he said, giving me his card, ‘that’s where I live. Pray come to me.” Now, it wasn’t,” cried Bob, “for the sake of anything he might be able to do for us, so much as for his kind Way, that this was quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim. and felt with us.” “I’m sure he’s a good soul!” said Mrs. Cratchit. “You would be sure of it, my dear,” returned Bob, “if you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn’t be at all Surprised—mark what I say!—if he got Peter a better situation.” “Only hear that, Peter,” said Mrs. Cratchit. “And then,” cried one of the girls, “ Peter will be :* 68 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. keeping company with some one, and setting up for himself.” r “Get along with you!” retorted Peter, grinning. “It’s just as likely as not,” said Bob, “one of these days; though there’s plenty of time for that, my dear. But however and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim—shall, we—or this first parting that there was among us?” “Never, father!” cried they all. - “And I know,” said Bob, “I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how mild he was; although he was a little, little child; we shall not quar- releasily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it.” - “No, never, father!” they all cried again. h “I am very happy,” said little Bob; “I am very appy!” - Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and him- self shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from God! “Spectre,” said Scrooge, “something informs me that our parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how. Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying dead?” The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as before—though at a different time, he thought: in- deed, there seemed no Order in these latter visions, save that they were in the Future—into the resorts of business men, but showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay for anything, but went straight on, as to the end just now desired, until besought by Scrooge t tarry for a moment. - “This Court,” said Scrooge, “through which we hurry now, is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a length of time. I see the house. Ilet me behold what I shall be in days to come.” & The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere. “The house is yonder,” Scrooge exclaimed. “Why do you point away?” The inexorable finger underwent no change. - Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The fur- A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 69 ve niture was not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as before. He joined it. Once again, and wondefing why and whither he had gone, accompanied it until they reached ań iron gate. He paused to look around before entering. A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. . It was a worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A worthy place! The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He advanced toward it trembling. The Phan- tom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape. “Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of the things that May be, only?” Still he Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood. “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!” The Spirit was immovable as ever. Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, “Ebenezer Scrooge.” º “Am I that man who lay upon the bed?” he cried, upon his knees. The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back agal n. - “No, Spirit! Oh, no, no!” The finger still was there. “Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at his robe, “hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!” For the first time the hand appeared to shake. “Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these Shadows you have shown me by an altered life?” 70 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. The kind hand trembled. - “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” I will live in the Past, the Present; and the Future. The Spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teačh. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this Stone!” In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought . to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him. Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost. *mº STAVE FIVE. T H E END of IT. YES! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his Own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. “The Spirits of all three shall strive within me. Oh, Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas time be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!” He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good in- tentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears. “They are not torn down,” cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed curtains in his arms; “they are not torn down, rings and all. They are here—I am here—the shadows of the things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!” His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance. “I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and Crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. “I am as light A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 71 as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as...merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!” He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there, perfectly winded. “There’s the saucepan that the gruel was inſ” cried Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fire- place. “There's the door by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There's the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present sat! There’s the window where I saw the wandering Spirits! It's all right, it’s all true, it all happened. Ha, ha, ha!” Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs! - “I don’t know what day of the month it is,” said Scrooge. “I don’t know how long I have been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!” He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clash, hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious! Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; golden sun- light; heavenly sky: Sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious! “What’s to-day?” cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him. “Eh9” returned the boy, with all his might of wonder. “What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said Scrooge. ‘‘To-day!” replied the boy. “Why, Christmas Day.” “It’s Christmas Day!” said Scrooge to himself. “I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!” “Hallo!” returned the boy. “Do you know the Poulterer's in the next street but, one, at the corner?” Scrooge inquired, 72 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. “I should hope I did,” replied the lad. “An intelligent boy!” said Scrooge. “A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize Tur- key that was hanging up there?—Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?” “What, the one as big as me?” returned the boy. “What a delightful boy!” said Scrooge. “It’s a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!” “It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy. “Is it?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.” “Walk-er!” exclaimed the boy. “No, no,” said Scrooge, “I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that I may give them the directions where to take it. Come back with the man, and I’ll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes, and I’ll give you half-a- Crown l’’ ... → . * The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast. “I’ll send it to Bob Cratchit's,” whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. “He shan’t know who sends it. It’s twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob’s will be!” - -- The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one; but write it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to open theestreet door, ready for the coming of the poulterer's man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker caught his eye. - “I shall love it as long as I live!” cried Scrooge, pat- ting it with his hand. “I scarcely ever looked at it be- fore. What an honest expression it has in its face! It's a wonderful knocker! Here's the Turkey. Hallo! Whoop! How are you! Merry Christmas!” It was a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped 'em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax. “Why, it’s impossible to carry that to Camden Town,” said Scrooge. “You must have a cab.” The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 73 by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he cried. Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand con- tinued to shake very much; and shaving requires atten- tion, even when you don’t dance while you are at it. But if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster Over it, and been quite satisfied. He dressed himself “all in his best,” and at last got out into the streets. The people were by this time pour- ing forth, as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows said “Good-morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!” And Scrooge said often afterwards, that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears. He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his counting-house the day before, and said “Scrooge and Marley's, I believe?” It sent a pang across his heart to think how this old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he knew what path lay straight be- fore him, and he took it. “My dear sir,” said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and taking the old gentleman by both hands. “How do you do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of you. A merry Christmas to you, sir!” “Mr. Scrooge?” : “Yes,” said Scrooge. “That is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness—” here Scrooge whispered in his ear. “Lord bless me!” cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away. “My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?” “If you please,” said Scrooge. “Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that favour?” “My dear sir,” said the other, shaking hands with him. “I don’t know what to say to such munifi-” “Don’t say anything, please.” retorted Scrooge. “Come and see me, Will you come and see me?” & J } 74 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. “I will!” cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he meant to do it. - “Thank’ee,” said Scrooge. “I am much obliged to you. I thank you fifty times. Bless you!” He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew’s house. He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the ºge to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and id it: “Is your master at home, my dear?” said Scrooge to the girl. “Nice girl! Very.” “Yes, sir.” “Where is he, my love?” said Scrooge. “He’s in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I’ll show you up-stairs, if you please.” “Thank’ee. He knows me,” said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-room lock. “I’ll go in here, my dear.” - - r He turned it gently, and sidled his face in round the door. They were looking at the table (which was spread out in great array); for these young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and like to see that everything is right. “Fred!” said Scrooge. Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sit- ting in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn't have done it, on any a CCOunt. “Why, bless my soul!” cried Fred, “who's that?” “It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?” . Let him in ' It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Top- per when he came. So did the plump sister, when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won- der-ful happiness! A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 75. But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he had set his heart upon. And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Rob. A quarter-past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the tank. His hat was off, before he opened the door; his com- forter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o'clock. “Hallo!” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice as near as he could feign it. “What do you mean by com- ing here at this time of day?” “I am very sorry, sir,” said Bob. “I am behind my time.” “You are!” repeated Scrooge. “Yes. I think you are. Step this way, sir, if you please.” “It’s only once a year, sir,” pleaded Bob, appearing from the tank. “It shall not be repeated. I was mak- ing rather merry yesterday, sir.” “Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,” said Scrooge. “I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,” he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob Such a dig in the waistcoat that he stag- gered back into the tank again, “and therefore I am about to raise your salary !” Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat. - “A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your strug- gling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!” Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he 76 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him. - - He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! à. so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every Ile I THE CHIMES. A GOBLIN STORY OF SOME BELLS THAT . RANG AN OLD YEAR OUT AND A NEW YEAR IN. sºmºsºmsºmºsº FIRST QUARTER. THERE are not many people—and as it is desirable that a story-teller and a story-reader should establish a mutual. understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed that I confine this observation neither to young people nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions of people: little and big, young and old: yet growing up, or already growing down again—there are not, I say, many people who would care to sleep in a church. . I don’t mean at sermon-time in warm weather (when the thing has actually been done, once or twice), but in the night, and alone. A great multitude of persons will be violently astonished, I know, by this position, in the broad, bold Day. But it applies to Night. It must be argued by night. And I will undertake to maintain it successfully on any gusty winter’s night appointed for the purpose, with any one opponent chosen from the rest, who will meet me singly in an old churchyard, be- fore an old church door; and will previously empower me to lock him in, if needful to his satisfaction, until morning. For the night-wind has a dismal trick of wandering round arrd round a building of that sort, and moaning as it goes; and of trying, with its unseen hand, the win- dows and the doors; and seeking out some crevices by which to enter. And when it has got in; as one not *77 78 THE CHIMEs. finding what it seeks, whatever that may be, it wails and howls to issue forth again; and not content with stalking through the isles, and gliding round and round the pillars, and tempting the deep organ, soars up to the roof, and strives to rend the rafters: then flings itself despairingly upon the stones below, and passes, mutter- jing, into the vaults. Anon, it comes up stealthily, and creeps along the walls, seeming to read, in whispers, the 'Inscriptions sacred to the Dead. At some of these, it breaks out shrilly, as with laughter; and at others, moans and cries as if it were lamenting. It has a ghostly sound, too, lingering within the altar; where it seems to chaunt in its wild way, of Wrong and Murder done, and false Gods worshipped, in defiance of the Tables of the Law, which look so fair and smooth, but are so flawed and broken. Ugh! Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly round the fire! It has an awful voice, that wind at Midnight, singing in a church! But, high up in the steeple! There the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple, where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and birds stuff shabby nests into corners of old Oaken joists and beams; and dust grows old and grey; and speckled spiders, indolent and fat with long security, swing idly to and fro in the vibration of the bells, and never loose their hold upon their thread-spun castles in } the air, or climb up sailor-like in quick alarm, or drop upon the ground and ply a score of nimble legs to save one’s life! High up in the steeple of an old church, far above the light and murmur of the town, and far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the wild and dreary place at night: and high up in the steeple of an old church, dwelt the Chimes I tell of. They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries ago, these Eells had been baptised by bishops: so many centuries ago, that the register of their baptism was lost long, long before the memory of man, and no one knew their names. They, had had their Godfathers and Godmoth- THE CHIMES. S. 79 ers, these Bells (for my own part, by the way, I would rather incur the responsibility of being Godfather to a Bell than a Boy), and had had their silver mugs, no doubt, besides. But Time had mowed down their spon- sors, and Henry the Eighth had melted down their mugs; and they now hung, nameless and mugless, in the church tower. - g Not speechless, though. Far from it. They had clear, loud, lusty, sounding voices, had these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard upon the wind. Much too sturdy chimes were they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear right royally; and bent on being heard, on stormy nights, by Some poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband was at sea, they had been some- times known to beat a blustering Nor'wester; aye, “all to fits,” as Toby Veck said; for, though they chose to call him Trotty Veck, his name was Toby, and nobody could make it anything else, either (except Tobias), without a special act of Parliament; he having been as lawfully christened in his day as the Bells had been in theirs, though with not quite so much of solemnity or public rejoicing. For my part, I confess myself of Toby Veck’s belief, for I am sure he had opportunities enough of forming a correct one. And whatever Toby Veck said, I say. And I take my stand by Toby Veck, although he did stand all day long (and weary work it was) just outside the church-door. In fact, he was a ticket-porter, Toby Veck, and waited there for jobs. And a breezy, goose-skinned, blue nosed, red-eyed, Stony-toed, tooth-chattering place it was, to wait in, in the winter-time, as Toby Veck well knew. The wind came tearing round the corner—especially the east wind—as if it had sallied forth, express, from the con- fines of the earth, to have a blow at Toby. And often- times it seemed to come upon him sooner than it had expected, for bouncing round the corner, and passing Toby, it would suddenly wheel round again, as if it cried, “Why, here he is!” Incontinently his little white apron would be caught up over his head like a naughty boy's garments, and his feeble little cane would be seen 80 THE CHIMES. to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his hand, and his legs would undergo tremendous agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now in this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, and touzled, and worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it a state of things but one degree removed from a positive miracle, that he wasn’t carried up bodily into the air as a colony of frogs or snails or other very port- able creatures sometimes are, and rained down again, to the great astonishment of the natives, on some Strange corner of the world where ticket-porters are un- known. But, windy weather, in spite of its using him so roughly, was, after all, a sort of holiday for Toby, That’s the fact. He didn’t seem to wait so long for a sixpence in the wind, as at other times; the having to fight with that boisterous element took off his attention, and quite freshened him up, when he was getting hun- gry and low-spirited. A hard frost, too, or a fall of snow, was an event; and it seemed to do him good, somehow or other—it would have been hard to say in what re- spect though, Toby! So wind and frost and snow, and perhaps a good stiff storm of hail, were Toby Veck’s red-letter days. £2. Wet weather was the worst; the cold, damp, clammy wet, that wrapped him up like a moist great-coat–the only kind of great-coat Toby owned, or could have added to his comfort by dispensing with. Wet days, when the rain came slowly, thickly, obstinately down; when the street's throat, like his own, was choked with mist ; when smoking umbrellas passed and repassed, spinning round and round like so many teetotums, as they knocked against each other on the crowded foot- way, throwing off a little whirlpool of uncomfortable sprinklings ; when gutters brawled and water-spouts were full and noisy; when the wet from the projecting stones and ledges of the church fell drip, drip, drip, on Toby, making the wisp of straw on which he stood mere mud in no time; those were the days that tried him. Then, indeed, you might see Toby looking anx- iously out from his shelter in an angle of the church wall—such a meagre shelter that in summer time it never cast a shadow thicker than a good-sized walking- stick upon the sunny pavement—with a disconsolate THE CHIMES. 81 and lengthened face. But coming out a minute after- wards, to warm himself by exercise, and trotting up and down some dozen times, he would brighten even then, and go back more brightly to his niche. They called him Trotty from his pace, which meant speed if it didn’t make it. He could have Walked faster perhaps; most likely; but rob him of his trot, and Toby would have taken to his bed and died. It bespattered him with mud in dirty weather; it cost him a world of trouble; he could have walked with infinitely greater ease; but that was one reason for his clinging to it. SO tenaciously. A weak, small, spare old man, he Was a very Hercules, this Toby, in his good intentions. He loved to earn his money. He delighted to believe—Toby was very poor, and couldn’t well afford, to part with a delight—that he was worth his salt. With a shilling or an eighteen-penny message or small parcel in hand, his courage, always high, rose higher. As he trotted on, he would call out to fast postmen ahead of him, to get Out of the way; devoutly believing that in the natural course of things he must inevitably overtake and run them down; and he had perfect faith—not often tested—in his being able to carry anything that man could lift. Thus even when he came out of his nook to warm him- self on a wet day, Toby trotted. Making, with his leaky shoes, a crooked line of slushy footprints in the mire; and blowing on his chilly hands and rubbing them against each other, poorly defended from the searching cold by threadbare mufflers of grey worsted, with a private apartment only for the thumb, and a common room or tap for the rest of the fingers; Toby, with his knees bent and his came beneath his arm, still trotted. Falling out into the road to look up at the belfry when the Chimes resounded, Toby trotted still. He made this last excursion several times a day, for they were company to him; and when he heard their voices, he had an interest-in glancing at their lodging- place, and thinking how they were moved, and what ham- mers beat upon them. Perhaps he was the more curious about these Bells, because there were points of resem- blance between themselves and him. They hung there, in all weathers, with the wind and rain driving in upon them; facing only the outsides of all those houses; never getting any nearer to the blazing fires that gleamed and -ty 7. 82 THE CHIMES. shone upon the windows, or came puffing out of the chimney tops; and incapable of participation in any of the good things that were constantly being handed, through the street doors and area railings, to prodigious cooks. Faces came and went at many windows: some- times pretty faces, youthful faces, pleasant faces: some- times the reverse: but Toby knew no more (though he often speculated on these trifles, standing idle in the streets) whence they came, or where they went, or whether, when the lips moved, one kind word was said of him in all the year, than did the Chimes themselves. Toby was not a casuist—that he knew of, at least— and I don’t mean to say that when he began to take to the Bells, and to knit up his first rough acquaintance with them into something of a closer and more delicate woof, he passed through those considerations one by one, or held any formal review or great field-day in his thoughts. But what I mean to say, and do say is, that as the functions of Toby’s body, his digestive organs for example, did of their own cunning, and by a great many operations of which he was altogether ignorant, and the knowledge of which would have astonished him very much, arrive at a certain end; so his mental faculties, without his privity or concurrence, set all these wheels and springs in motion, with a thousand others, when they worked to bring about his liking for the Bells. And though I had said his love, I would not have re- called the word, though it would scarcely have expressed his complicated feeling. For being but a simple man, he invested them with a strange and solemn character. They were so mysterious, often heard and never seen; so high up, so far off, so full of such a deep, strong mel- ody, that he regarded them with a species of awe; and sometimes when he looked up at the dark arched win- dows in the tower, he half expected to be beckoned to by something which was not a Bell, and yet was what he heard so often sounding in the Chimes. For all this, Toby scouted with indignation a certain flying rumour that the Chimes were haunted, as implying the possi- bility of their being connected with any evil thing. In short, they were very often in his ears, and very often in his thoughts, but always in his good Opinion; and he very often got such a crick in his neck by staring with his mouth wide open, at the steeple where they hung, THE CHIMES. 83 that he was fain to take an extra trot or two, afterwards, to cure it. . The very thing he was in the act of doing one cold day, when the last drowsy sound of Twelve o’clock, just struck, was humming like a melodious monster of a Bee, and not by any means a busy Bee, all through the steeple! “Dinner-time, eh?” said Toby, trotting up and down before the church. “Ah!” Toby’s nose was very red, and his eyelids were very red, and he winked very much, and his shoulders were very near his ears, and his legs were very stiff, and altogether he was evidently a long way upon the frosty side of cool. “Dinner-time, eh?” repeated Toby, using his right hand muffler like an infantine boxing-glove, and pun- ishing his chest for being cold. “Ah-h-h-h!” He took a silent trot, after that, for a minute or two. “There's nothing,” said Toby, breaking forth afresh —but here he stopped short in his trot, and with a face of great interest and some alarm, felt his nose carefully all the way up. It was but a little way (not being much of a nose) and he had soon finished. “I thought it was gone,” said Toby, trotting off again. “It’s all right, however. I am sure I couldn’t blame it if it was to go. It has a precious hard service of it in the bitter weather, and precious little to look forward to: for I don’t take snuff myself. It’s a good deal tried, poor creetur, at the best of times; for when it does get hold of a pleasant whiff or so º an’t too often), it’s generally from somebody else’s dinner, a- coming home from the baker’s.” - The reflection reminded him of that other reflection, which he had left unfinished. - * “There's nothing,” said Toby, “ more regular in its coming round than dinner-time, and nothing less regu- lar in it's coming round than dinner. That’s the great difference between 'em. It’s took me a long time to find it out. I wonder whether it would be worth any gentle- man’s while, now, to buy that observation for the Papers; or the Parliament!” Toby was only joking, for he gravely shook his head in self-depreciation. sº “Why I Lord!” said Toby. “The Papers is full of obserwations, as it is; and so’s the Parliament. Here’s 84 THE CHIMES. last week’s paper, now;” taking a very dirty one from his pocket, and holding it from him at arm’s length; “full of obserwations! Tull of observations! I like to know the news as well as any man,” said Toby, slowly, . folding it a little smaller, and putting it in his pocket again: “but it almost goes against the grain with me to read a paper now. It frightens me almost. I don’t know what we poor people are coming to. Lord send we may be coming to something better in the New Year nigh upon us!” “Why, father, father!” said a pleasant voice, hard by. But Toby, not hearing it, continued to trot backwards * forwards: musing as he went, and talking to him- Se] I. “It seems as if we can’t go right, or do right, or be righted,” said Toby. “I hadn’t much schooling, myself, when I was young; and I can’t make out whether we have any business on the face of the earth, or not. Sometimes I think we must have—a little; and some- times I think we must be intruding. I get so puzzled Sometimes that I am not even able to make up my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born bad. We seem to do dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always being complained of and guarded against. One way or another, we fill the papers. Talk of a New Year!” said Toby, mourn- fully. “I can bear up as well as another man at most times; better than a good many, for I am as strong as a lion, and all men an’t; but supposing it should really be that we have no right to a New Year—supposing we really are intruding—” “Why, father, father!” said the pleasant voice again. - t Toby heard it this time; started; stopped; and short- ening his sight, which had been directed a long way off as seeking for enlightenment in the very heart of the approaching year, found himself face to face with his own child, and looking close into her eyes. Bright eyes they were. Eyes that would bear a world of looking in, before their depth was fathomed. Dark eyes, that reflected back the eyes which searched them; not flashingly, or at the owner's will, but with a clear, calm, honest, patient radiance, claiming kindred with that light which Heaven called into being. Eyes that THE CHIMES. 85 were beautiful and true, and beaming with Hope. With Hope so young and fresh; with Hope so buoyant, vig- ourous and bright, despite the twenty years of work and poverty on which they had looked; that they became a voice to Trotty Veck, and said: “I think we have some business here—a little!” Trotty kissed the lips belonging to the eyes, and squeezed the blooming face between his hands. “Why, Pet,” said Trotty. “What's to do? I didn't expect you to-day, Meg.” “Neither did I expect to come, father,” cried the girl, nodding her head and smiling as she spoke. “But here I am! And not alone; not alone!” - “Why, you don’t mean to say,” observed Trotty, look- ing curiously at a covered basket which she carried in her hand, “that you—” - *... “Smell it, father dear,” said Meg. “Only smell it!” Trotty was going to lift the cover at once, in a great hurry, when she gaily interposed her hand. “No, no, no,” said Meg, with the glee of a child. ‘‘Lengthen it out a little. Let me just lift up the corner; just the lit-tle ti-ny cor-ner, you know,” said Meg, suiting the action to the word with the utmost gentleness, and speaking very Softly, as if she were afraid of being overheard by something; inside the basket; “there. Now. What's that!” Toby took the shortest possible Sniff at the edge of the basket, and cried out in a rapture: - “Why, it's hot!” - “It’s burning hot!” cried Meg. “Ha, ha, ha! It's scalding hot!” - “Ha, ha, ha!” roared Toby, with a sort of kick. “It’s scalding hot!” - “But what is it, father?” said Meg. “Come! You haven’t guessed what it is. And you must guess what it is. I can’t think of taking it out, till you guess what it is. Don’t be in such a hurry! Wait a minute! A little bit more of the cover. Now guess!” Meg was in a perfect fright lest he should guess right too soon; shrinking away, as she held the basket to- wards him; curling up her pretty shoulders; stopping her ear with her hand, as if by so doing she could keep the right word out of Toby’s lips; and laughing softly the whole time. 86 THE CHIMES. Meanwhile Toby, putting a hand on each knee, bent down his nose to the basket, and took a long inspiration at the lid; the grin upon his withered face expanding in the process, as if he were inhaling laughing gas. “Ah! It’s very nice,” said Toby. “It an’t-I supposo it an’t Polonies?” - ‘‘No, no, no!” cried Meg, delighted. “Nothing like Polonies!” - - “No,” said Toby, after another sniff. “It’s mellower than Polonies. It’s very nice. It improves every mo- ment. It’s too decided for Trotters. An’t it!” Meg was in an ecstasy. He could not have gone wider of the mark than Trotters—except Polonies. “Liver?” said Toby, communing with himself. “No. There’s a mildness about it that don’t answer to liver. Pettitoes? No. It an’t faint enough for pettitoes. It wants the stringiness of Cocks' heads. And I know it an’t sausages. I’ll tell you what it is. It’s chitter- lings!” “’No, it an’t!” cried Meg, in a burst of delight. “No, it an’t ſ” - “Why, what am I thinking of!” said Toby, suddenly recovering a position as near the perpendicular as it was possible for him to assume. “I shall forget my own name next. It’s tripe!” Tripe it was; and Meg, in high joy, protested he should say, in half a minute more, it was the best tripe ever stewed. “And so,” said Meg, busying herself exultingly with her basket; “I’ll lay the cloth at once, father; for I have brought the tripe in a basin, and tied the basin up in a pocket-handkerchief; and if I like to be proud for once, and spread that for a cloth, and call it a cloth, there’s no law to prevent me; is there, father?” “Not that I know of, my dear,” said Toby. “But they’re always a bringing up some new law or other.” “And according to what I was reading you in the E. the other day, father; what the Judge said, you now; we poor people are supposed to know them all. Ha, ha! What a mistake! My goodness me, how clever they think us!” “Yes, my dear,” cried Trotty; “and they’d be very fond of any one of us that did know 'em all. He’d grow fat upon the work he’d get, that man, and be popular THE CHIMES. 87 with the gentlefolks in his neighbourhood. Very much so!” - “He’d eat his dinner with an appetite, whoever he was, if it smelt like this,” said Meg, cheerfully. “Make haste, for there's a hot potato besides, and half a pint of fresh-drawn beer in a bottle. Where will you dine, father? On the Post, or on the Steps? Dear, dear, how grand we are. Two places to choose from l’’ “The steps to-day, my Pet,” said Trotty. “Steps in dry weather. Post in wet. There's a greater con- veniency in the steps at all times, because of the sitting down; but they’re rheumatic in the damp.” “Then here,” said Meg, clapping her hands, after a moment’s bustle; “here it is, all ready! And beautiful it looks! Come, father. Come!” - Since his discovery of the contents of the basket, Trotty had been standing looking at her—and had been speaking too—in an abstracted manner, which showed that though she was the object of his thoughts and eyes, to the exclusion even of tripe, he neither saw nor thought about her as she was at that moment, but had before him some imaginary rough sketch or drama of her future life. Roused, now, by her cheerful sum- mons, he shook off a melancholy shake of the head which was just coming upon him, and trotted to her side. As he was stooping to sit down, the Chimes rang. “Amen!” said Trotty, pulling off his hat and looking up towards them. “Amen to the Bells, father?” cried Meg. “They broke in like a grace, my dear,” said Trotty, taking his seat. “They’d say a good one, I am sure, if they could. Many’s the kind thing they say to me.” “The Bells do, father!” laughed Meg, as she set the basin, and a knife and fork before him. “Well!” “Seem to, my Pet,” said Trotty, falling to with great vigour. “And where's the difference? If I hear ’em, what does it matter whether they speak it or not? Why, bless you, my dear,” said Toby, pointing at the tower with his fork, and becoming more animated under the influ- ence of dinner, “how often have I heard them bells say, “Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good heart, Toby!’ A million times? More!” “Well, I never!” cried Meg. 88 THE CHIMES. She had, though—over and over again. For it was Toby’s constant topic. - “When things is very bad,” said Trotty; “very bad, indeed, I mean; almost at the worst; then it’s “Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job coming soon, Tobyl Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job coming soon, Toby.” That way.” “And it comes—at last, father,” said Meg, with a touch of sadness in her pleasant voice. f i Always.” answered the unconscious Toby. “Never ails.’ While this discourse was holding, Trotty made no Fº in his attack upon the savoury meat before him, ut cut and ate, and cut and drank, and cut and chewed, and dodged about, from tripe to hot potato, and from hot potato back again to tripe, with an unctuous and unflagging relish. But happening now to look all round the street—in case anybody should be beckoning from any door or window, for a porter—his eyes, in Coming back again, encountered Meg: sitting Opposite to him, with her arms folded: and only busy in watching his progress with a smile of happiness. “Why, Lord forgive me!” said Trotty, dropping his knife and fork. “My dove! Meg! why didn’t you tell me what a beast I was?” ‘‘ Father?” “Sitting here,” said Trotty, in penitent explanation, “Cramming, and stuffing, and gorging myself; and you before me there, never so much as breaking your precious fast, nor wanting to, when—” “But I have broken it, father,” interposed his daughter, laughing, “all to bits. I have had my dinner.” “Nonsense,” said Trotty. “Two dinners in one day! It ain’t possible! You might as well tell me that two New Year's Days will come together, or that I have had a gold head all my life, and never changed it.” - ‘‘I have had my dinner, father, for all that,” said Meg, coming nearer to him. “And if you’ll go on with yours, I’ll tell you how and where; and how your dinner came to be brought; and—and something else besides.” Toby still appeared incredulous; but she looked into his face with her clear eyes, and laying her hand upon his shoulder, motioned him to go on while the meat was sº. £º- THE CHIMES. 89 hot. So Trotty took up his knife and fork again, and went to work. But much more slowly than before, and º; his head, as if he were not at all pleased with himself. - “I had my dinner, father,” said Meg, after a little hesitation, “ with—with Richard. His dinner-time was early; and as he brought his dinner with him when he came to see me, we—we had it together, father.” Trotty took a little beer, and smacked his lips. Then he said, “Oh!”—because she waited. “And Richard says, father—” Meg resumed. Then stopped. - “What does Richard say, Meg?” asked Toby. “Richard says, father—” Another stoppage. “Richard’s a long time saying it,” said Toby. “He says then, father,” Meg continued, lifting up her eyes at last, and speaking in a tremble, but quite plainly; “another year is nearly gone, and where is the use of waiting on from year to year, when it is so unlikely we shall ever be better off than we are now? He says we are poor now, father, and we shall be poor then, but we are young now, and years will make us old before we know it. He says that if we wait: people in our condition: until we see our way quite clearly, the way will be a narrow one indeed—the common way—the Grave, father.” . A bolder man than Trotty Veck must needs have drawn upon his boldness largely, to deny it. Trotty held his peace. - “And how hard, father, to grow old, and die, and think we might have cheered and helped each other! How hard in all our lives to love each other; and to grieve, apart, to see each other working, changing, growing old and grey. Even if I got the better of it, and forgot him (which I never could), oh, father dear, how hard to have a heart so full as mine is now, and live to have it slowly drained out every drop, without the recollection of one happy moment of a woman’s life, to stay behind and comfort me, and make me better!” Trotty sat quite still. Meg dried her eyes, and said more gaily: that is to say, with here a laugh, and there a sob, and here a laugh and sob together: “So Richard says, father; as his work was yesterday made certain for some time to come, and as I love him 90 THE CHIMES. and have loved him full three years—ah! longer than that, if he knew it!—will I marry him on New Year's Day; the best and happiest day, he says, in the whole year, and One that is almost sure to bring good fortune with it. It’s a short notice, father—isn’t it?—but I haven’t my fortune to be settled, or my wedding dresses to be made, like the great ladies, father, have I? And he said so much, and said it in his way; so strong and earnest, and all the time so kind and gentle; that I said I’d come and talk to you, father. And as they paid the money for that work of mine this morning (unexpect- edly, I am sure!), and as you have fared very poorly for a whole week, and as I couldn’t help wishing there should be something to make this day a sort of holiday to you as well as a dear and happy day to me, father, I made a little treat and brought it to surprise you.” “And see how he leaves it cooling on the step!” said another voice. It was the voice of the same Richard, who had come upon them unobserved, and stood before the father and daughter; looking down upon them with a face as glow- ing as the iron on which his stout sledge-hammer daily rung. A handsome, well-made, powerful youngster he was; with eyes that sparkled like the red-hot droppings from a furnace fire; black hair that curled about his Swarthy temples rarely; and a smile—a smile that bore out Meg's eulogism on his style of conversation. “See how he leaves it cooling on the step!” said Rich- ard. “Meg don’t know what he likes. Not shel” Trotty, all action and enthusiasm, immediately reached up his hand to Richard, and was going to address him in a great hurry, when the house-door opened without any warning, and a footman very nearly put his foot in the tripe. “Out of the ways here, will you! You must always go and be a settin on Our steps, must you! You can’t go and give a turn to none of the neighbours never, can’t you! Will you clear the road, or won’t you?” Strictly speaking, the last question was irrelevant, as they had already done it. “What’s the matter, what’s the matter!” said the gentleman for whom the door was opened; coming Out of the house at that kind of light-heavy pace—that pecu- liar compromise between a walk and a jog-trot—with THE CHIMES. 91 which a gentleman upon the smooth down-hill of life, wearing creaking boots, a watch-chain, and clean linen, may come out of his house: not only without any abate- ment of his dignity, but with an expression of hav- ing important and wealthy engagements elsewhere. “What’s the matter! What’s the matter!” “You’re always a being begged, and prayed, upon your bended knees, you are,” said the footman with great emphasis to Trotty Veck, “to let our door-steps be. Why don’t you let ’em be? Can’t you let ’em be?” “There! That’ll do! that’ll do!” said the gentleman. “Halloa there! Porter!” beckoning with his head to Trotty Veck. “Come here. What’s that? Your din- ner?” “Yes, sir,” said Trotty, leaving it behind him in a COI’IlêI’. - “Don’t leave it there,” exclaimed the gentleman. “Bring it here, bring it here. So! This is your dinner, is it?” “Yes, sir,” repeated Trotty, looking with a fixed eye and a watery mouth, at the piece of tripe he had reserved for a last delicious tit-bit; which the gentle- * was now turning over and over on the end of the OI’K. Two other gentlemen had come out with him. One was a low-spirited gentleman of middle age, of a meagre habit, and a disconsolate face; who kept his hands con- tinually in the pockets of his scanty pepper-and-salt trousers, very large and dog's-eared from that custom; and was not particularly well brushed or washed. The other, a full-sized, sleek, well-conditioned gentleman, in a blue coat with bright buttons, and a white cravat. This gentleman had a very red face, as if an undue pro- portion of the blood in his body were squeezed up into his head; which perhaps accounted for his having also the appearance of being rather cold about the heart. He who had Toby's meat upon the fork, called to the first one by the name of Filer; and they both drew near together. Mr. Filer being exceedingly short-sighted, was obliged to go so close to the remnant of Toby's dinner before he could make out what it was, that Toby’s heart leaped up into his mouth. But Mr. Filer didn’t eat it. . “This is a description of animal food, Alderman,” 92 THE CHIMES. said Filer, making little punches in it, with a pencil- case, “commonly known to the labouring population of this country, by the name of tripe.” The Alderman laughed, and winked; for he was a merry fellow, Alderman Cute. Oh, and a sly fellow, too! A knowing fellow. Up to everything. Not to be im- posed upon. Deep in the people's hearts! He knew them, Cute did. I believe you! - - “But who eats tripe?” said Mr. Filer, looking round. “Tripe is without an exception the least economical, and the most wasteful article of consumption that the markets of this country can by possibility produce. The loss upon a pound of tripe has been '...} to be, in the boiling, seven-eighths of a fifth more than the loss upon a pound of any other animal substance whatever. Tripe is more expensive, properly understood, than the hot- house pine-apple. Taking into account the number of animals slaughtered yearly within the bills of mortality alone; and forming a low estimate of the quantity of tripe which the carcases of those animals, reasonably well butchered, would yield; I find that the waste on that amount of tripe, if boiled, would victual a garrison of five hundred men for five months of thirty-one days each, and a February over. The Waste, the Waste!” Trotty stood aghast, and his legs shook under him. He seemed to have starved a garrison of five hundred men with his own hand. - •- - “Who eats tripe?” said Mr. Filer, warmly. “Who eats tripe?” Trotty made a miserable bow. “You do, do you?” said Mr. Filer. “Then I'll tell you something. You snatch your tripe, my friend, Out of the mouths of widows and orphans.” “I hope not, sir,” said Trotty, faintly. “I’d sooner die of want!” - “ Divide the amount of tripe before-mentioned, Alder- man,” said Mr. Filer, “by the estimated number of existing widows and orphans, and the result will be one pennyweight of tripe to each. Not a grain is left for that man. Consequently, he’s a robber.” Trotty was so shocked, that it gave him no concern to see the Alderman finish the tripe himself. It was a relief to get rid of it, anyhow. - “And what do you say?” asked the Alderman, jocosely, *** . . THE CHIMES. - 93 of the red faced gentleman in the blue coat. “You have heard friend Filer. What do you say?” 8 “What's it possible to say?”. returned the gentleman. “What is to be said? Who can take any interest in a fellow like this,” meaning Trotty; “in such degenerate times as these. Look at him! What an object! The good old times, the grand old times, the great old times! Those were the times for a bold peasantry, and all that sort of thing, in fact. There’s nothing now-a-days. Ah!” sighed the red-faced gentleman. “The good old times, the good old times!” The gentleman didn’t specify what particular times he alluded to; nor did he say whether he objected to the present times,from a disinterested consciousness that they had done nothing very remarkable in producing himself. “The good old times, the good old times,” repeated the gentleman. “What times they were! They were the only times. It’s of no use talking about any other times, or discussing what the people are in these times. You don’t call these, times, do you? I don’t. Look into Strutt's Costumes, and see what a Porter used to be, in any of the good old English reigns.” “He hadn’t, in his very best circumstances, a shirt to his back, or a stocking to his foot; and there was Scarcely a vegetable in all England for him to put into his mouth,” said Mr. Filer. “I can prove it, by tables.” But still the red-faced gentleman extolled the good old times, the grand old times, the great old times. No matter what anybody else said, he still went turning . round and round in one set form of words concerning them; as a poor Squirrel turns and turns in its revolv- ing cage; touching the mechanism, and trick of which, it has probably quite as distinct perceptions, as ever this red-faced gentleman had of his deceased Millennium. It is possible that poor Trotty’s faith in these very ~vague Old Times was not entirely destroyed, for he felt vague enough at that moment. One thing, however, was plain to him, in the midst of his distress; to wit, that however these gentlemen might differ in details, his misgivings of that morning, and of many other mornings, were well founded. “No, no. We can’t go right or do right,” thought Trotty in despair. “There is no good in us. . We are born bad!” 94. THE CHIMES. But Trotty had a father's heart within him; which had somehow got into his breast in spite of this decree; and he could not bear that Meg, in the blush of her brief joy, should have her fortune read by these wise gentlemen. “God help her,” thought poor Trotty. “She will know it soon enough.” - g He anxiously signed, therefore, to the young Smith to take her away. But he was so busy, talking to her softly at a little distance, that he only became conscious of this desire, simultaneously with Alderman Cute. Now, the Alderman had not yet had his say, but he was a phi- losopher, too—practical, though! Oh, very practical!— and, as he had no idea of losing any portion of his audience, he cried “Stop!” “Now, you know,” said the Alderman, addressing his two friends, with a self-complacent smile upon his face, which was habitual to him, “I am a plain man, and a practical man; and I go to work in a plain, practical way. That’s my way. There is not the least mystery or diffi- culty in dealing with this sort of people if you only understand’em, and can talk to 'em in their own manner. Now, you Porter! Don’t you ever tell me, or anybody else, my friend, that you haven’t always enough to eat, and of the best; because I know better. I have tasted your tripe, you know, and you can’t ‘chaff' me. You understand what “chaff' means, eh? That’s the right word, isn’t it? Ha, ha, ha! Lord bless you,” said the Alderman, turning to his friends again, “it’s the easiest thing on earth to deal with this sort of people, if you only understand ‘em.” Famous man for the common people, Alderman Cute! Never out of temper with them! Easy, affable, joking, knowing gentleman! “You see, my friend,” pursued the Alderman, “there's a great deal of nonsense talked about Want— hard up,' you know; that’s the phrase, isn’t it? haſ ha! hal—and I intend to Put it Down. There's a certain amount of cant in vogue about Starvation, and I mean to Put it Down. That's all! I lord bless you,” said the Alderman, turning to his friends again, “you may Put Down any- thing among this sort of people, if you only know the way to set about it!” - Trotty took Meg's hand and drew it through his arm. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing though. *:::: -- - THE CHIMEs. 95 “Your daughter, eh?” said the Alderman, chucking her familiarly under the chin. Always affable with the working classes, Alderman Cute! Knew what pleased them! Not a bit of pride! “Where’s her mother?” asked that worthy gentleman. “Dead,” said Toby. “Her mother got up linen; and was called to heaven when she was born.” “Not to get up linen there, I suppose,” remarked the Alderman pleasantly. - Toby might or might not have been able to separate his wife in heaven from her old pursuits. But query: If Mrs. Alderman Cute had gone to heaven, would Mr. Alderman Cute have pictured her as holding any state or station there? “And you’re making love to her, are you?” said Cute to the young Smith. “Yes,” returned Richard quickly, for he was nettled by the question. “And we are going to be married on New Year's Day.” What do you meanſ” cried Filer sharply. “Mar- ried!” * “Why, yes, we’re thinking of it, Master,” said Rich- ard. “We’re rather in a hurry you see, in case it should be Put DOwn first.” “Eh! cried Filer, with a groan. “Put that down in- deed, Alderman, and you’ll do something. Married! Married! ! The ignorance of the first principles of po- litical economy on the part of these people; their improvi- dence; their wickedness; is, by Heavens! enough to— Now look at that couple, will you!” Well! They were worth looking at. And marriage seemed as reasonable and fair a deed as they need have in contemplation. - “A man may live to be as old as Methuselah,” said Mr. Filer, “ and may labour all his life for the benefit of such people as those: and may heap up facts on figures, facts on figures, facts on figures, mountains high and dry; and he can no more hope to persuade 'em that they have no right or business to be married, than he can hope to persuade 'em that they have no earthly right or business to be born. And that we know they haven’t. We reduced it to a mathematical certainty long ago!” Alderman Cute was mightily diverted, and laid his right forefinger on the side of his nose, as much as to 2 96 THE CHIMES. say to both his friends, “Observe me, will you? Keep your eye on the practical man!”—and called.Meg to him. “Come here, my girl!” said Alderman Cute. The young blood of her lover had been mounting, wrathfully, within the last few minutes; and he was in- disposed to let her come. But, setting a constraint upon himself, he came forward with a stride as Meg ap- proached, and stood beside her. Trotty kept her hand within his arm still, but looked from face to face as wildly as a sleeper in a dream. “Now, I’m going to give you a word,or two of good advice, my girl,” said the Alderman, in his nice, easy way. “It’s my place to give advice, you know, because I’m a Justice. You know I’m a Justice, don’t you?” Meg timidly said, “Yes.” But everybody knew Alder- man Cute was a Justice! Oh, dear, so active a Justice always! Who such a mote of brightness in the public eye, as Cute! - “You are going to be married, you say,” pursued the Alderman. “Very unbecoming and indelicate of one of your sex! But never mind that. After you are married, you’ll quarrel with your husband, and come to be a dis- tressed wife. You may think not; but you will, because I tell you so. Now, I give you fair warning, that I have made up my mind to Put distressed wives Down. So, don’t be brought before me. You’ll have children— boys. Those boys will grow up bad, of course, and run wild in the streets, without shoes and stockings. Mind, my young friend! I’ll convict ’em summarily, every one, for I am determined to Put boys without shoes and stockings, Down. Perhaps your husband will die young (most likely) and leave you with a baby. Then you’ll be turned out of doors, and wander up and down the streets. Now, don’t wander near me, my dear, for I am resolved to Put all wandering mothers Down. All young mothers, of all sorts and kinds, it’s my determination to Put Down. Don’t think to plead illness as an excuse with me; or babies as an excuse with me; for all sick persons and young children (I hope you know the church-service, but I’m afraid not) I am determined to Put Down. And if you attempt, desperately, and un- gratefully, and impiously, and fraudulently attempt, to drown yourself or hang yourself, I’ll have no pity on you, for I have made up my mind to Put all suicide THE CHIMES. gº 97. Down! If there is one thing,” said the Alderman, with his self-satisfied smile, “on which I can be said to have made up my mind more than on another, it is to Put suicide Down. So don’t try it on. That’s the phrase, isn’t it! Ha, ha! now we understand each Other.” s - Toby knew not whether to be agonised or glad, to see that Meg had turned a deadly white, and dropped her lover's hand. - “As for you, you dull dog,” said the Alderman, turn- ing with even increased cheerfulness and urbanity to the young Smith, “what are you thinking of being mar- ried for? What do you want to be married for, you silly fellow! If I was a fine, young, strapping chap like you, I should be ashamed of being milksop enough to pin my- self to a woman's apron-strings! Why, she’ll be an old woman before you're a middle-aged man! And a pretty figure you’ll cut then, with a draggle-tailed wife and a crowd of squalling children crying after you wherever you go!” Oh, he knew how to banter the common people, Alder- man Cute! - “There! Go along with you,” said the Alderman, “ and repent. Don’t make such a fool of yourself as to get married on New Year's Day. You'll think very dif- ferently of it, long before next New Year's Day: a trim young fellow like you, with all the girls looking after you. Go along with you!” They went along. Not arm in arm, or hand in hand, or interchanging bright glances; but she in tears; he gloomy and down-looking. Were these the hearts that had so lately made old Toby’s leap up from its faintness? No, no. The Alderman (a blessing on his head!) had Put them. Down. “As you happen to be here,” said the Alderman to Toby, “you shall carry a letter for me. Can you be quick? You’re an old man.” Toby, who had been looking after Meg, quite stupidly, made shift to murmur out that he was very quick, and very strong. - “How old are you?” inquired the Alderman. “I am over sixty, sir,” said Toby. “Oh! This man’s a great deal past the average age, you know,” cried Mr. Filer breaking in as if his 8 98 THE CHIMES. patience would bear some trying, but this was really carrying matters a little too far. “I feel I'm intruding, sir,” said Toby. “I–I mis- doubted it this morning. Oh, dear me!” The Alderman cut him short by giving him the letter from his pocket. Toby would have got a shilling too; but Mr. Filer clearly showing that in that case he would rob a certain given number of persons of ninepence- half-penny a piece, he only got sixpence; and thought himself very well off to get that. - Then the Alderman gave an arm to each of his friends, and walked off in high feather; but he immediately §: hurrying back alone, as if he had forgotten some- thing. - ** Porter!” said the Alderman. “Sir!” said Toby. “Take care of that daughter of yours. She’s much too handsome.” - * Even her good looks are stolen from somebody or other, I suppose,” thought Toby, looking at the sixpence in his hand, and thinking of the tripe. “She's been and robbed five hundred ladies of a bloom a piece, I shouldn’t wonder. It's very dreadful!” “She’s much too handsome, my man,” repeated the Aldertman. “ The chances are, that she'll come to no good, I clearly see. Observe what I say. Take care of her!” With which, he hurried off again. “Wrong every way. Wrong every way!” said Trotty, claspin & his habds. “Born bud. No business here!” The Chimes came clashing in upon him as he said the words. Full, loud, and sounding—but with no encour- agement. No, not a drop. “The tune's changed,” cried the old man, as he lis- tened. “There’s not a word of all that fancy in it. Why should there be? I have no business with the New Year nor with the old one neither. Let me die!” Still the Bells, pealing forth their changes, made the very air spin. Put 'em down, Put 'em down! Good old Times, Good old Times! Facts and Figures, Facts and Figures! Put 'em down, Put 'em down! If they said anything they said this, until the brain of Toby reeled. He pressed his bewildered head between his hands as if to keep it from splitting asunder. A well-timed action, as it happened; for finding the letter in one of THE CHIMES. 99 them, and being by that means reminded of his charge, he fell, mechanically, into his usual trot, and trotted off. SECOND QUARTER. THE letter Toby had received from Alderman Cute was addressed to a great man in the great district of the town. The greatest district of the town. . It must have been the greatest district of the town, because it was commonly called “the world’ by its inhabitants. The letter positively seemed heavier in Toby's hand than another letter. Not because the Alderman had sealed it with a very large coat of arms and no end of wax, but because of the weighty name on the Super- scription, and the ponderous amount of gold and silver with which it was associated. “How different from us!” thought Toby, in all sim- plicity and earnestness, as he looked at the direction. “ Divide the lively turtles in the bills of mortality, by the number of gentlefolks able to buy 'em; and whose share does he take but his own! As to Snatching tripe from anybody's mouth—he'd scorn it!” With the involuntary homage due to such an exalted character, Toby interposed a corner of his apron between the letter and his fingers. “His children,” said Trotty, and a mist rose before his eyes; ‘‘ his daughters—Gentlemen may win their hearts and marry them; they may be happy wives and mothers; they may be handsome like my darling M-e-” He couldn’t finish her name. The final letter swelled in his throat, to the size of the whole alphabet. “Never mind,” thought Trotty. “I know what I mean. That's more than enough for me.” And with this consolatory rumination, trotted on. * It was a hard frost, that day. The air was bracing, crisp, and clear. The wintry sun, though powerless for warmth, looked brightly down upon the ice it was too weak to melt, and set a radiant glory there. At other times, Trotty might have learned a poor man’s lesson from the wintry sun; but he was past that now. The Year was Old, that day. The patient Year had lived through the reproaches and misuses of its slander- 100 THE CHIMES. ers, and faithfully performed its work. Spring, sum- mer, autumn, winter. It had laboured through the destined round, and now laid down its weary head to die. Shut out from hope, high impulse, active happi- ness, itself, but messenger of many joys to others, it made appeal in its decline to have its toiling days and patient hours remembered, and to die in peace. Trotty might have read a poor man’s allegory in the fading year; but he was past that now. g And only he? Or has the like appeal been ever made, by seventy years at once upon an English labourer's head, and made in vain! The streets were full of motion, and the shops were decked out gaily. The New Year, like an Infant Heir to the whole world, was waited for, with welcomes, presents, and rejoicings. There were books and toys for the New Year, glittering trinkets for the New Year, dresses for the New Year, schemes of fortune for the New Year; new inventions to beguile it. Its life was parcelled out in almanacks and pocket-books; the com- ing of its moons, and stars, and tides, was known before- hand to the moment; all the workings of its seasons in their days and nights, were calculated with as much precision as Mr. Filer could work sums in men and WOIO €1). The New Year, the New Year. Everywhere the New Year! The Old Year was already looked upon as dead; and its effects were selling cheap, like some drowned mariner's aboardship, Its patterns were Last Year’s, and going at a sacrifice, before its breath was gone. Its treasures were mere dirt, beside the riches of its unborn successor! º Trotty had no portion, to his thinking, in the New Year or the Old. “Put 'em down, Put 'em down! Facts and Figures, Eacts and Figures! Good Old Times, Good Old Times! Put 'em down, Put 'em down!”—his trot" went to that measure, and would fit itself to nothing else. But, even that one, melancholy as it was, brought him, in due time, to the end of his journey. To the mansion of Sir Joseph Bowley, Member of Parliament. The door was opened by a Porter. Such a Porter! Not of Toby’s order. Quite another thing. His place was the ticket though; not Toby's. THE CHIMES. 101 This Porter underwent some hard panting before he could speak; having breathed himself by coming incau- tiously out of his chair, without first taking time to think about it and compose his mind. When he found his voice—which it took him some time to do, for it was a long way off, and hidden under a load of meat—he said in a fat whisper: “Who’s it from?” Toby told him. “You’re to take it in, yourself,” said the Porter, point- ing to a room at the end of a long passage, opening from the hall. “‘Flverything goes straight in, on this day of the year. You’re not a bit too soon; for the carriage is at the door now, and they have only come to town for a couple of hours, a purpose.” - Toby wiped his feet (which were quite dry already) with great care, and took the way pointed out to him; Observing as he went that it was an awfully grand house, but hushed and covered up, as if the family were in the Country. Knocking at the room door, he was told to enter from within; and doing so found himself in a spa- cious library, where, at a table strewn with files and papers, were a stately lady in a bonnet; and a not very stately gentleman in black who wrote from her dicta- tion; while another and an older, and a much statelier gentleman, whose hat and cane were on the table, walked up and down, with one hand in his breast, and looked complacently from time to time at his own picture—a full length; a very full length—hanging over the fireplace. - “What is this?” said the last-named gentleman. “Mr. Fish, will you have the goodness to attend?” Mr. Fish begged pardon, and taking the letter from Toby, handed it, with great respect. “From Alderman Cute, Sir Joseph.” “Is this all? Have you nothing else, Porter?” in- Quired Sir Joseph. Toby replied in the negative. “You have no bill or demand upon me—my name is Bowley, Sir Joseph Bowley—of any kind from anybody, have you?” said Sir Joseph., “If you have, present it. There is a cheque-book by the side of Mr. Fish. I allow nothing to be carried into the New Year. Every description of account is settled in this house H02 THE CHIMES. at the close of the old one. So that if death was to— to— “To cut,” suggested Mr. Tish. - “To sever, sir,” returned Sir Joseph, with great as- perity, “the cord of existence—my affairs would be found, I hope, in a state of preparation.” “My dear Sir Joseph!” said the lady, who was greatly younger than the gentleman. “How shocking!” “My Lady Bowley,” returned Sir Joseph, floundering now and then, as in the great depth of his observations, “ at this season of the year we should think of—of-Our- selves. We should look into our—our accounts. We should feel that every return of so eventful a period in human transactions, involves matter of deep moment between a man and his—and his banker.” Sir Joseph delivered these words as if he felt the full morality of what he was saying; and desired that even Trotty should have an opportunity of being improved by such discourse. Possibly he had this end before him in still forbearing to break the seal of the letter, and in telling Trotty to wait where he was a minute. “You were desiring Mr. Fish to say, my lady—” Ob- served Sir Joseph. “Mr. Fish has said that, I believe,” returned his lady, glancing at the letter. “But, upon my word, Sir Joseph, I don’t think I can let it go after all. It is SO very dear.” “What is dear?” inquired Sir Joseph. : “That Charity, my love. They only allow two votes for a subscription of five pounds. Really monstrous?” “My Lady Bowley,” returned Sir Joseph, “ you sur- prise me. Is the luxury of feeling in proportion to the number of votes; or is it, to a rightly-constituted mind, in proportion to the number of applicants, and the wholesome state of mind to which their canvassing reduces them! Is there no excitement of the purest kind in having two votes to dispose of among fifty people?” “Not to me, I acknowledge,” returned the lady. “It ... bores one. Besides, one can't oblige one's acquaintance. But you are the Poor Man's Friend, you know, Sir Joseph. You think otherwise.” * ‘‘ I am the Poor Man’s Friend,” observed Sir Joseph, glancing at the poor man present. “As such I may be THE CHIMES. 105 taunted. As such I have been taunted. But I ask no Other title.” “Bless him for a noble gentleman!” thought Trotty. “I don’t agree with Cute here, for instance, said Sir Joseph, holding out the letter. I don’t agree with the Filer Party. I don’t agree with any party. My friend, the Poor Man, has no business with anything of that sort, and nothing of that sort has any business with him. My friend, the Poor Man, in my district, is my business. No man or body of men has any right to interfere be- tween my friend and me. That is the ground Itake. I assume a-a paternal character towards my friend. I say, “My good fellow, I will treat you paternally.’” Toby listened with great gravity, and began to feel more comfortable. - “Your only business, my good fellow,” pursued Sir Joseph, looking abstractedly at Toby; “ your only busi- ness in life is with me. You needn’t trouble yourself to think about anything. I will think for you; I know what is good for you; I am your perpetual parent. Such is the dispensation of an all-wise Providence! Now, the design of your creation is—not that you should swill, and guzzle, and associate your enjoyments, brutally, with food;” Toby thought remorsefully of the tripe; “but that you should feel the Dignity of Labour. Go forth erect into the cheerful morning air, and—and stop there. Live hard and temperately, be respectful, exer- cise your self-denial, bring up your family on next to nothing, pay your rent as regularly as the clock strikes, be punctual in your dealings (I set you a good example; you will find Mr. Fish, my confidential secretary, with a cash-box before him at all times); and you may trust to me to be your Friend and Father.” “ Nice children, indeed, Sir Joseph!” said the lady with a shudder. “Rheumatisms, and fevers, crooked legs, and asthmas, and all kinds of horrors!” “My lady,” returned Sir Joseph, with solemnity, “not the less am I the Poor Man’s Friend and Father. Not the less shall he receive encouragement at my hands. Every quarter-day he will be put in communication with Mr. Fish. Every New-Year's Day, myself and friends will drink his health. Once every year, myself and friends will address him with the deepest feeling. Once in his life, he may even perhaps receive; in public, 104 THE CHIMES. in the presence of the gentry; a Trifle from a Friend. And when, upheld no more by these stimulants, and the Dignity of Labour, he sinks into his comfortable grave, then my lady”—here Sir Joseph blew his nose—“I will be a Friend and Father—on the same terms—to his children.” Toby was greatly moved. “Oh! You have a thankful family, Sir Joseph!” cried his wife. - “My lady,” said Sir Joseph, quite majestically, “in- gratitude is known to be the sin of that class. I expect no other return.” - “Ah! Born bad!” thought Toby. “Nothing melts us.” - “What man can do, I do,” pursued Sir Joseph. “I do my duty as the Poor Man’s Friend and Father; and I endeavour to educate his mind, by inculcating on all occasions the One great moral lesson which that class requires. That is, entire Dependence on myself. They have no business whatever with—with themselves. If wicked and designing persons tell them otherwise, and they become impatient and discontented, and are guilty of insubordinate conduct and black-hearted ingratitude; which is undoubtedly the case; I am their Friend and Father still. It is so Ordained. It is in the nature of things.” - With that great sentiment he opened the Alderman’s letter; and read it. “Very polite and attentive, I am sure!” exclaimed Sir Joseph. “My lady, the Alderman is so obliging as to remind me that he has had ‘the distinguished honour’— he is very good—of meeting me at the house of our mutual friend Deedles, the banker; and he does me the favour to inquire whether it will be agreeable to me to have Will Fern put down.” - “Most agreeable!” replied my lady Bowley. “The worst man among them! He has been committing a robbery, I hope?” “Why, no,” said Sir Joseph, referring to the letter. “Not quite. Very near. Not quite. He came up to London, it seems, to look for employment (trying to better himself—that’s his story), and being found at night asleep in a shed, was taken into custody, and car- ried next morning before the Alderman. The Alderman THE CHIMES. 105. observes (very properly) that he is determined to put this sort of thing down; and that if it will be agreeable to me to have Will Fern put down, he will be happy to begin with him.” - * Let him be made an example of, by all means,” re- turned the lady, “Last winter, when I introduced pinking and eyelet-holing among the men and boys in the village, as a nice evening employment, and had the lines— - Oh, let us love our occupations, Bless the squire and his relations, Live upon our daily rations, And always know our proper stations— set to music on the new system, for them to sing the while; this very Fern—I see him now—touched that hat of his, and said, ‘I humbly ask your pardon, my lady, but an’t I something different from a great girl?' I ex- pected it, of course; who can expect anything but inso- lence and ingratitude from that class of people. That is not to the purpose, however. Sir Joseph! Make an example of him!” - “Hem!” coughed Sir Joseph. “Mr. Fish, if you’ll have the goodness to attend—” Mr. Fish immediately seized his pen, and wrote from Sir Joseph’s dictation. . “Private. My dear Sir. I am very much indebted to you for your courtesy in the matter of the man William Fern, of whom, I regret to add, I can say nothing favour- able. I have uniformly considered myself in the light of his Friend and Father, but have been repaid (a common case, I grieve to say) with ingratitude, and constant op- position to my plans. He is a turbulent and rebellious spirit. His character will not bear investigation. Noth- ing will persuade him to be happy when he might. Under these circumstances it appears to me, I own,that when he comes before you again (as you informed me he promised to do to-morrow, pending your inquiries, and I think he may be so far relied upon), his committal for Some short term as a Vagabond, would be a service to Society, and would be a salutary example in a country where—for the sake of those who are, through good and evil report, the Friends and Fathers of the Poor, as well as with a view to that. generally speaking, misguided 106 THE CHIMES. class themselves—examples are greatly needed. And I am,” and so forth. : “It appears,” remarked Sir Joseph, when he had signe this letter, and Mr. Fish was sealing it, “as if this were Ordained: really. At the close of the year, I wind up #. account and strike my balance, even with William ern P’ • Trotty, who had long ago relapsed, and was very low- iºd, stepped forward with a rueful face to the etter. - tº “With my compliments and thanks,” said Sir Jo- seph.” “Stop!” - - “Stop!” echoed Mr. Fish. “You have heard, perhaps,” said Sir Joseph, oracu- larly, “ certain remarks into which I have been led re- specting the solemn period of time at which we have arrived, and the duty imposed upon us of settling our affairs, and being prepared. You have observed that I don’t shelter myself behind my superior standing in so- ciety, but that Mr. Fish—that genleman—has a cheque- book at his elbow and is in fact here to enable me to turn over a perfectly new leaf, and enter on the epoch before us with a clean account. Now, my friend, can you lay your hand upon your heart, and say that you also have made preparation for a New Year?” “I am afraid, sir,” stammered Trotty, looking meekly at him, “that I am a-a-little behind-hand with the world.” - “Behind-hand with the world!” repeated Sir Joseph Bowley, in a tone of terrible distinctness. “I am afraid, sir.” faltered Trotty, “that there’s a matter of ten or twelve shillings owing to Mrs. Chick- enstalker. “To Mrs. Chickenstalker!” repeated Sir Joseph, in the same tone as before. “A shop, sir,” exclaimed Toby, “in the general line. Also"a—a little money on account of rent. A very little, sir. It oughtn't to be owing, I know, but we have been hard put to it, indeed!” Sir Joseph looked at his lady, and at Mr. Fish, and at Trotty, one after another, twice all round. He then made a despondent gesture with both hands at Once, as if he gave the thing up altogether. . “How a man, even among this improvident and im- THE CHIMES. 107 practicable race; an old man; a man grown grey; can look a New Year in the face, with his affairs in this con- dition; how he can lie down on his bed at night, and get up again in the morning, and—There!” he said, turning his back on Trotty. “Take the letter. Take the letter!” “I heartily wish it was otherwise, sir,” said Trotty, º to excuse himself. “We have been tried very hard.” Sir Joseph still repeating “Take the letter, take the letter!” and Mr. Fish not only saying the same thing, but giving additional force to the request by motioning the bearer to the door, he had nothing for it but to make his bow and leave the house? And in the street, poor Trotty pulled his worn old hat down on his head, to laide the grief he felt at getting no hold on the New Year, any where. He didn’t even lift his hat to look up at the Bell tower when he came to the old church on his return. He halted there a moment, from habit: and knew that it was growing dark, and that the steeple rose above him, in- distinct and faint, in the murky air. He knew, too, that the Chimes would ring immediately; and that they sounded to his fancy, at such a time, like voices in the clouds. But he only made the more haste to deliver the Alderman's letter, and get out of the way before they began; for he dreaded to hear them tagging “Friends and Fathers, Friends and Fathers,” to the burden they had rung out last. - Toby discharged himself of his commission, therefore, with all possible speed, and set off trotting homeward. But what with his pace, which was at best an awkward one in the street; and what with his hat, which didn’t improve it; he trotted against somebody in less than no time, and was sent staggering out into the road. “I beg your pardon, I’m sure!” said Trotty, pulling up his hat in great confusion, and between the hat and the torn lining, fixing his head into a kind of bee-hive. “I hope I haven’t hurt you.” As to hurting anybody, Toby was not such an abso- lute Samson, but that he was much more likely to be hurt himself: and indeed, he had flown out into the road like a shuttlecock. He had such an opinion of his own strength, however, that he was in real concern for the other party: and said again: 108 - THE CHIMES. \ “I hope I haven't hurt you?” The man against whom he had run; a sun-browned, Sinewy, country-looking man, with grizzled hair, and a rough chin; stared at him for a moment, as if he sus- pected him to be in jest. But, satisfied of his good faith, he answered: *.* ‘‘No, friend. You have not hurt me.” “Nor the child, I hope?” said Trotty. “Nor the child,” returned the man. “I thank you kindly.” - As he said so, he glanced at a little girl he carried in his arms, asleep: and shading her face with the long end of the poor handkerchief he wore about his throat, went slowly on. The tone in which he said “I thank you kindly,” pene- trated Trotty’s heart. He was so jaded and foot-sore, and so soiled with travel, and looked about him so for- lorn and strange, that it was a comfort to him to be able to thank any one: no matter for how little. Toby stood gazing after him as he plodded wearily away, with the child's arm clinging round his neck. - At the figure in the worn shoes—now the very shade and ghost of shoes—rough leather leggings, common frock, and broad slouched -hat, Trotty stood gazing, blind to the whole street. And at the child’s arm cling- ing round its neck. Before he merged into the darkness the traveller stopped; and looking round, and seeing Trotty standing there yet, seemed undecided whether to return or go on. After doing first the one and then the other, he came back, and Trotty went half way to meet him. * “You can tell me, perhaps,” said the man, with a faint smile, “and if you can I am sure you will, and I’d rather ask you than another—where Alderman Cute ives.” - “Close at hand,” replied Toby. “I’ll show you his house with pleasure.” “I was to have gone to him elsewhere to-morrow,” said the man, accompanying Toby, “but I’m uneasy under suspicion, and want to clear myself, and to be free to go and seek my bread—I don’t know where. ... So, maybe he’ll forgive my going to his house to-night.” “It’s impossible,” cried Toby, with a start, “that your name’s Fern!” TIE CHIMES. 109 “Eh!” cried the other, turning on him in astonish- ment. - “Fern! Will Fern!” said Trotty. “That’s my name,” replied the other. - “Why, then,” cried Trotty, seizing him by the arm, and looking cautiously round, “for Heaven’s sake don’t go to him! Don’t go to him! He'll put you down as sure as ever you were born. Here! come up this alley, and I’ll tell you what I mean. Don’t go to him.” His new acquaintance looked as if he thought him mad; but he ‘. him company nevertheless. When they were shrouded from observation, Trotty told him what he knew, and what character he had received, and all about it. The subject of his history listened to it with a calm- ness that surprised him. He did not contradict or inter- rupt it once. He nodded his head now and then—more in corroboration of an old and worn-out story, it ap- peared, than in refutation of it; and once or twice threw back his hat, and passed his freckled hand over a brow, where every furrow he had ploughed seemed to have set its image in little. But he did no more. “It’s true enough in the main,” he said: “master, I could sift graim from husk here and there, but let it be as 'tis. What Odds? I have gone against his plans, to my misfortun'. I can’t help it; I should do the like to- morrow. . As to character, them gentlefolks will search and search, and pry and pry, and have it as free from spot or speck in us, afore they’ll help us to a dry good word!—Well! I hope they don’t lose good opinion as easy as we do, or their lives is strict indeed, and hardly worth the keeping. For myself, master, I never took - with that hand ” — holding it before him — “what wasn’t my own; and never held it back from work, however hard, or poorly paid. Whoever can deny it. let him chop it off But when work won’t maintain me like a human creetur; when my living is so bad, that 1 am Hungry, out of doors and in; when I see a whole working life begin that way, go on that way, and end that way, without a chance or change; then I say to the gentlefolks, ‘Keep away from me! Let my cottage be. My doors is dark enough without your darkening of 'em more. Don’t look for me to come up into the Park to help the show when there’s a Birthday, or a fine Speech- 110 THE CHIMES. making, or what not. Act your Plays and Games without me, and be welcome to 'em and enjoy 'em. We’ve now to do with one another. I’m best let alone!’” Seeing that the child in his arms had opened her eyes, and was looking about her in wonder, he checked him- self to say a word or two of foolish prattle in her ear, and stand her on the ground beside him. Then slowly winding one of her long tresses round and round his rough forefinger like a ring, while she hung about his dusty leg, he said to Trotty, - “I’m not a cross-grained man by natur', I believe; and easy satisfied, I’m sure. I bear no ill will against none of 'em. I only want to live like one of the Almighty’s creeturs. I can’t-I don't—and so there’s a pit dug be- tween me and them that can and do. There’s others like me. , You might tell 'em off by hundreds and by thousands, sooner than by ones.” Trotty knew he spoke the truth in this, and shook his head to signify as much. - “I’ve got a bad name this way,” said Fern; and I’m not likely, I'm afeared, to get a better. 'Tan’t lawful to be out of sorts, and I am out of sorts, though. God knows, I’d sooner bear a cheerful spirit if I could. Well! I don’t know as this Alderman could hurt me much by sending me to gaol; but without a friend to speak a word for me, he might do it; and you see—!” pointing downward with his finger at the child. “She has a beautiful face,” said Trotty. “Why, yes!” replied the other, in a low voice, as he gently turned it up with both his hands towards his own, and looked upon it steadfastly. “I’ve thought so many times. I’ve thought so, when my hearth was very cold, and cupboard very bare. I thought so t'other night, when we were taken like two thieves. But they —they shouldn’t try the little face too often—should they, Lilian? That’s hardly fair upon a man!” He sunk his voice so low, and gazed upon her with an air so stern and strange, that Toby, to divert the current of his thoughts, inquired if his wife were living. ‘‘I never had one,” he returned, shaking his head. “She’s my brother’s child—a orphan. Nine year old, though you'd hardly think it; but she's tired and worn out now. They’d have taken care on her, the Union— eight-and-twenty mile away from where We live—be- 3. _* THE CHIMES. 111 tween four walls (as they took care of my old father when he couldn’t work no more, though he didn’t trouble 'em long); but I took her instead, and she's lived with me ever since. Her mother had a friend once, in London here. We are trying to find her, and to find work, too; but it’s a large place. Never mind. More room for us to walk about in. Lilly!” Meeting the child's eyes with a smile which melted Toby more than tears, he shook him by the hand. “I don’t so much as know your name,” he said, “but I’ve opened my heart free to you, for I’m thankful to you; with good reason. I’ll take your advice and keep clear of this—” “Justice,” suggested Toby. “Ah!” he said. “If that's the name they give him. This Justice. And to-morrow will try whether there's better fortun' to be met with somewhere's near London. Good-night. A Happy New Year!” “Stay” cried Trotty, catching at his hand, as he relaxed his grip. “Stay! The New Year never can be happy to me, if we part like this. . The New Year never can be happy to me, if I see the child and you go wan- dering away, you don’t know where, without a shelter for your heads. Come home with me! I'm a poor man, living in a poor place; but I can give you lodging for one night and never miss it. Come home with me! Here! I'll take her!” cried Trotty, lifting up the child. “A pretty one! I’d carry twenty times her weight, and never know I’d got it. Tell me if I go too quick for you. I'm very fast. I always was!” Trotty said this, taking about six of his trotting paces to one stride of his fatigued companion; and with his thin legs quiver- ing again, beneath the load he bore. “Why, she's as light,” said Trotty, trotting in his speech as well as in his gait; for he couldn’t bear to be thanked, and dreaded a moment’s pause; “as light as a feather. Lighter than a Peacock's feather—a great deal lighter. Here we are, and here we go! Round this first turning to the right, Uncle Will, and past the pump, and sharp off up the passage to the left, right opposite the public house. Here we are, and here we go. Cross over, Uncle Will, and mind the kidney pieman at the corner! Here we are, and here we go! Down the Mews here, Uncle Will, and stop at the black door, with 112 THE CHIMES. s ‘T. Veck, Ticket Porter,’ wrote upon a board; and here we are, and here we go, arid here we are indeed, my precious Meg, surprising you!” With which words Trotty, in a breathless state, set the child down before his daughter in the middle of the floor. The little visitor looked once at Meg; and doubt- ing nothing in that face, but trusting everything she saw there; ran into her arms. - “Here we are, and here we go!” cried Trotty, running round the room and choking audibly. “Here, Uncle Will, here’s a fire, you know! Why don’t you come to the fire? Oh, here we are and here we go! Meg, my precious darling, where’s the kettle? Here it is and here it goes, and it’ll bile in no time!” Trotty really had picked up the kettle somewhere or other in the course of his wild career, and now put it on the fire; while Meg, seating the child in a warm corner, knelt down on the ground before her, and pulled off her shoes, and dried her wet feet on a cloth. Ay, and she laughed at Trotty, too—so pleasantly, so cheerfully, that Trotty could have blessed her where she kneeled: for he had seen that, when they entered, she was sitting by the fire in tears. - “Why, father!” said Meg. “You’re crazy to-night, I think. I don’t know what the Bells would say to that. Poor little feet. How cold they are!” “Oh, they’re warmer now!” exclaimed the child. “They’re quite warm now!” “No, no, no,” said Meg. “We haven’t rubbed 'em half enough. We’re so Šusy. So busy And when they’re done, we’ll brush out the damp hair; and when that’s done, we’ll bring some colour to the poor pale face with fresh water; and when that’s done we’ll be so gay, and brisk, and happy—” The child, in a burst of sobbing, clasped her round the neck; caressed her fair cheek with its hand; and said, “Oh, Meg! Oh, dear Meg!” - Toby’s blessing could have done no more. Who could do more. “Why, father!” cried Meg, after a pause. “Here I am, and here I go, my dear!” said Trotty. “Good Gracious me!” cried Meg. “He’s crazy! He's put the dear child’s bonnet on the kettle, and hung the lid behind the door!” THE CHIMES. 113 “I didn’t go to do it, my love,” said Trotty, hastily repairing this mistake. “Meg, my dear?” Meg looked towards him and saw that he had elabo- rately stationed himself behind the chair of their male visitor, where, with many mysterious gestures, he was holding up the sixpence he had earned. “I see, my dear,” said Trotty, “as I was coming in, half an ounce of tea lying somewhere on the stairs; and I’m pretty sure there was a bit of bacon, too. As I don’t remember where it was, exactly, I’ll go myself and try to find 'em.” - x- With this inscrutable artifice, Toby withdrew to pur- chase the viands he had spoken of, for ready money, at Mrs. Chickenstalker's; and presently came back, pre- tending that he had not been able to find them, at first, in the dark. - “But here they are at last,” said Trotty, setting out the tea-things, “all correct! I was pretty sure it was tea and a rasher. So it is. Meg, my pet, if you’ll just make the tea, while your unworthy father toasts the bacon, we shall be ready immediate. It’s a curious cir- cumstance,” said Trotty, proceeding in his cookery, with the assistance of the toasting-fork, “curious, but well known to my friends, that I never care, myself, for rashers, nor for tea. I like to see other people enjoy 'em,” said Trotty, speaking very loud to impress the fact upon his guests, “but to me, as food, they are dis- agreeable.” Yet Trotty sniffed the savour of the hissing bacon— ah!—as if he liked it; and when he poured the boiling water in the tea-pot, looked lovingly down into the depths of that snug caldron, and suffered the fragrant steam to curl about his nose, and wreathe his head and face in a thick cloud. However, for all this, he neither ate nor drank, except at the very beginning, a mere morsel for form’s sake, which he appeared to eat with lº relish, but declared was perfectly uninteresting to him. No. Trotty’s occupation was to see Will Fern and Lilian eat and drink; and so was Meg's. And never did spectators at a city dinner or court banquet find such high delight in seeing others feast: although it were a monarch or a pope: as those two did, in looking on that night. Meg smiled at Trotty. Trotty laughed at Meg. } 9. 114 THE CHIMES. Meg shook her head and made belief to clap her hands, applauding Trotty; Trotty conveyed, in dumb-show, unintelligible narratives of how and when and where he had found their visitors, to Meg; and they were happy. Very happy. - “Although,” thought Trotty, sorrowfully... as he watched Meg's face; “that match is broken off, I see!” “Now, I’ll tell you what,” said Trotty, after tea. “The little one, she sleeps with Meg, I know.” “With good Meg!” cried the child, caressing her. “With Meg.” “That's right,” said Trotty. “And I shouldn’t won- der if she kiss Meg's father, won’t she? I’m Meg's father.” - Mightily delighted Trotty was, when the child went timidly towards him, and having kissed him, fell back upon Meg again. “She’s as sensible as Solomon,” said Trotty. “Here we come, and here we—no, we don’t-I don’t mean that —I—what was I saying, Meg, my precious?” Meg looked towards their guest, who leaned upon her chair, and with his face turned from her, fondled the child’s head, half hidden in her lap. “To be sure,” said Toby. “To be sure! I don’t know what I am rambling on about, to-night. My wits are wool-gathering, I think. Will Fern, you come along with me. You’re tired to death, and broken down for want of rest. You come along with me.” The man still played with the child’s curls, still leaned upon Meg's chair, still turned away his face. He didn’t speak, but in his rough, coarse fingers, clenching and expanding in the fair hair of the child, there was an eloquence that said enough. “Yes, yes,” said Trotty, answering unconsciously what he saw expressed in his daughter's face. “Take her with you, Meg. Get her to bed. There! Now, Will, I’ll show you where you lie. It’s not much of a place: only a loft; but, having a loft, I always say, is one of the great conveniences of living in a mews; and till this coach-house and stable gets a better let, we live here cheap. There's plenty of sweet hay up there, be- longing to a neighbour; and it’s as clean as hands and Meg can make it. Cheer up! Don’t give way. A new heart for a New Year, always!” THE CHIMES. 115 The hand released from the child’s hair, had fallen, trembling, into Trotty’s hand. So Trotty, talking with- out intermission, led him out as tenderly and easily as if he had been a child himself. Returning before Meg, he listened for an instant at the door of her little chamber: an adjoining room. The child was murmuring a simple Prayer before lying down to sleep; and when she had remembered Meg's name, “Dearly, Dearly ’’—so her words ran—Trotty heard her stop and ask for his. It was some short time before the foolish little old fellow could compose himself to mend the fire, and draw his chair to the warm hearth. But when he had done so, and had trimmed the light, he took his news- paper from his pocket, and began to read. Carelessly at first, and skimming up and down the columns; but with an earnest and a sad attention, very soon. For this same dreaded paper redirected Trotty’s thoughts into the channel they had taken all that day, and which the day's events had so marked out and shaped. His interest in the two wanderers had set him on another course of thinking, and a happier one, for the time; but being alone again, and reading of the crimes and violences of the people, he relapsed into his former train. In this mood he came to an account (and it was not . the first he had ever read) of a woman who had laid her desperate hands not only on her own life but on that of her young child. A crime so terrible, and so revolting to his soul, dilated with the love of Meg, that he let the journal drop, and fell back in his chair, appalled ! “ Unnatural and cruel!” Toby cried. “Unnatural and cruel! None but people who were bad at heart, born bad, who had no business on the earth, could do such deeds. It’s too true, all I’ve heard to-day; too just, too full of proof. We're Bad!” The Chimes took up the words so suddenly—burst out so loud, and clear, and sonorous—that the Bells seemed to strike him in his chair. - And what was that they said? “Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you, Toby Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you, Toby Come and see us, come and see us, Drag him to us, drag him to us, Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt him Break 116 THE CHIMES. his slumbers, break his slumbers | Toby Veck, Toby Veck, door open wide, Toby, Toby Veck, Toby Veck, door open wide, Toby—” then fiercely back to their im- petuous strain again, and ringing in the very bricks and plaster on the walls. Toby listened. Fancy, fancy! His remorse for having run away from them that afternoon! No, no. Nothing of the kind. Again, again, and yet a dozen times again. “Haunt and hunt him, haunt and hunt him, Drag him to us, drag him to us!” Deafening the whole town | “Meg,” said Trotty, softly, tapping at her door. “Do you hear anything?” “I hear the Bells, father. Surely they’re very loud to-night.” - “Is she asleep?” said Toby, making an excuse for peeping in. “So peacefully and happily! I can’t leave her yet though, father. Look how she holds my hand!” - “Meg!” whispered Trotty. “Listen to the Bells!” She listened, with her face towards him all the time. But it underwent no change. She didn’t understand them. sº Trotty withdrew, resumed his seat by the fire, and Once more listened by himself. He remained here a little time. It was impossible to bear it ; their energy was dreadful. - “If the tower-door is really open,” said Toby, hastily laying aside his apron, but never thinking of his hat, “what’s to hinder me from going up in the steeple and satisfying myself 2 If it’s shut, I don’t want any other satisfaction. That’s enough.” He was pretty certain as he slipped out quietly into the street that he should find it shut and locked, for he knew the door well, and had so rarely seen it open, that he couldn’t reckon above three times in all. It was a low arched portal, outside the church, in a dark nook behind a column ; and had such great iron hinges, and such a monstrous lock, that there was more hinge and lock than door. But what was his astonishment when, coming bare- headed to the church; and putting his hand into this dark nook, with a certain misgiving that it might be THE CHIMES. 117 unexpectedly seized, and a shivering propensity to draw it back again; he found that the door, which opened out- wards, actually stood ajar! He thought, on the first surprise, of going back; 6r of getting a light, or a companion ; but his courage aided him immediately, and he determined to ascend alone. “What have I to fear,” said Trotty. “Its a church! Besides, the ringers may be there, and have forgotten to shut the door.” So he went in, feeling his way as he went, like a blind. man ; for it was very dark. And very quiet, for the chimes were silent. The dust from the street had blown into the recess; and lying there, heaped up, made it so soft and velvet- like to the foot, that there was something startling even in that. The narrow stair was so close to the door, too, that he stumbled at the very first; and shutting the door upon himself, by striking it with his foot, and causing it to rebound back heavily, he couldn’t open it 3,98,1{l. *. was another reason, however, for going on. Trotty groped his way, and went on. Up, up, up, and round and round ; and up, up, up; higher, higher, higher up! It was a disagreeable staircase for that groping work; so low and narrow, that his groping hand was always touching something; and it often felt so like a man or ghostly figure standing up erect and making room for him to pass without discovery, that he would rub the smooth wall upward searching for its face, and downward searching for its feet, while a chill tingling crept all over him. Twice or thrice, a door or niche broke the monoto- nous surface; and then it seemed a gap as wide as the whole church; and he felt on the brink of an abyss, and going to tumble headlong down, until he found the wall again. Still up, up, up; and round and round; and up, up, up; higher, higher, higher up! At length the dull and stifling atmosphere began to freshen; presently to feel quite windy: presently it blew SO strong, that he could hardly keep his legs. But he got to an arched window in the tower, breast high, and holding tight, looked down upon the house-tops, on the Smoking chimneys, on the blurr and blotch of lights. 118 THE CHIMES. (towards the place where Meg was wondering where he was, and calling to him perhaps), all kneaded up to- gether in a leaven of mist and darkness. This was the belfry, where the ringers came. He had caught hold of one of the frayed ropes which hung down through apertures in the oaken roof. At first he started, thinking it was hair; then trembling at the very thought of waking the deep Bell. The Bells themselves were higher. Higher, Trotty, in his fascination, or in work- ing out the spell upon him, groped his way. By ladders new and toilsomely, for it was steep, and not too certain holding for the feet. - * Up, up, up; and climb and clamber; up, up, up; higher, higher, higher up. Until, ascending through the floor, and pausing with his head just raised above its beams, he came among the Bells. It was barely possible to make out their great shapes in the gloom; but there they were. Shadowy, and dark, and dumb. A heavy dense of dread and loneliness fell instantly upon him. as he climbed into this airy nest of stone and metal. His head went round and round. He listened and then raised a wild “Halloal” Halloa' was mournfully protracted by the echoes. Giddy, confused, and out of breath, and frightened, Toby looked about him vacantly, and sunk down in a SWOOIl. © sº THIRD QUARTER. BLACK are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead. Monsters uncouth and wild, arise in premature, imperfect resurrection; the several parts and shapes of different things are joined and mixed by chance; and when, and how, and by what wonderful degrees, each separates from each, and every sense and object of the mind resumes its usual form and lives again, no man—though every man is every day the casket of this type of the Great Mystery—can tell. So, when and how the darkness of the night-black steeple changed to shining light; when and how the ‘solitary tower was peopled with a myriad figures; when THE CHIMES. 119 and how the whispered “Haunt and hunt him,” breath- ing monotonously through his sleep or swoon, became a voice exclaiming in the waking ears of Trotty, “Break his slumbers;” when and how he ceased to have a slug- gish and confused idea that such things were, com- panioning a host of others that were not; there are no dates or means to tell. But, awake, and standing on his feet upon the boards where he had lately lain, he saw this Goblin Sight. He saw the tower, whither his charmed footsteps had brought him, swarming with dwarf phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the Bells. He saw them leap- ing, flying, dropping, pouring from the Bells without a a pause. He saw them, round him on the ground; above him in the air, clambering from him, by the ropes below; looking down upon him, from the massive iron- girded beams; peeping in upon him, though the chinks and loopholes in the walls; spreading away and away from him in enlarging circles, as the water ripples give place to a huge stone that suddenly comes plashing in among them. He saw them, of all aspects and all shapes. He saw them ugly, handsome, crippled, ex- quisitely formed. He saw them young, he saw them old, he saw them kind, he saw them cruel, he saw them merry, he saw them grim; he saw them dance, and heard them sing; he saw them tear their hair, and heard them howl. He saw the air thick with them. He saw them come and go, incessantly. He saw them riding downward, soaring upward, sailing off afar, perching near at hand, all restless, and all violently active. Stone, and brick, and slate, and tile, became transparent to him as to them. He saw them in the houses, busy at the sleepers’ beds. He saw them sooth- ing people in their dreams; he saw them beating them with knotted whips; he saw them yelling in their ears; he saw them playing softest music on their pillows; he saw them cheering some with the songs of birds and the perfume of flowers; he saw them flashing awful faces on the troubled rest of others, from enchanted mirrors which they carried in their hands. He saw these creatures, not only among sleeping men but waking also, active in pursuits irregoncilable with One another, and possessing or assuming natures the Inost opposite. He saw one buckling on innumerable 120 THE CHIMES. * wings to increase his speed; another loading himself with chains and weights, to retard his. He saw some utting the hands of clocks forward, some putting the hands of clocks backward, some endeavouring to stop the clock entirely. He saw them representing, here a marriage ceremony, there a funeral; in this chamber an election, in that a ball; he saw, everywhere, restless and untiring motion. Bewildered by the host of shifting and extraordinary figures, as well as by the uproar of the Bells, which all this while were ringing, Trotty clung to a wooden pillar for support, and turned his white face here and there, in mute and stunned astonishment. e As he gazed, the Chimes stopped. Instantaneous change! The whole swarm fainted; their forms col- lapsed, their speed deserted them; they sought to fly, but in the act of falling died and melted into air. No fresh supply succeeded them. One straggler leaped down pretty briskly from the surface of the Great Bell, and alighted on his feet, but he was dead and gone be- fore he could turn round. Some few of the late com- pany who had gambolled in the tower, remained there, spinning over and over a little longer; but these became at every turn more faint, and few, and feeble, and soon went the way of the rest. The last of all was one small hunchback, who had got into an echoing corner, where he twirled and twirled, and floated by himself a long time; showing such perseverance, that at last he dwindled to a leg and even to a foot, before he finally retired; but he vanished in the end, and then the tower was silent. Then, and not before, did Trotty see in every Bell a bearded figure of the bulk and stature of the Bell—in- comprehensibly, a figure and the Bell itself. Gigantic, grave, and darkly watchful of him, as he stood rooted to the ground. w Mysterious and awful figures! Resting on nothing; poised in the night air of the tower, with their draped and hooded heads merged in the dim roof; motionless and shadowy. Shadowy and dark, although he saw them by some light belonging to themselves—none else was there—each with its muffled hand upon its goblin mouth. He could not plunge down wildly through the open- THE CHIMES. 121 ing in the floor; for all power of motion had deserted him. Otherwise he would have done so—aye, would have thrown himself, head-foremost, from the steeple- top, rather than have seen them watching him with eyes that would have waked and watched although the pupils had been taken out. Again, again, the dread and terror of the lonely place, and of the wild and, fearful night that reigned there, touched him like a spectral hand. His distance from all help; the long, dark, winding, ghost-beleaguered way that lay between him and the earth on which men lived; his being high, high, high, up there, where it had made him dizzy to see the birds fly in the day; cut off from all good people, who at such an hour were safe at home and sleeping in their beds; all this struck coldly through him, not as a reflection but a bodily sensation. Mean- time his eyes and thoughts and fears were fixed upon the watchful figures: which, rendered unlike any fig- ures of this world by the deep gloom and shade enwrap- ping and enfolding them, as well as by their looks and forms and supernatural hovering above the floor, were nevertheless as plainly to be seen as were the stalwart oaken frames, cross-pieces, bars and beams, set up there to support the Bells. These hemmed them, in a very forest of hewn timber; from the entanglements, intrica- cies, and depths of which, as from among the boughs of a dead wood blighted for their Phantom use, they kept their darksome and unwinking watch. A blast of air—how cold and shrill!—came moaning through the tower. As it died away, the Great Bell, or the Goblin of the Great Bell, spoke. - “What visitor is this!” it said. The voice was low and deep, and Trotty fancied that it sounded in the other figures as well. “I thought my name was called by the Chimes!” said Trotty, raising his hands in an attitude of supplication. “I hardly know why I am here, or how I came. I have listened to the chimes these many years. They have cheered me often.” “And you have thanked them?” said the Bell. “A thousand times?” cried Trotty. & 4 How ?” -- “I am a poor man,” faltered Trotty, “ and could only thank them in words.” . - 17? THE CHIMES. “And always so?” inquired the Goblin of the Bell. " Have you never done us wrong in words?” “No!” cried Trotty eagerly. “Never done us foul, and false, and wicked wrong, in words?” pursued the Goblin of the Bell. Trotty was about to answer, “Never!” But he stopped, and was confused. “The voice of Time,” said the Phantom, “Cries to man, Advance! Time is for his advancement and im- provement; for his greater worth, his greater happiness. his better life; his progress onward to that goal within its knowledge and its view, and set there, in the period when Time and He began. Ages of darkness, wicked- ness, and violence, have come and gone—millions un- Countable, have suffered, lived, and died—to point the way before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will Strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check!” ‘‘I never did so to my knowledge, sir,” said Trotty. “It was quite by accident if I did. I wouldn’t go to do it, I’m sure.” “Who puts into the mouth of Time, or of its servants,” said the Goblin of the Bell, “a cry of lamentation for days which have had their trial and their failure, and have left deep traces of it which the blind may see—a cry that only serves the present time, by showing men how much it needs their llelp when any ears can listen to regrets for such a past—who does this, does a wrong. And you have done that wrong to us, the Chimes.” Trotty’s first excess of fear was gone. But he had felt tenderly and gratefully towards the Bells, as you have seen; and when he heard himself arraigned as one who had offended them so weightily, his heart was touched with penitence and grief. “If you knew,” said Trotty, clasping his hands earn- estly—"" or perhaps you do know—if you know how often you have kept me company; how often you have cheered me up when I’ve been low; how you were quite the plaything of my little daughter Meg (almost the only one she ever had) when first her mother died, and she and me were left alone; you won’t bear malice for a hasty word!” “Who hears in us, the Chimes, one note bespeaking THE CHIMES. 123 t disregard, or stern regard, of any hope, or joy, or pain, or sorrow, of the many-sorrowed throng; who hears us make response to any creed that guages human passions and affections, as it guages the amount of miserable food on which, humanity may pine and wither; does us wrong. That wrong you have done us,” said the Bell. “I have!” said Trotty. “Oh, forgive me!” “Who hears us echo the dull vermin of the earth: the Putters Down of crushed and broken natures, formed to be raised up higher than such maggots of the time can crawl or can conceive,” pursued the Goblin of the Bell: “who does so, does us wrong. And you have done us wrong!” - - - “Not meaning it,” said Trotty. “In my ignorance. Not meaning it!” -- “Lastly, and most of all,” pursued the Bell. “Who turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which they fell from good—grasping in their fall some tufts and Shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf below; does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity. And you have done that wrong!” - “Spare me,” cried Trotty, falling on his knees; “for Mercy’s sake!” - - “Listen!” said the Shadow. “Listen!” cried the other Shadows. - “Listen!” said a clear and child-like voice, which Trotty thought he recognized as having heard before. The organ sounded faintly in the church below. Swell- ing by degrees, the melody ascended to the roof, and filled the choir and nave. Expanding more and more, it rose up, up; up, up; higher, higher, higher up; awak- ening agitated hearts within the burly piles of oak, the hollow bells, the iron-bound doors, the stairs of solid Stone; until the tower walls were insufficient to contain it, and it soared into the sky. No wonder that an old man's breast could not contain a Sound so vast and mighty. It broke from that weak prison in a rush of tears; and Trotty put his hands be- fore his face. - “Listen!” said the Shadow. “Listen!” said the other Shadows. * > 124 THE CHIMES. \ “Listen!” said the child’s voice. A solemn strain of blended voices rose into the tower. It was a very low and mournful strain—a Dirge—and as he listened, Trotty heard his child among the singers. “She is dead!” exclaimed the old man. “Meg is dead! Her Spirit calls to me. I hear it!” *** * “The Spirit of your child bewails the dead, and min- gles with the dead—dead hopes, dead fancies, dead im- aginings of youth,” returned the Bell, “but she is living. Learn from her life, a living truth. Learn from the creature dearest to your heart, how bad the bad are born. See every bud and leaf plucked one by one from off the fairest stem, and know how bare and wretched it may be. Follow her! To desperation!” Each of the shadowy figures stretched its right arm forth, and pointed downward. “The Spirit of the Chimes is your companion,” said the figure. “Go! It stands behind you!” Trotty turned and saw—the child! The child Will Fern had carried in the street; the child whom Meg had watched, but now asleep!” “I carried her myself to-night,” said Trotty. “In these arms!” - “Show him what he calls himself,” said the dark fig- ures, one and all. The tower opened at his feet. He looked down, and beheld his own form, lying at the bottom, on the out- side, crushed and motionless. “No more a living man!” cried Trotty. “Dead!” “Dead!” said the figures altogether. “Gracious Heaven! And the New Year—” “Past,” said the figures. “What!” he cried shuddering. “I missed my way, and coming on the outside of this tower in the dark, fell down—a year ago?” - “Nine years ago!” replied the figures. As they gave the answer, they recalled their out- stretched hands; and where their figures had been, there the Bells wero. sº And they rung; their time being come again. And once again vast multitudes of phantoms sprung into existence; once again were incoherently engaged, as they had been before; once again, faded on the stopping of the Chimes; and dwindled into nothing. THE CHIMES. 125 .* “What are these?” he asked his guide. “If I am not mad, what are these?” “Spirits of the Bells. Their sound upon the air,” re- turned the child. “They take such shapes and occupa- tions as the hopes and thoughts of mortals, and the recollections they have stored up, give them.” - - “And you,” said Trotty, wildly. “What are you?” “Hush, hush!” returned the child. ‘: Look here!” In a poor, mean room; working at the same kind of em- broidery, which he had often, often seen before her; Meg, his own dear daughter, was presented to his view. He made no effort to imprint his kisses on her face; he did not strive to clasp her to his loving heart; he knew that such endearments were, for him, no more. But he held his trembling breath, and brushed away the blinding º that he might look upon her; that he might only See Ele]”. - Ah! Changed. Changed. The light of the clear eye, how dimmed. The bloom, how faded from the cheek. Beautiful she was, as she had ever been, but Hope, Hope, Hope, oh, where was the fresh Hope that had spoken to him like a voice! She looked up from her work, at a companion. Fol- lowing her eyes, the old man started back. In the woman grown, he recognised her at a glance. In the long silken hair, he saw the self-same curls; around the lips, the child’s expression lingering still. See! In the eyes, now turned inquiringly on Meg, there shone the very look that scanned those features when he brought her home! Then what was this, beside him! . Looking with awe into its face, he saw a something reigning there: a lofty something, undefined and indis- tinct, which made it hardly more than a remembrance of that child—as yonder figure might be—yet it was the same: the same: and wore the dress. Hark. They were speaking! “Meg,” said Lillian, hesitating. “How often you raise your head from your work to look at me!” “Are my looks so altered, that they frighten you?” asked Meg. “Nay, dear! But you smile at that yourself! Why not smile when you look at me, Meg?” “I do so. Do I not?” she answered: smiling on her. 35 126 THE CHIMES. “Now you do,” said Lilian, “but not usually. When you think I’m busy, and don’t see you, you look so anxious and so doubtful, that I hardly like to raise my eyes. There is little cause for smiling in this hard and toilsome life, but you were once so cheerful.” “Am I not now!” cried Meg, speaking in a tone of Strange alarm, and rising to embrace her. “Do I make our weary life more weary to you, Lilian!” w “You have been the only thing that made it life,” said Lilian, fervently kissing her; “sometimes the only thing that made me care to live so, Meg. Such work, such work! So many hours, so many days, so many long, long nights of hopeless, cheerless, never-ending work— not to heap up riches, not to live grandly or gaily, not to live upon enough, however coarse; but to earn bare bread, to scrape together just enough to toil upon, and want upon, and keep alive in us ; consciousness of our hard fate! Oh, Meg, Meg!” she raised her voice and twined her arms about her as she spoke, like One in aim. “How can the cruel world go round, and bear to ook upon such lives!” “Lilly” said Meg, soothing her, and putting back her hair from her wet face. “Why, Lilly! You! So pretty and so young!” - “Oh, Meg!” she interrupted, holding her at arm’s- length, and looking in her face imploringly. “The worst of all, the worst of all! Strike me, old Meg! Wither me and shrivel me, and free me from the dreadful thoughts that tempt me in my youth!” - Trotty turned to look upon his guide. But, the Spirit of the child had taken flight. Was gone. Neither did he himself remain in the same place; for Sir Joseph Bowley, Friend and Father of the Poor, held a great festivity at Bowley Hall, in honour of the natal day of Lady Bowley. And as Lady Bowley had been born on New Year's Day (which the local newspapers considered an especial pointing of the finger of Provi- dence to number One, as Lady Bowley’s destined figure in Creation), it was on a New Year's Day that this fes- tivity took place. - Bowley Hall was full of visitors. The red-faced gen- tleman was there. Mr. Filer was there, the great Alder- man Cute was there—Alderman Cute had a sympathetic feeling with great people, and had considerably improved * THE CHIMES. - 127 his acquaintance with Sir Joseph Bowley on the strength of his attentive letter: indeed had become quite a friend of the family since then—and many guests were there. Trotty’s ghost was there, wandering about, poor phan- tom, drearily; and looking for its guide. There was to be a great dinner in the great Hall, at which Sir Joseph Bowley, in his celebrated character of Friend and Father of the Poor, was to make his great speech. Certain plum puddings were to be eaten by his Friends and Children in another Hall first; and at a given signal, Friends and Children flocking in among their Friends and Fathers, were to form a family assem- blage, with not one manly eye therein unmoistened by emotion. But there was more than this to happen. Even more than this. Sir Joseph Bowley, Baronet and Member of Parliament, was to play a match at skittles—real skit- tles—with his tenants! “Which quite reminds one, said Alderman Cute, “of the days of old King Hal, stout King Hal, bluff Ring Hal. Ah! Fine character!” “Very,” said Mr. Filer, dryly. “For marrying women and murdering 'em. Considerably more than the average number of wives, by-the-bye.” “You’ll marry the beautiful ladies, and not murder 'em, eh?” said Alderman Cute to the heir of Bowley, aged twelve. “Sweet boy! We shall have this little gentleman in Parliament, now,” said the Alderman, holding him by the shoulders, and looking as reflective as he could, ‘‘ before we know where we are. We shall hear of his successes at the poll; his speeches in the house; his overtures from Governments; his brilliant achievements of all kinds; ah! we shall make our little orations about him in the common council, I’ll be bound; before we have time to look about us!” “Oh, the difference of shoes, and stockings!” Trotty thought. But his heart yearned towards the child, for the love of those same shoeless and stockingless boys, predestined (by the Alderman) to turn out bad, who might have been the children of poor Meg. “Richard,” moaned Trotty, roaming among the com- any to and fro; “where is he? I can’t find Richard! here is Richard?” Not likely to be there, if still alive! But Trotty’s 128 THE CHIMES. #. and solitude confused him; and he still went wan- ering among the gallant company, looking for his guide and saying, “Where is Richard? Show me Richard!” - - - He was wandering thus, when he encountered Mr. Fish, the confidential Secretary: in great agitation. “Bless my heart and soul!” cried Mr. Fish. “Where’s Aldermen Cute? Has anybody seen the Alderman?” Seen the Alderman P. Oh, dear! Who could ever help seeing the Alderman? He was so considerate, so affa– ble, he bore so much in mind the natural desire of folks to see him, that if he had a fault, it was the being con- stantly On View. And wherever the great people were, there, to be sure, attracted by the kindred sympathy between great souls, was Cute. - Several voices cried that he was in the circle round Sir Joseph. Mr. Fish made way there; found him; and took him secretly into a window near at hand. Trotty joined them. Not of his own accord. He felt that his steps were led in that direction. “My dear Alderman Cute,” said Mr. Fish. “A little more this way. The most dreadful circumstance has occurred. I have this moment received the intelligence. I think it will be best not to acquaint Sir Joseph with it till the day is over. You understand Sir Joseph, and will give me your opinion. The most frightful and deplorable event!” * * Fish!” returned the Alderman. “Fish! My good fellow, what is the matter? Nothing revolutionary, I hope! No—no attempted interference with the magis- trates?” Q “Deedles, the banker,” gasped the Secretary. “Dee- dles Brothers—who was to have been here to-day—high in office in the Goldsmiths’ Company—” N ot stopped!” exclaimed the Alderman. “It can’t “Shot himself.” ‘‘ Good God!” “Put a double-barrelled pistol to his mouth, in his own counting-house,” said Mr. Fish, “and blew his brains out. No motive. Princely circumstances!” “Circumstances!” exclaimed the Alderman. “A man of noble fortune. One of the most respectable of men, Suicide, Mr. Fish! By his own hand!” THE CHIMES. 29 “This very morning,” returned Mr. Fish. “Oh, the brain, the brain!” exclaimed the pious Alder- man, lifting up his hands. “Oh, the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called Man! Oh, the little that unhinges it: poor creatures that we are! Perhaps a dinner, Mr. Fish. Perhaps the conduct of his son, who, I have heard, ran very wild, and was in the habit of drawing bills upon him without the least authority! A most respectable man. One of the most respectable men I ever knew! A lamentable instance, |Mr. Fish. A public calamity! I shall make a point of wearing the deepest mourning. A most respectable man! But there is One above. We must Submit, Mr. Fish. We must Submit!” What, Alderman! No word of Putting Down? Re- member, Justice, your high moral boast and pride. Come, Alderman! Balance those scales. Throw me into this, the empty one, no dinner, and Nature’s founts in some poor woman, dried by starving misery and ren- dered obdurate to claims for which her offspring has authority in holy mother Eve. Weigh me the two, you Daniel, going to judgment, when your day shall come! Weigh them, in the eyes of suffering thousands, audi- ence (not unmindful) of the grim farce you play. Or Supposing that you strayed from your five wits—it's not So far to go, but that it might be—and laid hands upon that throat of yours, warning your fellows (if you have a fellow) how they croak their comfortable wickedness to raving heads, and stricken hearts. What then? The words rose up in Trotty’s breast, as if they had been spoken by some other voice within him. Alder- man Cute pledged himself to Mr. Fish that he would assist him in breaking the melancholy catastrophe to Sir Joseph, when the day was over. Then, before they parted, wringing Mr. Fish's hand in bitterness of soul, he said, “The most respectable of men!” And added that he hardly knew (not even he) why such afflictions were allowed on earth. “It’s almost enough to make one think, if one didn’t know better,” said Alderman Cute, “that at times some motion of a capsizing nature was going on in things, which affected the general economy of the social fabric. Deedles Brothers!” The skittle-playing came off with immense sticcess. ed 10 - 130 THE CHIMES. Sir Joseph knocked the pins about quite skilfully; Master Bowley took an innings at a shorter distance also; and everybody said that now, when a Baronet and the Son of , a Baronet played at skittles, the country was coming round again, as fast as it could COIYle. At its proper time, the Banquet was served up. Trotty involuntarily repaired to the Hall with the rest, for he felt himself conducted thither by some stronger impulse than his own free will. The sight was gay in the ex- treme; the ladies were very handsome; the visitors de- lighted, cheerful, and good-tempered. When the lower doors were opened, and the pºle flocked in, in their rustic dresses, the beauty of the spectacle was at its height; but Trotty only murmured more and more. “Where is Richard! He should help and comfort her! I can’t see Richard!” - - There had been some speeches made, and Lady Bowley’s health had been proposed; and Sir Joseph Bowley had returned thanks, and had made his great speech, show- ing by various pieces of evidence that he was the born Friend and Father, and so forth; and had given as a Toast, his Friends and Children, and the Dignity of Labour; when a slight disturbance at the bottom of the hall attracted Toby’s notice. After some confusion, noise, and opposition, one man broke through the rest, and stood forward by himself. * Not Richard. No. But one whom he had thought of, and had looked for, many times. . In a scantier supply of light, he might have doubted the identity of that worn man, so old, and grey, and bent; but with a blaze of lamps upon his gnarled and knotted head, he knew Will Fern as soon as he stepped forth. “What is this?” exclaimed Sir Joseph, rising. “Who gave this man admittance? This is a criminal from prison! Mr. Fish, sir, atºll you have the goodness—” “A minute!” said Will Fern. “A minute! My lady, you was born on this day along with a New Year. - Get me a minute's leave to speak.” - She made some intercession for him. Sir Joseph took his seat again, with native dignity. The ragged visitor—for he was miserably dressed— looked round upon the company, and made his homage to therh with a humble bow. THE CHIMEs. e 131 “Gentlefolks!” he said. “You’ve drunk the Labourer. Look at me!” e “Just come from jail,” said Mr. Fish. - “Just come from jail,” said Will. “And neither for the first time, nor the second, nor the third, nor yet the fourth.” Mr. Filer was heard to remark testily, that four times was over the average; and he ought to be ashamed of himself. “Gentlefolks!” repeated Will Fern. “Look at me. You see I’m at the worst. Beyond all hurt or harm; beyond your help; for the time when your kind words or kind actions could have done me good”—he struck his hand upon his breast, and shook his head—“is gone, with the scent of last year's beans or clover on the air. Let me say a word for these,” pointing to the labouring people in the hall; “and when you’re met together, hear the real Truth spoke out for once.” “There’s not a man here,” said the host, “who would have him for a spokesman.” - “Like enough, Sir Joseph. I believe it. Not the less true, perhaps, is what I say. Perhaps that’s a proof on it. Gentlefolks, I’ve lived many a year in this place. You may see the cottage from the sunk fence over yonder. I’ve seen the ladies draw it in their books a hundred times. It looks well in a picter, I’ve heerd say; but there an’t weather in picters, and maybe 'tis fitter for that than for a place to live in. Well! I lived there. How hard—how bitter hard, I lived there, I won’t say. . Any day in the year, and every day, you can judge for your own selves.” - He spoke as he had spoken on the night when Trotty found him in the street. His voice was deeper and more husky, and had a trembling in it now and then; but he never raised it, passionately, and seldom lifted it above the firm stern level of the homely facts he Stated. “”Tis harder than you think for, gentlefolks, to grow up decent, commonly decent, in such a place. That I growed up a man and not a brute, says something for me—as I was then. As I am now, there’s noth- ing can be said for me or done for me. I’m past it.” “I am glad this man has entered,” observed Sir Joseph, looking round serenely. “Don’t disturb him. ...Jº'-vº. -* 132 - * THE CHIMES. It appears to be Ordained. He is an example: a living example. I hope and trust, and confidently expect, that it will not be lost upon my Friends here.” “I dragged on,” said Fern, after a moment’s silence, “somehow. Neither me nor any other man knows how; but so heavy, that I couldn’t put a cheerful face upon it, or make believe that I was anything but what I was. Now, gentlemen—you gentlemen that sits at Sessions— when you see a man with discontent writ on his face, you says to one another, ‘he’s suspicious. I has my doubts,’ says you, ‘about Will Fern. Watch that fellow!' I don’t say, gentlemen, it ain’t quite natºral, but I say 'tis so; and from that hour, whatever Will Fern does, or lets alone—all one—it goes against him.” Alderman Cute stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat- pockets, and leaning back in his chair, and smiling, winked at a neighbouring chandelier. As much as to say, “Of course! I told you so. The common cry! Lord bless you, we are up to all this sort of thing—myself and human nature.” “Now, gentlemen,” said Will Fern, holding out his hands, and flushing for an instant in his haggard face. “See how your laws are made to trap and hunt us when we’re brought to this. I tries to live elsewhere. And I’m a vagabond. To jail with him! I comes back here. I goes a nutting in your woods, and breaks—who don’t —a limber branch or two. To jail with him! One of your keepers sees me in the broad day, near my own patch of garden, with a gun. To jail with him! I has a natºral angry word with that man, when I’m free again. To jail with him! I cuts a stick. To jail with him! I eats a rotten apple or a turnip. To jail with him! It’s twenty mile away; and coming back I begs a trifle on the road. To jail with him! At last the constable, the keeper—anybody—finds me anywhere, a doing anything. To jail with him, for he's a vagrant, and a jail bird known; and jail’s the only home he’s got.” The Alderman nodded sagaciously, as who should say, “A very good home, too!” “Do I say this to serve my cause?” cried Fern. “Who can give me back my liberty, who can give me back my good name, who can give me back my innocent niece? Not all the Lords and Ladies in wide England. But gen- tlemen, gentlemen, dealing with other men like me, THE CHIMES. 133 begin at the right end. Give us, in mercy, better homes when we’re a lying in our cradles; give us better food when we’re a working for our lives; give us kinder laws to bring us back when we’re a going wrong; and don’t set Jail, Jail, Jail, afore us, everywhere we turn. There ain’t a condescension you can show the Labourer then, that he won’t take, as ready and as grateful as a man can be; for, he has a patient, peaceful, willing heart. But you must put his rightful spirit in him first; for, whether he's a wreck and ruin such as me, or is like one of them that stand here now, his spirit is divided from you at this time. Bring it back, gentlefolks, bring it back! Bring it back, afore the day comes when even his Bible changes in his altered mind, and the words seem to him to read, as they have sometimes read in my own eyes—in Jail: ‘Whither thou goest, I can Not go; where thou lodgest, I do Not lodge; thy people are Not my peo- ple; Northy God my God!’” . A sudden stir and agitation took place in the Hall. Trotty thought, at first, that several had risen to eject the man; and hence this change in its appearance. But, another moment showed him that the room and all the company had vanished from his sight, and that his daughter was again before him, seated at her work. But in a poorer, meaner garret than before; and with no Lilian by her side. - The frame at which she had worked was put away upon a shelf and covered up. The chair in which she had sat, was turned against the wall. A history was written in these little things, and in Meg's grief-worn face. Oh! who could fail to read it! Meg strained her eyes upon her work until it was too dark to see the threads; and when the night closed in, she lighted her feeble candle and worked on. Still her old father was invisible about her; looking down upon her; loving her—how dearly loving her!—and talking to her in a tender voice about the old times, and the Bells. Though he knew, poor Trotty, though he knew she could not hear him. A great part of the evening had worn away, when a knock came at her door. She opened it. A man was on the threshold. A slouching, moody, drunken sloven, wasted by intemperance and vice, and with his matted hair and unshorn beard in wild disorder; but, with some 134 THE CHIMES. traces on him, too, of having been a man of good pro- portion and good features in his youth. - He stopped until he had her leave to enter; and she, retiring a pace or two from the open door, silently and sorrowfully looked upon him. Trotty had his wish. He saw Richard. “May I come in, Margaret?” “Yes! Come in. Come in l’” It was well that Trotty knew him before he spoke; for with any doubt remaining on his mind, the harsh, dis- cordant voice would have persuaded him that it was not Richard but some other man. There were but two chairs in the room. She gave hers, and stood at some short distance from him, wait- ing to hear what he had to say. . He sat, however, staring vacantly at the floor; with a lustreless and stupid smile. A spectacle of such deep degradation, of such abject hopelessness, of such a mis- erable downfall, that she put her hands before her face º turned away, lest he should see how much it moved €I’. Roused by the rustling of her dress, or some such trifling sound, he lifted his head, and began to speak as if there had been no pause since he entered. “Still at work, Margaret? You work late.” ‘‘I generally do.” “And early 2” “And early.” “So she said. She said you never tired; or never owned that you tired. Not all the time you lived to- gether. Not even when you fainted, between work and fasting. But I told you that, the last time I came.” “You did,” she answered. “And I implored you to tell me nothing more; and you made me a solemn ‘ promise, Richard, that you never would.” “A solemn promise,” he repeated, with a drivelling laugh and a vacant stare. “A Solemn promise. To be sure. A solemn promise!” Awakening, as it were, after a time, in the same manner as before; he said with sudden animation: - “How can I help it, Margaret? What am I to do? She has been to me again!” * “Again!” cried Meg, clasping her hands. “Oh, does she think of me so often! Has she been again?” THE CHIMES.. . 135 “Twenty times again,” said Richard. “Margaret, she haunts me. She comes behind me in the street, and thrusts it in my hand. I hear her foot upon the ashes when I’m at my work (ha, ha! that an’t often), and be- fore I can turn my head, her voice is in my ear, saying, “Richard, don’t look round. For Heaven’s love, give her this!” She brings it where I live; she sends it in letters; she taps at the window and lays it on the sill. What can I do? Look at it!” - He held out in his hand a little purse, and chinked the money it enclosed. “Hide it,” said Meg. “Hide it! When she comes again, tell her, Richard, that I love her in my soul. That I never lie down to sleep, but I bless her, and pray for her. That in my solitäry work, I never cease to have her in my thoughts. That she is with me, night and day. That if I died to-morrow, I would remember her with my last breath. But, that I cannot look upon it!” He slowly recalled his hand, and crushing the purse together, said with a kind of drowsy thoughtfulness: “I told her so. I told her so, as plain as words could speak. I’ve taken this gift back and left it at her door a dozen times since then. But when she came at last, and stood before me, face to face, what could I do?” “You saw her!” exclaimed Meg. “You saw her! Oh, iilian, my sweet girl! Oh, Lilian, Lilian!” “I saw her,” he went on to say, not answering, but engaged in the same slow pursuit of his own thoughts. There she stood: trembling! “How does she look, Richard? Does she ever speak of me? Is she thinner? My old place at the table: what’s in my old place? And the frame she taught me our old work on—has she burnt it, Richard?’ There she was. I hear her say it.” Meg checked her sobs, and with the tears streaming from her eyes, bent over him to listen. Not to lose a breath. With his arms resting on his knees; and stooping for- ward in his chair, as if what he said were written on the ground in some half legible character, which it was his occupation to decipher and connect; he went on. ‘‘‘ Richard, I have fallen very low; and you may guess how much I have suffered in having this sent back, when I can bear to bring it in my hand to you. But you loved 136 THii. CHIMES. her once, even in my memory, dearly. Others stepped in between you; fears, and jealousies, and doubts, and vanities, estranged you from her; but you did love her, even in my memory!' I suppose I did,” he said, interrupt- ing himself for a moment. “I did! That's neither here northere. Oh, Richard, if you ever did; if you ever have any memory for what is gone and lost, take it to her once more. Once more! Tell her how I begged and prayed. Tell her how I laid my head upon your shoulder, where her own head might have lain, and was so humble to you, Richard. Tell her that you looked into my face, and saw the beauty which she used to praise, all gone: all gone: and in its place, a poor, wan, hollow cheek, that she would weep to see. Tell her everything, and take it back, and she will not refuse again. She will not have the heart!” So he sat musing, and repeating the last words, until he woke again, and rose. . “You won’t take it, Margaret?” She shook her head, and motioned an entreaty to him to leave her, . “Good-night, Margaret.” “Good-night !” - He turned to look upon her; struck by her sorrow, and perhaps by the pity for himself which trembled in her voice. It was a quick and rapid action; and for the mo- ment some flash of his old bearing kindled in his form. In the next he went as he had come. Nor did this glim- mer of a quenched fire seem to light him to a quicker sense of his debasement. In any mood, in any grief, in any torture of the mind or body, Meg's work must be done. She sat down to her task, and plied it. Night, midnight. Still she worked. - She had a meagre fire, the night being very cold; and rose at intervals to mend it. The chimes rang half-past twelve while she was thus engaged; and when they ceased she heard a gentle knocking at the door. Before she could so much as wonder who was there, at that un- usual hour, it opened. - Oh, Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this! Oh, Youth and Beauty, blest and blessing all within your reach, and working out the ends of your Beneficent Creator, look at this! THE CHIMES. 137. She saw the entering figure; screamed its name; Cried “Lilian!” - It was swift, and fell upon its knees before her: cling- ing to her dress. “ Up dear!. Up! Lilian! My own dearest!” “Never more, Meg; never more! Here! Here! Close to you, holding to you, feeling your dear breath upon my face!” “Sweet Lilian! Darling Lilian! Child of my heart— no mother's love can be more tender—lay your head upon my face!” “Never more, Meg. Never more When I first looked into your face, you knelt before me. On my knees be- fore you, let me die. Let it be here!” “You have come back. My Treasure! We will live together, work together, hope together, die together!” “Ah! Kiss my lips, Meg; fold your arms about me; press me to your bosom; look kindly on me; but don’t raise me. Let it be here, Let me see the last of your dear face upon my knees!” - Oh, Youth and Beauty, happy as ye should be, look at this! Oh, Youth and Beauty, working out the ends of your Beneficent Creator, look at this! “Forgive me, Meg! So dear, so dear! Forgive me! I know you do, I see you do, but say so, Meg!” She said so, with her lips on Lilian’s cheek. And with her arms twined round—she knew it now—a broken heart, “His blessing on you, dearest love. Kiss me once more! He suffered her to sit beside His feet, and dry them with her hair. Oh, Meg, what Mercy and Com- passion!” As she died, the Spirit of the child returning, innocent and radiant, touched the old man with its hand, and beckoned him away. & sº * '.' 138 THE CHIMEs. FOURTH QUARTER, SOME new remembrance of the ghostly figures in the Bells; some faint impression of the ringing of the Chimes; some giddy consciousness of having seen the swarm of phantoms reproduced and reproduced until the recollection of them lost itself in the confusion of their numbers; some hurried knowledge, how conveyed to him he knew not, that more years had passed; and Trotty, with the Spirit of the child attending him, stood looking on at mortal company. , Fat company, rosy-cheeked company, comfortable company. They were but two, but they were red enough for ten. They sat before a bright fire, with a small low table between them; and unless the fragrance of hot tea and muffins lingered longer in that room than in most others, the table had seen service very lately. But all the cups and saucers being clean, and in their proper places in the corner cupboard; and the brass toasting- fork hanging in its usual nook, and spreading its four idle fingers out, as if it wanted to be measured for a glove; there remained no other visible tokens of the meal just finished, than such as purred and washed their whiskers in the person of the basking cat, and glistened in the gracious, not to say the greasy, faces of her patrons. This cosy couple (married, evidently) had made a fair division of the fire between them, and sat looking at the glowing sparks that dropped into the grate; now nod- ding off into a doze; now waking up again when some hot fragment, larger than the rest, came rattling down, as if the fire were coming with it. It was in no danger of sudden extinction, however; for it gleamed not only in the little room, and on the jº. of window-glass in the door, and on the curtain alf drawn across them, but in the little shop beyond. A little shop, quite crammed and choked with the abun- dance of its stock; a perfectly voracious little shop, with a maw as accommodating and full as any shark's. Cheese, butter, firewood, soap, pickles, matches, bacon, THE CHIMES. - 139 table-beer, peg-tops, sweetmeats, boys' kites, bird-seed, cold ham, H. brooms, hearth-stones, salt, vinegar, blacking, red-herrings, stationery, lard, mushroom- ketchup, staylaces, loaves of bread, shuttlecocks, eggs, and slate-pencil; everything was fish that came to the net of this greedy little shop, and all articles were in its net. How many other kinds of petty merchandise were there, it would be difficult to say; but balls of pack- thread, ropes of onions, pounds of candles, cabbage-nets, and brushes, hung in bunches from the ceiling, like ex- traordinary fruit; while various old canisters, emitting aromatic smells, established the veracity of the inscrip- tion over the outer door, which informed the public that the keeper of this little shop was a licensed dealer in tea, coffee, tobacco, pepper, and Snuff. Glancing at such of these items as were visible in the shining of the blaze, and the less cheerful radiance of two smoky lamps which burnt but too dimly in the shop itself, as though its plethora sat heavy On their lungs; and glancing, then, at one of the two faces by the par- Jour-fire; Trotty had small difficulty in recognising in the stout old lady, Mrs. Chickenstalker: always inclined to corpulency, even in the days when he had known her as established in the general line, and having a small balance against him in her books. The features of her companion were less easy to him. The great broad chin, with creases in it large enough to hide a finger in; the astonished eyes, that seemed to ex- postulate with themselves for sinking deeper and deeper into the yielding fat of the soft face; the nose afflicted with that disordered action of its functions which is generally termed The Snuffles; the short, thick throat and labouring chest, with other beauties of the like description; though calculated to impress the memory, Trotty could at first allot to nobody he had ever known: and yet he had some recollection of them too. At length, in Mrs. Chickenstalker’s partner in the general line, and in the crooked and eccentric line of life, he recognised the former porter of Sir Joseph Bowley; an apoplectic innocent, who had connected himself in Trotty’s mind with Mrs. Chickenstalker years ago, by giving him ad- mission to the mansion where he had confessed his Obligations to that lady, and drawn on his unlucky head such grave reproach. .* 140 THE CHIMEs. Trotty had little interest in a change like this, after the changes he had seen; but association is very strong sometimes; and he looked involuntarily behind the ... parlour-door, where the accounts of credit customers were usually kept in chalk. There was no record of his name. Some names were there, but they were strange to him, and infinitely fewer than of old; from which he argued that the porter was an advocate of ready money transactions, and on coming into the business had looked pretty sharp after the Chickenstalker defaulters. So desolate was Trotty, and so mournful for the youth and promise of his blighted child, that it was a sorrow to him, even to have no place in Mrs. Chickenstalker's ledger. - “What sort of a night is it, Anne?” inquired the for- mer porter of Sir Joseph Bowley, stretching out his legs before the fire, and rubbing as much of them as his short arms could reach; with an air that added, “Here I am if it’s bad, and I don’t want to go out if it’s good.” “Blowing and sleeting hard,” returned his wife; “and threatening snow. Dark. And very cold.” “I’m glad to think we had muffins,” said the former porter, in the tone of one who had set his conscience at rest. “It’s a sort of night that’s meant for muffins. Likewise crumpets. Also Sally Lunns.” The former porter mentioned each successive kind of eatable, as if he were musingly summing up his good actions. After which, he rubbed his fat legs as before, and jerking them at the knees to get the fire upon the yet unroasted parts, laughed as if somebody had tickled him. “You’re in spirits, Tugby, my dear,” observed his wife. The firm was Tugby, late Chickenstalker. “No,” said Tugby. “No. Not particular. I’m a little elewated. The muffins came so pat!” With that he chuckled until he was black in the face; and had so much ado to become any other colour, that his fat legs took the strangest excursions into the air. Nor were they reduced to anything like decorum until Mrs. Tugby had thumped him violently on the back, and shaken him as if he were a great bottle. “Good gracious, goodness, lord-a-mercy bless and save the man!” cried Mrs. Tugby, in great terror. “What’s he doing?” THE CHIMES. 141 Mr. Tugby wiped his eyes, and faintly repeated that he found himself a little elewated. “Then don’t be so again, that’s a dear good soul,” said Mrs. Tugby, “if you don’t want to frighten me to death, with your struggling and fighting!” Mr. Tugby said he wouldn’t; but his whole existence was a fight, in which, if any judgment might be founded On the constantly-increasing shortness of his breath and the deepening purple of his face, he was always getting the worst of it. A “So it’s blowing, and sleeting, and threatening snow; and it’s dark, and very cold, is it, my dear?” said Mr. Tugby, looking at the fire, and reverting to the cream and marrow of his temporary elevation. “Hard weather, indeed,” returned his wife, shaking her head. “Aye, aye! Years,” said Mr. Tugby, “are like Christians in that respect. Some of 'em die hard; some of 'em die easy. This one hasn’t many days to run, and is making a fight for it. I like him all the better. There’s a customer, my love!” Attentive to the rattling door, Mrs. Tugby had already I’ISé11. & “Now, then!” said that lady, passing out into the little shop. “What's wanted? Oh! I beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure. I didn’t think it was you.” She made this apology to a gentlemari in black, who, with his wristbands tucked up, and his hat cocked loungingly on One side, and his hand in his pockets, sat down astride on the table-beer barrel, and nodded in return. “This is a bad business up-stairs, Mrs. Tugby, the gentleman. “The man can’t live.” “Not the back-attic can't!” cried Tugby, coming out into the shop to join the conference, “The back-attic, Mr. Tugby,” said the gentleman, “is coming down-stairs fast, and will be below the basement very soon.” - Looking by turns at Tugby and his wife, he sounded the barrel with his knuckles for the depth of beer, and having found it, played a tune upon the empty part. “The back-attic, Mr. Tugby,” said the gentleman: Tugby having stood in silent consternation for some time; “is Going.” 33 said 142 - THE CHIMES. “Then,” said Tugby, turning to his wife, “he must Go, you know, before he's Gone.” “I don’t think you can move him,” said the gentle- man, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t take the responsi- bility of saying it could be done, myself. You had bet- ter leave him where he is. He can’t live long.” ! “It’s the only subject,” said Tugby, bringing the but- iter-scale down upon the counter with a crash, by weigh- ing his fist on it, “that we’ve ever had a word upon; she and me; and look what it comes tol. He's going to die here, after all. Going to die upon the premises. Going to die in our house!” ºnd where should he have died, Tugby!” cried his W116. “In the workhouse,” he returned. “What are work- houses made for?” ‘‘Not for that,” said Mrs. Tugby, with great energy. “Not for that! Neither did "I marry you for that. Don’t think it, Tugby. I won’t have it. "I won't allow it. I’d be separated first, and never see your face again. When my wººdow’s name stood over that door, as it did for many, many years: this house being known as Mrs. Chickenstalker’s far and wide, and never-known but to its honest credit and its good report: when my widow’s name stood over that door, Tugby, I knew him as a hand- Some, steady, manly, independent youth; I knew her as the Sweetest-looking, sweetest-tempered girl, eyes ever saw; I knew her father (poor old creature, he fell down from the steeple walking in his sleep, and killed him- Self), for the simplest, hardest-working, childest-hearted man, that ever drew the breath of life; and when I turn #them out of house and home, may angels turn me out of heaven. As they would! And serve me right!” Her old face, which had been a plump and dimpled One before the changes which had come to pass, seemed to Shine out of her as she said these words; and when she dried her eyes, and shook her head and her handkerchief at Tugby, with an expression of firmness which it was quite clear was not to be easily resisted, Trotty said, “Bless her! Bless her!” Then he listened, with a panting heart, for what should follow. Knowing nothing yet, but that they spoke of Meg. If Tugby had been a little elevated in the parlour, he THE CHIMES. 143 more than balanced that account by being not a little depressed in the shop, where he now stood staring at his wife, without attempting a reply; secretly conveying, however—either in a fit of abstraction or as a precau- tionary measure—all the money from the till into his own pockets, as he looked at her. - The gentleman upon the table-beer cask, who ap- peared to be some authorized medical attendant upon the poor, was far too well accustomed, evidently, to little differences of opinion between man and wife, to interpose any remark in this instance. He sat softly whistling, and turning little drops of beer out of the tap upon the ground, until there was a perfect calm: when he raised his head, and said to Mrs. Tugby, late Chicken- stalker: - “There’s something interesting about the woman, even now. How did she come to marry him?” “Why, that,” said Mrs. Tugby, taking a seat near him, “is not the least cruel part of her story, sir. You See they kept company, she and Richard, many years ago. When they were a young and beautiful couple, everything was settled, and they were to have been married on a New Year's Day. But, somehow, Richard got it into his head, through what the gentleman told him, that he might do better, and that he’d soon repent it, and that she wasn’t good enough for him, and that a young man of spirit had no business to be married. And the gentleman frightened her, and made her melan- choly, and timid of his deserting her, and of her children. coming to the gallows, and of its being wicked to be man and wife, and a good deal more of it. And in short, they lingered and lingered, and their trust in one an- other was broken, and so at last was the match. But the fault was his. She would have married him, sir, . joyfully. I’ve seen her heart swell, many times after- wards, when he passed her in a proud and careless way; and never did a woman grieve more truly for a man, than she for Richard when he first went wrong.” “Oh! he went wrong, did he?” said the gentleman, pulling out the vent-peg of the table beer, and trying to peep down into the barrel through the hole. “Well, sir, I don’t know that he rightly understood himself, you see. I think his mind was troubled by their having broke with one another; and that but for being 144 THE CHIMES. ashamed before the gentleman, and perhaps for being uncertain, too, how she might take it, he’d have gone through any suffering or trial to have had Meg's promise, and Meg's hand again. That’s my belief. He never said so; more's the pity!" He took to drinking, idling, bad companions: all the fine resources that were to be so much better for him than the Home he might have had. He lost his looks, his character, # health, his strength, his friends, his work: every- thing!” “He didn’t lose everything, Mrs. Tugby,” returned the gentleman, “ because he gained a wife; and I want to know how he gained her.” * - “I’m coming to it, sir, in a moment. This went on for years and years; he sinking lower and lower; she enduring, poor thing, miseries enough to wear her life away. At last he was so cast down, and cast out, that no one would employ or notice him; and doors were shut upon him, go where he would. Applying from place to place, and door to door; and coming for the hundredth time to one gentleman who had often and often tried him (he was a good workman to the very end); that gen- tleman, who knew his history, said, “I believe you are incorrigible; there is only one person in the world who has a chance of reclaiming you; ask me to trust you no more, until she tries to do it.” Something like that, in his anger and vexation. “Ah!” said the gentleman. “Well?” “Well, sir, he went to her, and kneeled to her; said it was so; said it ever had been so; and made a prayer to her to save him.” “And she?—Don’t distress yourself, Mrs. Tugby.” “She came to me that night to ask me about living here. ‘What he was once to me,’ she said, “is buried in a grave, side by side with what I was to him. But I have thought of this; and I will make the trial. In the hope of saving him; for the love of the light-hearted girl (you remember her) who was to have been married on a New Year’s day; and for the love of her Richard.’ And she said he had come to her from Lilian, and Lilian had trusted to him, and she never could forget that. So they were married; and when they came home here, and I saw them, I hoped that such prophecies as parted them when they were young, may not often fulfil them- 2 *** 2°: . - *e THE CHIMES. 145 selves as they did in this case, or I wouldn’t be the makers of them for a Mine of Gold.” - The gentleman got off the cask, and stretched him- self, observing: - - “I suppose he used her ill, as soon as they were mar- ried?” . “I don’t think he ever did that,” said Mrs. Tugby, shaking her head and wiping her eyes. “He went on better for a short time; but his habits were too old and strong to be got rid of; he soon fell back a little; and was falling fast back, when his illness came so strong upon him. I think he has always felt for her. I am sure he has. I’ve seen him, in his crying fits and trem- blings, try to kiss her hand; and I have heard him call her “Meg,” and say it was her nineteenth birthday. There he has been lying, now, these weeks and months. Between him and her baby, she has not been able to do her old work; and by not being able to be regular, she has lost it, even if she could have done it. How they have lived, I hardly know!” “I know,” muttered Mr. Tugby, looking at the till, and round the shop, and at his wife; and rolling his head with immense intelligence. “Like Fighting Cocks!” He was interrupted by a cry—a sound of lamentation —from the upper story of the house. The gentleman moved hurriedly to the door. “My friend,” he said, looking back, “you needn’t dis- cuss whether he shall be removed or not. He has spared you that trouble, I believe.” Saying so, he ran up-stairs, followed by Mrs. Tugby; while Mr. Tugby panted and grumbled after them at leisure; being rendered more than commonly short- winded by the weight of the till, in which there had been an inconvenient quantity of copper. Trotty, with the child beside him, floated up the staircase like mere air. “Follow her! Follow her! Follow her!” He heard the ghostly voices in the Bells repeat their words as he fººd. ‘‘Learn it, from the creature dearest to your eart!” It was over. It was over. And this was she, her father's pride and joy! This haggard, wretched woman, weeping by the bed, if it deserved that name, and press- ing to her breast, and hanging down her head upon, an 14 **- r ***: . . ; 'Sº ., , , , , 146 THE CHIMES. infant? Who can tell how spare, how sickly, and how poor an infant? Who can tell how dear! “Thank God!” cried Trotty, holding up his folded hands. “Oh, God be thanked! She loves her child!” The gentleman, not otherwise hard-hearted or indif- ferent to such scenes, than that he saw them every day, and knew that they were figures of no moment in the Filer sums—mere scratches in the working of those cal- culations-—laid his hand upon the heart that beat no more, and listened for the breath, and said, “His pain is over. It’s better as it is!” Mrs. Tugby tried to com- fort her with kindness. Mr. Tugby tried philosophy. “Come, come!” he said, with his hands in his pockets, “you mustn't give way, you know. That won’t do. You must fight up. What would have become of me if I had given way when I was porter, and we had as many as six runaway carriage-doubles at our door in One night! But I fell back upon my strength of mind, and didn’t open it!” Again Trotty heard the voices, saying, “Follow her!” He turned towards his guide, and saw it rising from him, passing through the air. “Follow her!” it said. And vanished. He hovered round her; sat down at her feet; looked up into her face for one trace of her old self; listened for one note of her old pleasant voice. He flitted round the child: so wan, so prematurely old, so dreadful in its gravity, so plaintive in its feeble, mournful, miserable wail. He almost worshipped it. He clung to it as her only safeguard; as the last unbroken link that bound her to endurance. He set his father’s hope and trust on the frail baby; watched her every look upon it as she held it in her arms; and cried a thousand times, “She loves it! God be thanked, she loves it!” He saw the woman tend her in the night; return to her when her grudging husband was asleep, and all was still; encourage her, shed tears with her, set nour- ishment before her. He saw the day come, and the night again; the day, the night; the time go by; the house of death relieved of death; the room left to her- self and to the child; he heard it moan and cry; he saw it harrass her. and tire her out, and when she slumbered in exhaustion, drag her back to consciousness, and hold her with its little hands upon fibe rack; but she was con- THE CHIMES. 147 stant to it, gentle with it, patient with it. Patient! Was its loving mother in her inmost heart and soul, and had its Being knitted up with hers as when she carried it unborn. - All this time, she was in want: languishing away, in dire and pining want. With the baby in her arms, she wandered here and there in quest of Occupation; and with its thin face lying in her lap, and looking up in hers, did any work for any wretched sum: a day and night of labour for as many farthings as there were figures on the dial. If she had quarrelled with it; if she had neglected it; if she had looked upon it with a moment's hate; if, in the frenzy of an instant, she had struck it! No. His comfort was, She loved it always. She told no one of her extremity, and wandered abroad in the day lest she should be questioned by her only friend: for any help she received from her hands occasioned fresh disputes between the good woman and her husband; and it was new bitterness to be the daily cause of strife and discord, where she owed So much. She loved it still. She loved it more and more. But a change fell on the aspect of her love. One night. She was singing faintly to it in its sleep, and walking to and fro to hush it, when her door was Softly opened, and a man looked in. - * “For the last time,” he said. ** William Fernl” “For the last time.” He listened like a man pursued: and spoke in whis- pers. º “Margaret, my race is nearly run. I couldn’t finish it, without a parting word with you. Without one grateful word.” * “What have you done?” she asked: regarding him with terror. He looked at her, but gave no answer. After a short silence, he made a gesture with his hand, as if he set her question by; as if he brushed it aside; and said: - “It’s long ago, Margaret, now; but that night is as fresh in my memory as ever 'twas. We little thought then,” he added, looking round, “ that we should ever meet like this. Your child, Margaret? Let me have it in my arms. Let me hold your child.” 148 THE CHIMES. He put his hat upon the floor, and took it. And he trembled as he took it, from head to foot. “Is it a girl?” . “Yes.” He put his hand before its little face. “See how weak I’m grown; Margaret, when I want the courage to look at it ! Let her be, a moment. I won’t hurt her. It’s long ago, but—What's her name?” “Margaret,” she answered quickly. “I’m glad of that,” he said. “I’m glad of that!” He seemed to breathe more freely; and after pausing for an instant, took away his hand, and looked upon the infant's face. But covered it again immediately. “Margaret!” he said; and gave her back the child. “It’s Lilian’s.” “Lilian’s ſ” “I held the same face in my arms when Lilian’s mother died and left her.” “When Lilian’s mother died and left her!” she re- peated, wildly. “How shrill you speak | Why do you fix your eyes upon me so? Margaret!” - She sunk down in a chair, and pressed the infant to her breast, and wept over it. Sometimes, she released it from her embrace, to look anxiously in its face; then strained it to her bosom again. At those times, when she gazed upon it, then it was that something fierce and terrible began to mingle with her love. Then it was, that her old father quailed. “Follow her l’’ was sounded through the house. “Learn it, from the creature dearest to your heart!” “Margaret,” said Fern, bending over her, and kissing her upon the brow ; “I thank you for the last time. Good-night!, Good-bye! Put your hand in mine, and tell me you’ll forget me from this hour, and try to think the end of me was here.” “What have you done?” she asked again. “There’ll be a Fire to-night,” he said, removing from her. “There’ll be Fires this winter-time, to light the dark nights, East, West, North, and South. When you See the distant sky red, they’ſ be blazing. When you See the distant sky red, think of me no more; or, if you do, remember what a Hell was lighted up inside of me, THE CHIMES. 149 and think you see its flames reflected in the clouds. Good-night. Good-bye!” | - She called to him ; but he was gone. She sat down stupefied, until her infant roused her to a sense of hun- ger, cold and darkness. She paced the room with it the livelong night, hushing it and soothing it. She said at intervals, ‘‘ Like Lilian, when her mother died and left her!” Why was her step so quick, her eyes so wild, her Yove so fierce and terrible, whenever she repeated those words? • - “But, it is Love,” said Trotty. “It is Love. She’ll never cease to love it. My poor Meg!” She dressed the child next morning with unusual care —ah! vain expenditure of care upon such squalid robes! —and once more tried to find some means of life. It was the last day of the Old Year. She tried till night, and never broke her fast. She tried in vain. She mingled with an abject crowd, who tarried in the snow, until it pleased some officer appointed to dispense the public charity (the lawful charity; not that, once preached upon a Mount), to call them in, and question them, and say to this one, “go to such a place,” to that one, “come next week;” to make a football of another wretch, and pass him here and there, from hand to hand, from house to house, until he wearied and lay down to die; or started up and robbed, and so became a higher sort of criminal, whose claims allowed of no delay. Here, too, she failed. She loved her child, and wished to have it lying on her breast. And that was quite enough. It was night ; a bleak, dark, cutting night ; when, pressing the child close to her for warmth, she arrived outside the house she called her home. She was so faint and giddy, that she saw no one standing in the door- way until she was close upon it, and about to enter. Then she recognised the master of the house, who had So disposed himself—with his person it was not difficult as to fill up the whole entry. “Oh!” he said softly. “You have come back?” She looked at the child, and shook her head. “Don’t you think you have lived here long enough without paying any rent? Don't you think that, without any money, you’ve been a pretty constant customer at this shop, now?” said Mr. Tugby. I56) THE CHIMEs. She repeated the same mute appeal. - “Suppose you try and deal somewhere else,” he said. “And suppose you provide yourself with another lodg- ing. Come! Don’t you think you could manage it?” She said, in a low voice, that it was very late. To- IY1OI"I’OW. “Now I see what you want,” said Tugby; “and what you mean. You know there are two parties in this house about you, and you delight in setting 'em by the ears. I don’t want any quarrels; I’m speaking softly to avoid a quarrel; but if you don't go away, I’ll speak out loud, and you shall cause words high enough to please you. But you shan’t come in. That I am determined.” She put her hair back with her hand, and looked in a Sudden manner at the sky, and the dark lowering dis- fan Ce. “This is the last night of an Old Year, and I won’t carry ill-blood and quarrellings and disturbances into a New One, to please you nor anybody else,” said Tugby, who was quite a retail Friend and Father. “I wonder you ain’t ashamed of yourself, to carry such practices into a New Year. If you haven’t any business in the world, but to be always giving way, and always making disturbances between man and wife, you’d be better out of it. Go along with you!” - “Follow her! To desperation!” Again the old man heard the voices. Looking up, he saw the figures hovering in the air, and pointing where she went, down the dark street. “She loves it!” he exclaimed, in agonised entreaty for her. “Chimes! she loves it still!” “Follow her!” The shadows swept upon the track she had taken, like a cloud. He joined in the pursuit; he kept close to her; he looked into her face. He saw the same fierce and terrible expression mingling with her love, and kindling in her eyes. He heard her say, “Like Lilian! To be changed like Lilian!” and her speed redoubled. - Oh, for something to awaken her! For any sight, or sound, or scent, to call up tender recollections in a brain on fire! For any gentle image of the Past, to rise before her! ‘‘I was her father! I was her father!” cried the old man, stretching out his hands to the dark shadows THE CHIMES. w 151 flying on above. “Have mercy on her, and on me! Where does she go? Turn her back! I was her father!” But they only pointed to her, as she hurried on; and said, “To desperation! Learn it from the creature dearest to your heart!” - A hundred voices echoed it. The air was made of breath expended in those words. He seemed to take them in, at every gasp he drew. They were everywhere, and not to be escaped. And still she hurried on; the same light in her eyes, the same words in her mouth; “Like Lilian! To be changed like Lilian!” All at once she stopped. “Now, turn her back!” exclaimed the old man, tearing his white hair. “My child! Meg! Turn her back! Great Father, turn her back!” - In her own scanty shawl, she wrapped the baby warm. With her fevered hands, she smoothed its limbs, com- posed its face, arranged its mean attire. In her wasted arms she folded it, as though she never would resign it more. And with her dry lips, kissed it in a final pang, and last long agony of Love. W Putting its tiny hand up to her neck, and holding it there, within her dress, next to her distracted heart, she set its sleeping face against her: closely, steadily, against her: and sped onward to the river. To the rolling River, swift and dim, where Winter Night sat brooding like the last dark thoughts of many who had sought a refuge there before her. Where scattered lights upon the banks gleamed sullen, red and dull, as torches that were burning there, to show the way to Death. Where no abode of living people cast its shadow, on the deep, impenetrable, melancholy shade. To the River! To that portal of Eternity, her desper- ate footsteps tended with the swiftness of its rapid waters running to the sea. He tried to touch her as she passed him, going down to its dark level; but the wild distempered form, the fierce and terrible love, the desperation that had left all human check or hold be- hind, swept by him like the wind. He followed her. She paused a moment on the brink, before the dreadful plunge. He fell down on his knees, and in a shriek addressed the figures in the Bells now hovering above them. * 152 THE CHIMES. “I have learnt it!” cried the old man. “From the creature dearest to my heart! Oh, save her, save her!” He could wind his fingers in her dress; could hold it! As the words escaped his lips he felt his sense of touch return, and knew that he detained her. / The figures looked down steadfastly upon him. ‘‘I have learnt it!” cried the old man. “Oh, have mercy on me in this hour, if, in my love for her, so young and good, Islandered Nature in the breasts of mothers rendered desperate! Pity my presumption, wickedness, and ignorance, and save her!” He felt his hold relaxing. They were silent still. “Have mercy on her!” he exclaimed, “as one in whom this dreadful crime has sprung from Love per- verted; from the strongest, deepest Love we fallen crea- tures know!” Think, what her misery must have been, when such seed bears such fruit. Heaven meant her to be good. There is no loving mother on the earth who might not come to this, if such a life had gone before. Oh, have mercy on my child, who, even at this pass, means mercy to her own, and dies herself, and perils her immortal soul, to save it!” She was in his arms. He held her now. His strength was like a giant's. “I see the spirit of the Chimes among you!” cried the old man, singling out the child, and speaking in some inspiration, which their looks conveyed to him. “I know that our inheritance is held in store for us by Time. I know there is a sea of Time to rise one day, before which all who wrong us or oppress us will be swept away like leaves. I see it, on the flow ! I know that we must trust and hope, and neither doubt our- selves, nor doubt the good in one another. I have learnt it from the creature dearest to my heart. I clasp her in my arms again. Oh, Spirits, merciful and good, I take your lesson to my breast along with her! Oh, Spirits, merciful and good, I am grateful!” He might have said more; but, the Bells, the old fa- miliar Bells, his own dear, constant, steady friends, the Chimes, began to ring the joy-peals for a New Year: so lustily, so merrily, so happily, so gaily, that he leapt upon his feet, and broke the spell that bound him. “And whatever you do, father,” said Meg, “don’t eat Žs THE CHIMES.. 153 tripe again, without asking some doctor whether it's likely to agree with you; for how you have been going on, Good gracious!” She was working with her needle, at the little table by the fire; dressing her simple gown with ribbons for her wedding. So quietly happy, so blooming and youthful, so full of beautiful promise, that he uttered a great cry as if it were an Angel in his house; then flew to clasp her in his arms. # But he caught his feet in the newspaper, which had fallen on the hearth; and somebody came rushing in between them. . * “No!” cried the voice of this same somebody; a gen- erous and jolly voice it was! “Not even you. Not even you. The first kiss of Meg in the New Year is mine! Mine! I have been waiting outside the house, this hour, to hear the Bells and claim it. Meg, my precious prize, a, ºppy year! A life of happy years, my darling Wife!” . . . And Richard smothered her with kisses. You never in all your life saw anything like Trotty after this. I don’t care where you have lived or what you have seen; you never in all your life saw anything at all approaching him! He sat down in his chair and beat his knees and cried; he sat down in his chair and beat his knees and laughed; he sat down in his chair and beat his knees and laughed and cried together; he got out of his chair and hugged Meg; he got out of his chair and hugged Richard; he got out of his chair and hugged them both at once; he kept running up to Meg, and squeezing her fresh face between his hainds and kissing it, going from her backwards not to lose sight of it, and running up again like a figure in a magic lan- tern; and whatever he did, he was constantly sitting himself down in this chair, and never stopping in it for one single moment; being—that’s the truth—beside him- self with joy. • © “And to-morrow's your wedding-day, my pet!” cried Trotty. “Your real, happy wedding-day!” “To-day!” cried Richard, shaking hands with him. “To-day. The Chimes are ringing in the New Year. Hear them ''' They were ringing! Bless their sturdy hearts, they were ringing! Great Bells as they were; melodious, 154 - THE CHIMES. deep-mouthed, noble Bells; cast in no common metal; made by no common founder; when had they ever chimed like that, before! “But, to-day, my pet,” said Trotty. “You and Rich- ard had some words to-day.” “Because he's such a bad fellow, father,” said Meg. “An’t you, Richard? Such a headstrong, violent man! He’d have made no more of speaking his mind to that great Alderman, and putting him down I don’t know where, than he would of—” g “ — Kissing Meg,” suggested Richard. Doing it, too ! “No. Not a bit more,” said Meg. “But I wouldn’t let him, father. Where would have been the use !” “Richard, my boy!” cried Trotty. “You was turned up Trumps originally; and Trumps you must be, till you die ' But, you were crying by the fire to-night, #. pet, when I came home ! Why did you cry by the re P” - tº . “I was thinking of the years we’ve passed together, father. Only that. And thinking you might miss me, and be lonely.” Trotty was backing off to that extraordinary chair again, when the child, who had been awakened by the noise, came running in half-dressed. “Why, here she is!” cried Trotty, catching her up. “Here’s little Lilian' Ha, ha, ha! Here we are and here we go! Oh, here we are and here we go again! And here we are and here we go! And Uncle Will, too!” Stopping in his trot to greet him heartily. “Oh, Uncle . Will, the vision that I’ve had to-night, through lodging you! Oh, Uncle Will, the obligations that you’ve laid me under. by your coming, my good friend!” -- Before Will Fern could make the least reply, a band of music burst into the room. attended by a flock of neighbours, screaming, “A Happy New Year, Meg!” ‘. A Happy Wedding!” “Many of 'em!” and other frag- mentary good wishes of that sort. The Drum (who was a, private friend of Trotty’s) then stepped forward, and Sal Cl: - “Trotty Veck, my boy! It's got about that your daughter is going to be married to-morrow. There an’t a soul that knows you that don’t wish you well, or that knows her and don’t wish her well, Or that knows you THE CHIMES. 155 N both, and don’t wish you both all the happiness the New Year can bring. And here we are, to play it in and dance it in, accordingly.” - Which was received with a general shout. The Drum was rather drunk, by-the-bye; but, never mind. - - “What a happiness it is, I’m sure,” said Trotty, “to be so esteemed! How kind and neighbourly you are! It’s all along of my dear daughter. She deserves it!” They were ready for a dance in half a second (Meg and Richard at the top); and the Drum was on the very brink of leathering away with all his power; when a combination of prodigious sounds was heard outside, and a good-humoured comely woman of some fifty years of age, or thereabouts, came running in, attended by a man bearing a stone pitcher of terrific size, and closely followed by the marrow-bones and cleavers, and the bells; not the Bells, but a portable collection, on a frame. Trotty said, “It’s Mrs. Chickenstalker!” and sat down and beat his knees again. “Married, and not tell me, Meg!” cried the good woman. “Never! I couldn’t rest on the last night of the Old Year without coming to wish you joy. I couldn’t have done it, Meg. Not if I had been bed- ridden. So here I am; and as it’s New Year's Eve, and the Eve of your wedding, too, my dear, I had a little flip made, and brought it with me.” - Mrs. Chickenstalker’s notion of a little flip did honour to her character. The pitcher Steamed and smoked and reeked like a volcano; and the man who had carried it was faint. - “Mrs. Tugby | * , said, Trotty, who had been going round and round her, in all ecstasy.—“I should say, Chickenstalker—Bless your heart and soul! A happy New Year, and many of 'em! Mrs. Tugby,” said Trotty when he had saluted her;-“I should say, Chicken- stalker—This is William Fern and Lilian.” The worthy dame, to his surprise, turned very pale and very red. “Not Lilian Fern whose mother died in Dorsetshire!” said she. |Her uncle answered, “Yes,” and meeting hastily, they exchanged some hurried words together; of which the upshot was, that Mrs. Chickenstalker shook him 156 THE CHIMES. by both hands; saluted Trotty on his cheek again of her own free will; and took the child to her capacious breast. - - “Will Fern!” said Trotty, pulling on his right-hand ºr. “Not the friend that you was hoping to Il 2 ” “Ay!” returned Will, putting a hand on each of Trotty’s shoulders. “And like to prove a'most as good a friend, if that can be, as one I found.” “Oh!” said Trotty. “Please to play up there. Will you have the goodness!” - To the music of the band, the bells, the marrow-bones and cleavers, all at once; and while the Chimes were yet in lusty operation out of doors; Trotty making Meg and Richard second couple, led off Mrs. Chickenstalker down the dance, and danced it in a step unknown before or since; founded on his own peculiar trot. Had Trotty dreamed? Or, are his joys and sorrows, and the actors in them, but a dream; himself a dream; the teller of this tale a dreamer, waking but now? If it be so, O listener, dear to him in all his visions, try to bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come; and in your sphere—none is too wide, and none too limited for such an end—endeavour to cor- rect, improve, and soften them. So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose hap- piness depends on you! ... So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy. THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. A. F. A.I.R. Y T A L E O F. H. O. M. E. esmºsºsºsºsºsé CHIRP THE FIRST. THE kettle began it! Don’t tell me what Mrs. Peery- bingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn’t say which of them began it; but, I say the kettle did. I ought to know, I hope? The kettle began it, full five minutes by the little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the cor- ner, before the Cricket uttered a chirp. As if the clock hadn’t finished striking, and the con- vulsive little Haymaker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn’t mowed down half an acre of imaginary grass be- fore the Cricket joined in at all! Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows that I wouldn’t set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I were quite sure, on any ac- count whatever. Nothing should induce me. But, this is a question of facts. And the fact is, that the kettle begun it at least five minutes before the Cricket gave any sign of being in existence. Contradict me, and I’ll say ten. Det me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to do so, in my very first word, but for this plain consideration—if I am to tell a story, I must begin at the beginning; and how is it possible to begin at the beginning, without beginning at the kettle? ..It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of * P157 *-* 158 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. skill, you must understand, between the kettle and the .* And this is what led to it, and how it came about. Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and clicking over the wet stones in a pair of pattens that worked innumerable rough impressions of the first propo- sition in Euclid all about the yard—Mrs. Peerybingle filled the kettle at the water butt. Presently returning, less the pattens (and a good deal less, for they were tall. and Mrs. Peerybingle was but short), she set the kettle on the fire. In doing which she lost her temper, or mis- laid it for an instant; for, the water being uncomforta- bly cold, and in that slippy, slushy, sleety sort of state wherein it seems to penetrate through every kind of sub- stance, patten rings included—had laid hold of Mrs. Peerybingle's toes, and even splashed her legs. And when we rather plume ourselves (with reason too) upon our legs, and keep ourselves particularly neat in point of stockings, we find this, for the moment, hard to bear. Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn’t allow itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn’t hear of accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it would lean forward with a drunken air and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peery- bingle's fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvey, and then with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived sideways in—down to the very bottom of the kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has never made half the monstrous resistance to coming out of the water, which the lid of that kettle employed against Mrs. Peerybingle, before she got it up again. It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then: carrying its handlo with an air of defiance, and cocking its spout pertly and mockingly at Mrs. Peerybingle as if it said, “I won’t boil. Nothing shall induce me!” But Mrs. Peery bingle, with restored good-humour, dusted her chubby little hands against each other, and sat down before the kettle, laughing. . Meantime, the jolly blaze uprose and fell, flashing and gleaming on the little Haymaker at tho top of the Dutch clock, until one might have thought he stood stock still before the Moor- ish Palace, and nothing was in motion but the flame. *::. . * THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, 150 *. He was on the move, however; and had his spasms, two to the second, all right and regular. But, his suffer- ings when the clock was going to strike, were frightful to behold; and when a Cuckoo looked out of a trap-door in the Palace, and gave note six times, it shook him, each time, like a spectral voice—or like a something wiry, plucking at his legs. - It was not until a violent commotion and a whirring noise among the weights and ropes below him had quite subsided, that this terrified Haymaker became himself again. Nor was he startled without reason; for, these rattling, bony skeletons of clocks are very disconcerting in their operation, and I wonder very much how any set of men, but most of all how Dutchmen, can have had a liking to invent them. There is a popular belief that Dutchmen love broad cases and much clothing for their own lower selves; and they might know better than to leave their clocks so very lank and unprotected, surely. Now it was, you observe, that the kettle began to spend the evening. Now it was, that the kettle, grow- ing mellow and musical, began to have irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to indulge in short vocal Snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn’t quite made up its mind yet to be good company. Now it was, that after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all re- serve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and hi- larious, as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the least idea of. So plain, too! Bless you, you might have understood it like a book—better than some books you and I can name, perhaps. With its warm breath gushing forth in a light cloud which merrily and gracefully ascended a few feet, then hung about the chimney-corner as its own domestic heaven, it trolled its song with that strong energy of cheerfulness, that its iron body hummed and stirred upon the fire; and the lid itself, the recently re- bellious lid—such is the influence of a bright example —performed a sort of jig, and clattered like a deaf and dumb young cymbal that had never known the use of its twin brother. S That this song of the kettle's was a song of invitation and welcome to somebody out of doors: to somebody &t that moment coming on, towards the snug small home 160 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. and the crisp fire: there is no doubt whatever. Mrs. Peerybingle knew it, perfectly, as she sat musing before the hearth. It’s a dark night, sang the kettle, and the rotten leaves are lying by the way; and, above, all is mist and darkness, and below, all is mire and clay; and there’s only one relief in all the sad and murky air; and I don’t know that it is one, for it’s nothing but a glare; of deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind together; set a brand upon the clouds for being guilty of such weather; and the widest open country is a long dull streak of black; and there's hoar-frost on the finger-post, and thaw upon, the track; and the ice it isn’t water, and the water isn’t free; and you couldn’t say that anything is what it ought to be; but he's coming, coming, coming!— And here, if you like, the Cricket did chime in with a Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice, so astoundingly disproportion- ate to its size, as compared with the kettle (size! you couldn’t see it!), that if it had then and there burst itself like an over-charged gun, if it had fallen a victim on the spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty pieces, it would have seemed a natural and inevitable conse- Quence, for which it had expressly laboured. The kettle had had the last of its solo performance. It persevered with undiminished ardour; but the Cricket took first fiddle and kept it. Good Heaven, how it chirped! Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer darkness like a star. There was an indescribable little trill and tremble in it at its loudest, which suggested its being carried off its legs, and made to leap again, by its own intense enthusiasm. Yet they went very well to- gether, the Cricket and the kettle. The burden of the song was still the same; and louder, louder, louder still, they sang it in their emulation. . The fair little listener—for fair she was, and young: though something of what is called the dumpling shape; but I don’t myself object to that—lighted a candle, glanced at the Haymaker on the top of the clock, who was getting in a pretty average crop of minutes; and looked out of the window, where she saw nothing, owing to the darkness, but her own face imaged in the glass. And my opinion is (and so would yours have been), that THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 161 she might have looked a long way, and seen nothing half so agreeable. When she came back, and sat down in her former seat, the Cricket and the kettle were still keeping it up, with a perfect fury of competition. The kettle's weak side clearly being, that he didn’t know when he was beat. There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum— m—m! Kettle making play in the distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket round the corner. Hum, hum, hum—m—m! Kettle sticking to him in his own way ; no idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp ! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum—m—m ! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp ! Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum—m—m ! Ket- tle not to be finished. Until at last, they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry, helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to have decided with anything like certainty. But, of this, there is no doubt : that, the kettle and the Cricket, at one and the same moment, and by some power of amalgamation best known to themselves, sent, each, his fireside song of comfort streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out through the window, and a long way down the lane. And this light, bursting on a certain person who, On the instant, approached towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him, literally in a twinkling, and cried, “Welcome home, old fellow ! Welcome home, my boy This end attained, the kettle being dead beat, boiled Over, and was taken off the fire. Mrs. Perrybingle then went running to the door, where, what with the wheels of a cart, the tramp of a horse, the voice of a man, the tearing in and out of an excited dog, and the surprising and mysterious appearance of a baby, there was soon the very What's-his-name to pay. Where the baby came from, or how Mrs. Perrybingle got hold of it in that flash of time, I don’t know. But a live baby there was, in Mrs. Perrybingle's arms; and a pretty tolerable amount of pride she seemed to have in it, when she was drawn gently to the fire, by a 12 162 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. sturdy figure of a man, much taller and much older than herself, who had to stoop a long way down to kiss her. But she was worth the trouble. Six foot six, with the lumbago, might have done it. “Oh, goodness, John ” said Mrs. P. “What a state you’re in with the weather l’” He was something the worse for it undeniably. The thick mist hung in clots upon his eyelashes like candied thaw ; and, between the fog and fire together, there were rainbows in his very whiskers. • “Why, you see, Dot,” John made answer, slowly, as he unrolled a shawl from about his throat ; and warmed his hands; “it—it an’t exactly summer weather. So, no wonder.” “I wish you wouldn’t call me Dot, John. I don’t like it,” said Mrs. Perrybingle ; pouting in a way that clearly showed she did like it very much. “Why, what else are you ?” returned John, looking down upon her with a smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze as his hugh hand and arm could give. “A dot and ”—here he glanced at the baby—‘‘ a dot and carry—I won’t say it, for fear I should spoil it ; but I was very near a joke. I don’t know as ever I was nearer.” He was often near to something or other very clever, by his own account ; this lumbering, slow, honest John ; this John so heavy, but so light in spirit ; SO rough upon the surface, but so gentle at the core ; so dull without, so quick within ; so stolid, but so good Oh, Mother Nature, give thy children the true poetry of heart that hid itself in this poor Carrier's breast—he was but a Carrier by the way—and we can bear to have them talking prose, and leading lives of prose; and bear to bless thee for their company. It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little figure and her baby in her arms: a very doll of a baby: glancing with a coquettish thoughtfulness at the fire, and inclin- ing her delicate little head just enough on One side to let it rest in an odd, half-natural, half-affected, wholly nestling and agreeable manner, on the great rugged figure of the Carrier. It was pleasant to see him, with his tender åwkwardness, endeavouring to adapt his rude support to her slight need, and make his burly middle-age a leaning-staff not inappropriate to her THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 163 blooming youth. It was pleasant to observe how Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the background for the baby, took special cognizance (though in her earliest teens) of this grouping; and stood with her mouth and eyes wide open, and her head thrust forward, taking it in as if it were air. Nor was it less agreeable to observe how John the Carrier, reference being made by Dot to the aforesaid baby, checked his hand when on the point of touching the infant, as if he thought he might crack it; and bending down, surveyed it from a safe distance, with a kind of puzzled pride, such as an amiable mastiff might be supposed to show, if he found himself, one day, the father of a young canary. “An’t he beautiful, John? Don’t he look precious in his sleep?” . “Very precious,” said John. “Very much so. He generally is asleep, an’t he?” “Lor, John! Good gracious, no!” . “Oh,” said John, pondering. “I thought his eyes was generally shut. Halloa!” “Goodness, John, how you startle one!” “It an’t right for him to turn 'em up in that way!” said the astonished Carrier, “is it? See how he's winking with both of 'em at once! and look at his mouth ! Why, he’s gasping like a gold and silver fish!” “You don’t deserve to be a father, you don’t,” said Dot, with all the dignity of an experienced matron. “But how should you know what little complaints children are troubled with, John' You wouldn’t so much as know their names, you stupid fellow.” And when she had turned the baby over on her left arm, and had slapped its back as a restorative, she pinched her husband’s ear, laughing. “No,” said John, pulling off his outer coat. “It’s very true, Dot. I don’t know much about it. I only know that I’ve been fighting pretty stiffly with the wind to- night. It’s been blowing northeast, straight into the the cart, the whole way home.” “Poor old man, so it has!” cried Mrs. Peerybingle, instantly becoming very active. “Here! take the precious darling, Tilly, while I make myself of some use. Bless it, I could smother it with kissing it, I could! Hie, then, good dog! Hie, Boxer, boy! Only let me make the tea first, John; and then I'll help you with the parcels, 164 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. like a busy bee. ‘How doth the little’—and all the rest of it, you know, John. Did you ever learn “how doth the little,” when you went to school, John?” - “Not to quite know it,” John returned. “I was very near it once. But I should only have spoilt it, I dare say.” “Ha, ha,” laughed Dot. She had the blithest little laugh you ever heard. “What a dear old darling of a dunce you are, John, to be sure!” Not at all disputing this position, John went out to see that the boy with the lantern, which had been dancing to and fro before the door and window, like a Will of the Wisp, took due care of the horse; who was fatter than you would quite believe, if I gave you his measure, and so old that his birthday was lost in the mists of antiquity. Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy; now, describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the stable-door; now, feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now, eliciting a shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire, by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance; now, exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now, going round and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established himself for the night; now, getting up again, and taking that nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, out into the weather, as if he had just remembered an appointment, and was off, at a round trot, to keep it. “There! There’s the tea-pot, ready on the hob!” said Dot; as briskly busy as a child at play at keeping house. “And there's the cold knuckle of ham; and there's the butter; and there’s the crusty loaf, and all! Here’s a clothes-basket for the small parcels, John, if you’ve got any there—where are you, John? Don’t let the dear child fall under the grate, Tilly, whatever you do!” It may be noted of Miss Slowboy, in spite of her re- jecting the caution with some vivacity, that she had a rare and surprising talent for getting this baby into dif- ficulties: and had several times imperilled its short life, in a quiet way peculiarly her own. She was of a spare and straight shape, this young lady, insomuch that her THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 165 garments appeared to be in constant danger of sliding off those sharp pegs, her shoulders, on which they were loosely hung. Her costume was remarkable for the par- tial development, on all possible occasions, of some flannel vestment of a singular structure; also for affording glimpses, in the region of the back, of a corset, or pair of stays, in colour a dead-green. Being always in a state of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed, besides, in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress's perfec- tions and the baby’s, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of judgment, may be said to have done equal honour to her head and to her heart; and though these did less honour to the baby's head, which they were the occasional means of bringing into contact with deal doors, dresses, . stair-rails, bedposts, and other foreign substances, still they were the honest results of Tilly Slowboy’s constant astonishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and installed in such a comfortable home. For, the maternal and paternal Slowboy were alike unknown to Fame, and Tilly had been bred by public charity, a foundling; which word, though only differing from fondling by one vowel's length, is very different in meaning, and ex- presses quite another thing. - - To have seen little Mrs. Peerybingle come back with her husband, tugging at the clothes-basket and making the most strenuous exertions to do nothing at all (for he carried it), would have amused you, almost as much as it amused him. It may have entertained the Cricket, too, for anything I know; but, certainly, it now began to chirp again, vehemently. “Heyday!” said John, in his slow way. “It’s merrier than ever to-night, I think.” “And it's sure to bring us good fortune, John! It always has done so. To have a Cricket on the Hearth, is the luckiest thing in all the world!” John looked at her as if he had very nearly got the thought into his head, that she was his Cricket in chief, and he quite agreed with her. But it was probably one of his narrow escapes, for he said nothing. - “The first time I heard its cheerful little note, John, was on that night when you brought me home—when you brought me to my new home here; its little mistress. Nearly a year ago. You recollect, John?” Oh, yes. John remembered. I should think so! 166 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. “Its chirp was such a welcome to me! It seemed so full of promise and encouragement. It seemed to say, you would be kind and gentle with me, and would not expect (I had a fear of that, John, then) to find an Old head on the shoulders of your foolish little wife.” John thoughtfully patted one of the shoulders, and then the head, as though he would have said No, no; he had had no such expectation; he had been quite content to take them as they were. And really he had reason. A'hey were very comely. “It spoke the truth, John, when it seemed to say So: for you have ever been, I am sure, the best, the most considerate, the most affectionate of husbands to me. This has been a happy home, John; and I love the Cricket for its sake!” pº Why, so do I, then,” said the Carrier. “So do I, Ot.” “I love it for the many times I have heard it, and the many thoughts its harmless music has given me. Some- times, in the twilight, when I have felt a little solitary and down-hearted, John—before baby was here to keep me company and make the house gay—when I have thought how lonely you would be if I should die; how lonely I should be, if I could know that you had lost me, dear; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp upon the hearth, has seemed to tell me of another little voice, so sweet, so very dear to me, before whose coming sound my trouble vanished like a dream. And when I used to fear—I did fear once, John, I was very young, you know—that ours might prove an ill-assorted marriage, I being such a child, and you more like my guardian than my hus- band; and that you might not, however hard you tried, be able to learn to love me, as you hoped and prayed you might; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp, has cheered me up again, and filled me with new trust and confidence. I was thinking of these things to-night, dear, when I sat expecting you; and I love the Cricket for their sake!” “And so do I,” repeated John. “But, Dot? I hope and pray that I might learn to love you? How you talk! I had learnt that, long before I brought you here, to be the Cricket’s little mistress, Dot!” She laid her hand, an instant, on his arm, and looked up at him with an agitated face, as if she would have told him something. Next moment, she was down upon THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 167 her knees before the basket; speaking in a sprightly voice, and busy with the parcels. “There are not many of them to-night, John, but I saw some goods behind the cart, just now; and though they give more trouble, perhaps, still they pay as well; so we have no reason to grumble, have we? Besides, you have been delivering, I dare say, as you came along?” “Oh, yes,” John said. “A good many.” - - “Why, what’s this round box? Heart alive, John, it’s a wedding-cake!” “Leave a woman alone to find out that,” said John, admiringly. “Now a man would never have thought of it! Whereas, it’s my belief, that if you was to pack a wedding-cake up in a tea-chest, or a turn-up bedstead, or a pickled salmon keg, or any unlikely thing, a woman would be sure to find it out directly. Yes; I called for it at the pastry-cook’s.” “And it weighs I don’t know what—whole hundred- weights!” cried Dot, making a great demonstration of trying to lift it. “Whose is it, John? Where is it going?” * - “Read the writing on the other side,” said John. “Why, John! My goodness, John!” “Ah! who’d have thought it!” John returned. “You never mean to say,” pursued Dot, sitting on the floor and shaking her head at him, “that it’s Gruff and Tackleton the toymaker!” John nodded. - Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not in assent—in dumb and pitying amazement; screw- ing up her lips, the while, with all their little force (they were never made for screwing up; I am clear of that), and looking the good Carrier through and through, in her abstraction. Miss Slowboy, in the meantime, who had a mechanical power of reproducing scraps of current conversation for the delectation of the baby, with all the sense struck out of them, and all the nouns changed into the plural number, inquired aloud of that young creature, Was it Gruffs and Tackletons the toy- makers then, and Would it call at Pastry-cooks for wed- ding-cakes, and Did its mothers know the boxes when its fathers brought them home; and so on. - “And that is really to come about !” said Dot. “Why she and I were girls at school together, John,” 168 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. He might have been thinking of her, or nearly think- ing of her, perhaps, as she was in that same school-time. He looked upon her with a thoughtful pleasure, but he made no answer. e “And he's as old! As unlike her!—Why, how many years older than you, is Gruff and Tackleton, John?” “How many more cups of tea shall I drink to-night at one sitting, than Gruff and Tackleton ever took in four, I wonder!” replied John, good-humouredly, as he drew a chair to the round table, and began at the cold ham, “As to eating, I eat but little; but that little I I enjoy, Dot.” - Even this, his usual sentiment at meal times, one of his innocent delusions (for his appetite was always ob- stinate, and flatly contradicted him), awoke no smile in the face of his little wife, who stood among the parcels, pushing the cake-box slowly from her with her foot, and never Once looked, though her eyes were cast down too, upon the dainty shoe she generally was so mindful of. Absorbed in thought, she stood there, heedless alike of the tea and John (although he called to her, and rapped the table with his knife to startle her), until he rose and touched her on the arm; when she looked at him for a moment, and hurried to her place behind the tea- board, laughing at her negligence. But not as she had laughed before. The manner and the music were quite changed. The Cricket, too, had stopped. Somehow the room was not so cheerful as it had been. Nothing like it. “So, these are all the parcels, are they. John?” she said, breaking a long silence, which the honest Carrier had devoted to the practical illustration of one part of his favourite sentiment—certainly enjoying what he ate, if it couldn’t be admitted that he ate but little. “So these are all the parcels, are they, John?” “That’s all,” said John. “Why—no—I—” laying down his knife and fork, and taking a long breath. “I declare—I’ve clean forgotten the old gentleman!” “The old gentleman?” “In the cart,” said John. “He was asleep, among the straw, the last time I saw him. I’ve very nearly remembered him, twice, since I came in; but he went Out of my head again. Halloa! Yahip there! Rouse up! That's my hearty!” THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 169 John said these latter words outside the door, whither he had hurried with the candle in his hand. Miss Slowboy, conscious of some mysterious reference to The Old Gentleman, and connecting in her mystified imagination certain associations of a religious nature with the phrase, was so disturbed, that hastily rising from the low chair by the fire to seek protection near the skirt of her mistress, and coming into contact as she crossed the doorway with an ancient Stranger, she instinctively made a charge or butt at him with the only offensive instrument within her reach. This in- strument happening to be the baby, great commotion and alarm ensued, which the sagacity of Boxer rather tended to increase; for that good dog, more thoughtful than his master, had, it seemed, been watching the Old gentleman in his sleep, lest hé should walk off with a few young poplar trees that were tied up behind the cart; and he still attended on him very closely, worry- ing his gaiters in fact, and making dead sets at the buttons: > - “You’re such an undeniable good sleeper, sir,” said John, when tranquility was restored; in the meantime the old gentleman had stood, bareheaded and motion- less, in the centre of the room; “that I have half a mind to ask you where the other six are—only that would be a joke, and I know I should spoil it. Very near though,” murmured the Carrier, with a chuckle; “very near!” The Stranger, who had long white hair, good features, singularly bold and well defined for an old man, and dark, bright, penetrating eyes, looked round with a Smile, and saluted the Carrier's wife by gravely inclin- ing his head. - His garb was very quaint and odd–a long, long way behind the time. Its hue was brown, all over. In his hand he held a great brown club or walking-stick; and Striking this upon the floor, it fell asunder, and became a chair. On which he sat down, quite composedly. “There!” said the Carrier, turning to his wife. ...That's the way I found him, sitting by the roadside! Upright as a milestone, and almost as deaf.” “Sitting in the open air, John!” - “In the open air,” replied the Carrier, “just at dusk. Carriage Paid,” he said; and gave me eighteenpence. Then he got in. And there he is.” . 170 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. “He’s going, John, I think!” Not at all. He was only going to speak. “If you please, I was to be left till called for,” said the Stranger, mildly. “Don’t mind me.” With that he took a pair of spectacles from one of his large pockets, and a book from another, and leis- urely began to read. Making no more of Boxer than if he had been a house lamb] , The Carrier and his wife exchanged a look of per- plexity. The stranger raised his head; and glancing from the latter to the former, said: “Your daughter, my good friend?” “Wife,” returned John. “Niece?” said the Stranger. “Wife,” roared John. . - “Indeed?”, observed the Stranger. “Surely? Very young!” . - He quietly turned over, and resumed his reading. But, before he could have read two lines, he again inter- rupted himself, to say: “Baby, yours?” John gave him a gigantic nod: equivalent to an an- swer in the affirmative, delivered through a speaking- trumpet. - “Girl?” “Bo-o-oy!” roared John. “Also very young, eh?” - Mrs. Peerybingle instantly struck in. “Two months and three da-ays. Vaccinated just six weeks ago-O! Took very fine-ly! Considered, by the doctors, a remark- ably beautiful chi-ild! Equal to the general run of children at five months o-ld! Takes notice, in a way uite won-der-ful! May seem impossible to you, but feel his legs al-ready!” Here the breathless little mother, who had been shrieking these short sentences into the old man’s ear, until her pretty face was crimsoned, held up the Baby before him as a stubborn and triumphant fact; while Tilly Slowboy, with a melodious cry of “ Ketcher, Ketcher”—which sounded like some unknown words, adapted to a popular Sneeze—performed some cow- like gambols around that all unconscious Innocent. “Hark! He's called for, sure enough,” said, John. “There's somebody at the door. Open it, Tilly.” THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 171 Before she could reach it, however, it was opened from without; being a primitive sort of door, with a latch that any one could lift if he chose—and a good many people did choose, for all kinds of neighbours liked to have a cheerful word or two with the Carrier, though he was no great talker himself. Being opened, it gave admission to a little, meager, thoughtful, dingy-faced man, who seemed to have made himself a great-coat from the sack-cloth covering of some old box; for, when he turned to shut the door, and keep the weather out, he disclosed upon the back of that garment the inscription G & T in large black capitals. Also the word “glass" in bold characters. “Good-evening, John ” said the little man. “Good- evening, mum. Good-evening, Tilly. Good-evening, Flºwn How’s Baby, Mum? Boxer’s pretty well, ope?” - “All thriving, Caleb,” replied Dot. “I am sure you #. Only look at the dear child, for one, to know that.” “And I’m sure I only need look at you for another,” said Caleb. He didn’t look at her, though; he had a wandering and thoughtful eye which seemed to be always project- ing itself into some other time and place, no matter what he said; a description which will equally apply to his VOICé. - “Or at John for another,” said Caleb. “Or at Tilly, as far as that goes. Or certainly at Boxer.” “Busy just now, Caleb” asked the Carrier. “Why, pretty well, John,” he returned, with the dis- traught air of a man who was casting about for the Philosopher's stone, at least. “Pretty much so. There’s rather a run on Noah's Arks at present. I could have wished to improve upon the Family, but I don’t see how it’s to be done at the price. It would be a satisfaction to one’s mind, to make it clearer which was Shems and Hams, and which was Wives. Flies an’t on that scale neither, as compared with elephants, you know! Ah! }. Have you got anything in the parcel line for me, Ohn P” - & The Carrier put his hand into the pocket of the coat he had taken off; and brought out, carefully preserved in moss and paper, a tiny flower-pot. 172 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. “There it is!” he said, adjusting it with great care. “Not so much as a leaf damaged. Full of buds!” pºleº's dull eye brightened, as he took it, and thanked 1I]. - “Dear, Caleb,” said the Carrier. “Very dear at this season.” - - “Never mind that. It would be cheap to me, what- ever it cost,” returned the little man. “Anything else, John?” e “A small box,” replied the Carrier. “Here you are!” “‘For Caleb Plummer,’” said the little man, spelling out the direction. “‘With Cash.' With Cash, John? I don’t think it’s for me.” “With Care,” returned the Carrier, looking over his shoulder. “Where do you make out cash?” “Oh! To be sure!” said Caleb. “It’s all right. With care! Yes, yes; that's mine. It might have been with cash, indeed, if my dear Boy in the Golden South Amer- icas had lived, John. You loved him like a son; didn't you? You needn’t, say you did. I know, of course. ‘Caleb Plummer. With care.’ Yes, yes, it's all right. It’s a box of dolls’ eyes for my daughter’s work. I wish it was her own sight in a box, John.” y “I wish it was, or could be!” cried the Carrier. “Thankee,” said the little man. “You speak very hearty. To think that she should never see the Dolls— and them a staring at her, so bold, all day long! That's where it cuts. What’s the damage, John?” “I’ll damage you,” said John, “if you inquire. Dot! Very near?” - • . - “Well! It's like you to say so,” observed the little man. “It’s your kind way. Let me see. I think that’s all.” “I think not,” said the Carrier. “Try again.” “Something for our Governor, eh?” said Caleb, after pondering a little while. “To be sure. That’s what I came for; but my head’s so running on them Arks and things! He hasn’t been here, has he?” “Not he,” returned the Carrier. “He’s too busy, courting.” - “He’s coming round, though,” said Caleb; “for he told me to keep on the near side of the road going home, and it was ten to one he’d take me up. I had better go, by-the-bye.—You couldn’t have the goodness to let me THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 173 pinch Boxer’s tail, mum, for half a moment, could you?” “Why, Caleb! What a question!” “Oh, never mind, mum,” said the little man. “He mightn’t like it, perhaps. There’s a small order just come in, for barking dogs; and I should wish to go as close to Natur’ as I could for sixpence. That’s all. Never mind, mum.” - It happened, opportunely, that Boxer, without re- ceiving the proposed stimulus, began to bark with great zeal. But, as this implied the approach of some new visitor, Caleb, postponing his study from the life to a more convenient season, shouldered the round box, and took a hurried leave. He might have spared himself the trouble, for he met the visitor upon the threshold. “Oh! You are here, are you? Wait a bit. I’ll take you home. John Peerybingle, my service to you. More of my service to your pretty wife. Handsomer every day! Better, too, if possible! And younger,” mused the speaker in a low voice; “that’s the devil of it!” “I should be astonished at your paying compliments, Mr. Tackleton,” said Dot, not with the best grace in the world, “but for your condition.” “You know all about it then?” “I have got myself to believe it somehow,” said Dot. “After a hard struggle, I suppose?” & 6 Very.” - - : Tackleton, the Toy merchant, pretty generally known as Gruff and Tackleton—for that was the firm, though Gruff had been bought out long ago; only leaving his name, and as some said his nature, according to its Dic- tionary meaning, in the business—Tackleton the Toy merchant, was a man whose vocation had been quite misunderstood by his Parents and Guardians. If they had made him a Money Lender, or a sharp Attorney, or a Sheriff’s Officer, or a Broker, he might have sown his discontented oats in his youth, and, after having had the full-run of himself in ill-natured transactions, might have turned out amiable, at last, for the sake of a little freshness and novelty. But, cramped and chaſing in the peaceable pursuit of toy-making, he was a domesti," Ogre, who had been living on children all his life, and was their implacable enemy. He despised all toys; wouldn’t have bought one for the world; delighted, in his malice, to insinuate grim expressions into the faces of 174 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. brown paper farmers who drove pigs to market, bellmen who advertised lost lawyers’ consciences, movable old ladies who darned stockings or carved pies; and other like samples of his stock in trade. In appalling masks; hideous, hairy, red-eyed Jacks in Boxes; Vampire Kites; demoniacal Tumblers who wouldn’t lie down, and were perpetually flying forward to stare infants out of counte- nance; his soul perfectly revelled. They were his only relief and safety-valve. He was great in such inven- tions. Anything suggestive of a Pony nightmare, was . delicious to him. He had even lost money (and he took to that toy very kindly) by getting up Goblin slides for magic lanterns, whereupon the Powers of Darkness were depicted as a sort of supernatural shell-fish, with human faces. In intensifying the portraiture of Giants, he had sunk quite a little capital; and though no painter him- self, he could indicate, for the instruction of his artists, with a piece of chalk, a certain furtive leer for the coun- tenances of those monsters, which was safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentleman between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole Ghristmas or Mid- Summer Vacation. What he was in toys, he was (as most men are) in Other things. You may easily suppose, therefore, that within the great green cape, which reached down to the calves of his legs, there was buttoned up to the chin an uncommonly pleasant fellow; and that he was about as choice a spirit, and as agreeable a companion, as ever stood in a pair of bull-headed looking boots with mahog- any-coloured tops. Still, Tackleton, the toy merchant, was going to be married. In spite of all this, he was going to be mar- ried. And to a young wife, too, a beautiful young wife. He didn’t look much like a Bridegroom, as he stood in the Carrier’s kitchen, with a twist in his dry face, and a screw in his body, and his hat jerked over the bridge of his nose, and his hands tucked down into the bottoms of his pockets, and his whole sarcastic, ill-conditioned self peering out of one little corner of one little eye, like the concentrated essence of any number of ravens. But a Bridegroom he designed to be. “In three days’ time. Next Thursday. The last day of the first month in the year. That's my wedding day,” said Tackleton. - THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 175 Did I mention that he had always one eye wide open, and one eye nearly shut; and that the One eye nearly º was always the expressive eye? I don’t think I did. e “That's my wedding-day!” said Tackleton, rattling his money. - “Why, it's our wedding-day too,” exclaimed the Car- I’leI’. “Ha, ha!” laughed Tackleton. “Odd! You’re just such another couple. Just!” - The indignation of Dot at this presumptuous assertion is not to be described. What next? His imagination would compass the possibility of just such another Baby, perhaps. The man was mad. “I say! A word with you,” murmured Tackleton, nudging the Carrier with his elbow, and taking him a little apart, “You’ll come to the wedding? We're in the same boat, you know.” “How in the same boat?” inquired the Carrier. - “A little disparity you know,” said Tackleton, with another nudge. “Come and spend an evening with us, beforehand.” “Why,” demanded John, astonished at this pressing hospitality. - - “Why?” returned the other. “That’s a new way of . receiving an invitation. Why, for pleasure—sociability, you know, and all that?” e “I thought you were never sociable,” said John, in his plain way. ‘. “Tohah! It's of no use to be anything but free with you, I see,” said Tackleton. “Why, then, the truth is you have a-what tea-drinking people call a sort of a comfortable appearance together, you and your wife. We know better, you know, but—” “No, we don’t know better,” interposed John. “What are you talking about?” “Well! We don’t know better then,” said Tackleton. “We’ll agree that we don’t. As you like; what does it matter? I was going to say, as you have that sort of º your company will produce a favourable effect on Mrs. Tackleton that will be. And, though I don’t think your good lady’s very friendly to me, in this matter, still she can’t help herself from falling into my views, for there’s a compactness and cosiness of appear- 176 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. ance about her that always tells, even in an indifferent case. You’ll say you’ll come?” “We have arranged to keep our wedding-day (as far as that goes) at home,” said John. “We have made the promise to ourselves these six months. We think, you see, that home—” - “Bah! what's home?” cried Tackleton. “Four walls and a ceiling! (Why don’t you kill that Cricket; I would! I always do. I hate their noise.) There are four walls and a ceiling at my house. Come to me!” - “You kill your Crickets, eh?” said John. “Scrunch 'em, sir,” returned the other, setting his heel heavily on the floor. “You’ll say you’ll come? It's as much your interest as mine, you know, that the women should persuade each other that they’re quiet and contented, and couldn’t be better off. I know their way. Whatever one woman says, another woman is determined to clinch, always. There's that spirit of emulation among 'em, sir, that if your wife says to my- wife, ‘I’m the happiest woman in the world, and mine's the best husband in the world, and I dote on him,” my wife will say the same to yours, or more, and half believe it.” “Do you mean to say she don’t, then?” asked the Carrier. “Don’t!” cried Tackleton, with a short, sharp laugh. ** DOn’t, What?” The Carrier had some faint idea of adding, “ dote upon you.” But, happening to meet the half-closed eye, as it twinkled upon him over the turned-up collar of the cape, which was within an ace of poking it out, he felt it such an unlikely part and parcel of anything to be doted on, that he substituted, “that she don’t believe it?” “Ah, you dog! You’re joking,” said Tackleton. But the Carrier, though slow to understand the full drift of his meaning, eyed him in such a serious manner, that he was obliged to be a little more ex- planatory. “I have the humour,” said Tackleton: holding up the fingers of his left hand, and tapping the forefinger, to imply ‘there I am, Tackleton to wit: “I have the humour, sir, to marry a young wife, and a pretty wife:” here he rapped his little finger, to express the Bride; THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 177 not sparingly, but sharply; with a sense of power. “I’m able to gratify that humour and I do. It’s my whim. But—now look there!” He pointed to where Dot was sitting, thoughtfully before the fire; leaning her dimpled chin upon her hand, and watching the bright blaze. The Carrier looked at her, and then at him, and then at her, and then at him again. “She honours and obeys, no doubt, you know,” said Tackleton; “and that, as I am not a man of Sentiment, is quite enough for me. But do you think there's any- thing more in it?” “I think,” observed the Carrier, “that I should chuck any man out of window, who said there wasn't.” “Exactly so,” returned the other with an unusual alacrity of assent. “To be sure! Doubtless you would. Of course. I’m certain of it. Good-night. Pleasant dreams!” - The Carrier was puzzled, and made uncomfortable and uncertain, in spite of himself. He couldn’t help showing it, in his manner. “Good-night, my dear friend!” said Tackleton, com- Fºnº “I’m off. We’re exactly alike, in reality, see. You won’t give us to-morrow evening? Well! Next day you go out visiting, I know. I’ll meet you there, and bring my wife that is to be. It’ll do her good. You’re agreeable? Thankee. What’s that!” It was a loud cry from the Carrier's wife: a loud, sharp, sudden cry, that made the room ring, like a glass vessel. She had risen from her seat, and stood like one transfixed by terror and surprise. The Stranger had advanced towards the fire to warm himself, and stood within a short stride of her chair. But quite still. “Dot” cried the Carrier. “Mary! Darling! What's the matter?” They were all about her in a moment. Caleb, who had been dozing on the cake-box, in the first imperfect recovery of his suspended presence of mind, seized Miss Slowboy by the hair of her head, but immediately apologised. “Mary!” exclaimed the Carrier, supporting her in his arms. “Are you ill! What is it? Tell me, dear!” She only answered by beating her hands together, and falling into a wild fit of laughter. Then, sinking from 13 - 178 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. ... as he stands his grasp upon the ground, she covered her face with her apron, and wept bitterly. And then she laughed again, and then she cried again, and then she said how cold she was, and suffered him to lead her to the fire, where she sat down as before. The old man standing, as before, quite still. - i I'm better, John,” she said. “I’m quite well now “John l’ But John was on the other side of her. Why turn her face towards the strange old gentleman, as if addressing him! Was her brain wandering? “Only a fancy, John, dear—a kind of shock—a some- thing coming suddenly before my eyes—I don’t know what it was. It’s quite gone, quite gone.” “I’m glad it’s gone,” muttered Tackleton, turning the expressive eye all round the room. “I wonder where it’s gone, and what it was. Humph! Caleb, come here! Who's that with the grey hair?” . “I don’t know, sir,” returned Caleb, in a whisper. “Never see him before, in all my life. A beautiful figure for a nut-cracker; quite a new model. With a screw-jaw opening down into his waistcoat, he’d be lovely.” “Not ugly enough,” said Tackleton. “Or for a fire-box, either,” observed Caleb, in deep contemplation, “what a model! Unscrew his head to put the matches in; turn him heels up'ards for the light; and what a fire-box for a gentleman’s mantel-shelf, just p; “Not half ugly enough,” said Tackleton. “Nothing hº at all. Come! Bring that box! All right now, I hope?” - “Oh, quite gone! Quite gone!” said the little woman, waving him hurriedly away. “Good-night!”, “Good-night,” said Tackleton. “Good-night, John Peerybingle! Take care how you carry that box, Caleb. Let it fall and I’ll murder you! Dark as pitch, and weather worse than ever, eh? Good-night!” So, with another sharp look round the room, he went out at the door; followed by Caleb with the wedding- cake on his head. The Carrier had been so much astounded by his little wife, and so busily engaged in soothing and tending her, that he had scarcely been conscious of the Stranger's THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 179 presence, until now, when he again stood there, their only guest. ** “He don’t belong to them, you see,” said John. “I must give him a hint to go.” “I beg your pardon, friend,” said the old gentleman, . advancing to him; “the more so, as I fear your wife has not been well; but the Attendant whom my infirmity,” he touched his ears, and shook his head, “renders almost indispensable, not having arrived, I fear there must be some mistake. The bad night which made the shelter of your comfortable cart (may I never have a worse!) so acceptable, is still as bad as ever. Would you, in your kindness, suffer me to rent a bed here?” “Yes, yes,” cried Dot. “Yes! Certainly ” “Oh!” said the Carrier, surprised by the rapidity of this consent. “Well! I don't object; but, still I’m not quite sure that—” - “Hush!” she interrupted. “Dear John!” “Why, he’s stone deaf,” urged John. “I know he is, but—Yes, sir, certainly. Yes! certainly I’ll make him up a bed directly, John.” As she hurried off to do it, the flutter of her spirits, and the agitation of her manner, were so strange, that the Carrier stood looking after her, quite confounded. “Did its mothers make it up a Beds then!” cried Miss Slowboy to the Baby; “and did its hair grow brown and curly, when its caps was lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a sitting by the fires!” With that unaccountable attraction of the mind to trifles, which is often incidental to a state of doubt and confusion, the Carrier, as he walked slowly to and fro, found himself mentally repeating even these absurd words, many times. So many times, that he got them by heart, and was still conning them over and over, like a lesson, when Tilly, after administering as much fric- tion to the little bald head with her hand as she thought wholesome (according to the practice of nurses), had Once more tied the Baby’s cap on. “And frighten it a precious Pets, a sitting by the fires. What frightened Dot, I wonder!” mused the Car- rier, pacing to and fro. ... • He scouted, from his heart, the insinuations of the Toy merchant, and yet they filled him with a vague, indefi- nite uneasiness. For, Tackleton was quick and sly; 180 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. and he had that painful sense, himself, of being a man of slow perception, that a broken hint was always wor- rying to him. He certainly had no intention in his mind of linking anything that Tackleton had said, with the unusual conduct of his wife, but the two subjects of reflection came into his mind together, and he could not. keep them asunder. - The bed was soon made ready; and the visitor, de- clining all refreshment but a cup of tea, retired. Then, Dot—quite well again, she said, quite well again—ar- ranged the great chair in the chimney corner for her husband; filled his pipe and gave it to him; and took her usual little stool beside him on the hearth. - She always would sit on that little stool. I think she must have had a kind of notion that it was a coaxing, wheedling little stool. She was, out and out, the very best filler of a pipe, I should say, in the four quarters of the globe. To see her put that chubby little finger in the bowl, and then blow down the pipe to clear the tube, and, when she had done so, affect to think that there was really something in the tube, and blow a dozen times, and hold it to her eye like a telescope, with a most provoking twist in her capital little face, as she looked down it, was quite a brilliant thing. As to the tobacco, she was perfect mis- tress of the subject ; and her lighting of the pipe, with a wisp of paper, when the Carrier had it in his mouth—going so very near his nose, and yet not scorch- ing it—was Art, high Art. And the Cricket and the Kettle, tuning up again, ac- knowledged it! The bright fire, blazing up again, ac- knowledged it! The little Mower on the clock, in his unheeded work, acknowledged it! The Carrier, in his smoothing forehead and expanding face, acknowledged it, the readiest of all. . And as he soberly and thoughtfully puffed at his old pipe, and as the Dutch clock ticked, and as the red fire gleamed, and as the Cricket chirped; that Genius of his Hearth and Home (for such the Cricket was) came out, in fairy shape, into the room, and summoned many forms of Home about him. Dots of all ages, and all sizes, filled the chamber. Dots who were merry children, running on before him, gathering flowers, in the fields; coy Dots, half shrinking from, half yielding to, the THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, 181 pleading of his own rough image; newly married Dots, alighting at the door, and taking wondering possession of the household keys; motherly little Dots, attended by fictitious Slowboys, bearing babies to be christened; matronly Dots, still young and blooming, watching Dots of daughters, as they danced at rustic balls; fat Dots, en- circled and beset by troops of rosy grandchildren; with- ered Dots, who leaned on Sticks, and tottered as they crept along. Old Carriers, too, appeared, with blind old Boxers lying at their feet; and newer carts with younger drivers (“Peerybingle 'Brothers,” on the tilt); and sick . old Carriers, tended by the gentlest hands; and graves of dead and gone old Carriers, green in the churchyard. And as the Cricket showed him all these things—he saw them plainly, though his eyes were fixed upon the fire— the Carrier's heart grew light and happy, and he thanked his Household Gods with all his might, and cared no more for Gruff and Tackleton than you do. But, what was that young figure of a man, which the same Fairy Cricket set so near Her stool, and which re- mained there, singly and alone? Why did it linger still, so near her, with its arm upon the chimney-piece, ever repeating, “Married! and not to me!” Oh, Dot! Oh, failing Dot! There is no place for it in all your husband’s visions; why has its shadow fallen on his hearth ! *mºmº CHIRP THE SECOND. CALEB PLUMMER and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by themselves, as the Story-Books say—and my blessing, with yours to back it, I hope, on the Story-Books, for saying anything in this workaday world!—Caleb Plum- mer and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by them- selves, in a little cracked nutshell of a wooden house, which was, in truth, no better than a pimple on the prominent red-brick nose of Gruff and Tackleton. The premises of Gruff and Tackleton were the great feature of the street; but you might have knocked down Caleb Plummer's dwelling with a hammer or two, and carried off the pieces in a cart. If any one had done the dwelling-house of Caleb 182 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. Plummer the honour to miss it after such an inroad, it would have been, no doubt, to commend its demolition as a vast improvement. It stuck to the premises of Gruff and Tackleton, like a barnacle to a ship's keel, or a snail to a door, or a little bunch of toadstools to the stem of a tree. But it was the germ from which the full-grown trunk of Gruff and Tackleton had sprung; and under its crazy roof, the Gruff before last, had, in a small way, made toys for a generation of old boys and girls, who had played with them, and found them out, and broken them, and gone to sleep. - I have said that Caleb and his poor Blind Daughter lived here. I should have said that Caleb lived here, and his poor Blind Daughter somewhere else—in an en- chanted home of Caleb’s furnishing, where scarcity and shabbiness were not, and trouble never entered. Caleb was no sorcerer, but in the only magic art that still re- mains to us, the magic of devoted, deathless love, Na- ture had been the mistress of his study ; and from her teaching, all the wonder came. * ~ The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were discol- oured, walls blotched and bare of plaster here and there, high crevices unstopped and widening every day, beams mouldering and tending downward. The Blind Girl never knew that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling off; the size, and shape, and true proportion of the dwelling, withering away. The Blind Girl never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board ; that sorrow and faint-heartedness were in the house; that Caleb’s scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey, before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, cold, exacting, and uninterested—never knew that Tackleton was Tackle- ton in short; but lived in the belief of an eccentric hu- mourist who loved to have his jest with them, and who, while he was the Guardian Angel of their lives, dis- dained to hear one word of thankfulness. And all was Caleb’s doing; all the doing of her simple father! But he, too, had a Cricket on his Hearth; and listening sadly to its music when the motherless Blind Child was very young, that Spirit had inspired him with the thought that even her great deprivation might be almost changed into a blessing, and the girl made happy by these little means. For all the Cricket tribe are po- THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 183 tent Spirits, even though the people who hold converse with them do not know it (which is frequently the case), and there are not in the unseen world, voices more gen- tle and more true, that may be so implicitly relied on, or that are so certain to give none but tenderest counsel, as the Voices in which the Spirits 6f the Fireside and the Hearth address themselves to human kind. Caleb and his daughter were at work together in their usual working-room, which served them for their Ordi- nary living-room as well; and a strange place it was. There were houses in it, finished and unfinished, for Dolls of all stations in life. Suburban tenements for Dolls of moderate means; kitchens and single apart- ments for Dolls of the lower classes; capital town resi- dences for Dolls of high estate. Some of these estab- lishments were already furnished according to estimate, with a view to the convenience of Dolls of limited in- come ; others could be fitted on the most expensive scale, at a moment’s notice, from whole shelves of chairs and tables, sofas, bedsteads, and upholstery. The nobility and gentry and public in general, for whose accommodation these tenements were designed, lay, here and there, in baskets, staring straight up at the ceiling; but, in denoting their degrees in society, and confining them to their respective stations (which ex- perience shows to be lamentably difficult in real life), the makers of these Dolls had far improved on Nature, who is often froward and perverse; for they, not rest- ing on such arbitrary marks as satin, cotton-print, and bits of rag, had superadded striking personal differences which allowed of no mistake. Thus, the Doll-lady of distinction had wax limbs of perfect symmetry; but only she and her compeers. The next grade in the so- cial scale being made of leather, and the next of coarse linen stuff. . As to the common people, they had just so many matches out of tinder-boxes, for their arms and legs, and there they were—established in their sphere at Once, beyond the possibility of getting out of it. There were various other samples of his handicraft besides Dolls, in Caleb Plummer’s room. There were Noah’s Arks, in which the Birds and Beasts were an un- commonly tight fit, I assure you: though they could be crammed in, anyhow, at the roof, and rattled and shaken into the smallest compass. ISy a bold poetical licence, 184 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, most of these Noah’s Arks had knockers on the doors; inconsistent appendages, perhaps, as suggestive of morning callers and a Postman, yet a pleasant finish to the outside of the building. There were scores of mel- ancholy little carts, which, when the wheels went round, performed most doleful music. Many small fiddles, drums, and other instruments of torture; no end of can- non, shields, swords, spears, and guns. There were little tumblers in red breeches, incessantly swarming up high obstacles of red-tape, and coming down, head first, on . the other side; and there were innumerable old gentlemen of respectable, not to say venerable appearance, insanely flying over horizontal pegs, inserted, for the purpose, in their own street doors. There were beasts of all sorts; horses, in particular, of every breed, from the spotted barrel on four pegs, with a small tippet for a mane, to the thoroughbred rocker on his highest mettle. As it would have been hard to count the dozens upon dozens of grotesque figures that were ever ready to commit all sorts of absurdities on the turning of a handle, so it would have been no easy task to mention any human folly, vice, or weakness that had not its type, immediate or remote, in Caleb Plummer's room. And not in an exaggerated form, for very little handles will move men and women to as strange performances, as any Toy was ever made to undertake. In the midst of all these objects, Caleb and his daugh- ter sat at work. The Blind Girl busy as a Doll's dress- maker; Caleb painting and glazing the four-pair front of a desirable family mansion. The care imprinted in the lines of Caleb’s face, and his absorbed and dreamy manner, which would have set well on some alchemist or abstruse student, were at first sight an odd contrast to his occupation, and the trivialities about him. But trivial things, invented and pursued for bread, become very serious matters of fact; and, apart from this consideration, I am not at all prepared to say, myself, that if Caleb had been a Lord Chamber- lain, or a Member of Parliament, or a lawyer, or even a great speculator, he would have dealt in toys one whit less whimsical, while I have a very great doubt whether they would have been as harmless. “So you were out in the rain last night, father, in your beautiful new great-coat,” said Caleb’s daughter. THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 185 “In my beautiful new great-coat,” answered Caleb, glancing towards a clothes-line in the room, on which the sackcloth garment previously described was care- fully hung up to dry. - “How glad I am you bought it, father!” “And of such a tailor, too,” said Caleb. “Quite a fashionable tailor. It’s too good for me.” The Blind Girl rested from her work, and laughed with delight. “Too good, father! What can be too good for you?” “I’m half ashamed to wear it, though,” said Caleb, watching the effect of what he said, upon her brighten- ing face, “upon my word! When I hear the boys and people say behind me, ‘Hal-loa! Here’s a swell !” I don’t know which way to look. And when the beggar wouldn’t go away last night; and, when I said I was a very common man, said ‘No, your Honor! Bless your Honor, don’t say that!' I was quite ashamed. I really felt as if I hadn’t a right to wear it.” . ti Happy Blind Girl! How merry she was in her exulta- 1O]] || - “I see you, father,” she said, clasping her hands, “as plainly as if I had the eyes I never want when you are with me. A blue coat—” - “Bright blue,” said Caleb. “Yes, yes! Bright blue!” exclaimed the girl, turning up her radiant face; “the colour I can just remember in the blessed sky! You told me it was blue before. A bright blue coat—” “Made loose to the figure,” suggested Caleb. “Yes! loose to the figure!” cried the Blind Girl, laugh- ing heartily; “ and in it, you, dear father, with your merry eye, your smiling face, your free step, and your dark hair—looking so young and handsome!” ºloa. Halloa.” said Caleb. “I shall be vain pres- ently.” - “I think you are, already,” cried the Blind Girl, pointing at him, in her. glee. “I know you, father! Ha, ha, ha! I’ve found you out, you see!” How different the picture in her mind, from Caleb, as he sat observing her! She had spoken of his free step. She...was right in that. For years and years, he had never once crossed that threshold at his own slow pace, but with a footfall counterfeited for her ear; and never 186 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. had he, when his heart was heaviest, forgotten the light tread that was to render hers so cheerful and cour- ageous! - Heaven knows! But I think Caleb’s vague bewilder- ment of manner may have half originated in his having confused himself about himself and everything around him, for the love of his Blind Daughter. How could the little man be otherwise than bewildered, after la- bouring for so many years to destroy his own identity, and that of all the objects that had any bearing on it! “There we are,” said Caleb, falling back a pace or two to form the better judgment of his work; “as near the real thing as sixpenn'orth of halfpence is to six- pence. What a pity that the whole front of the house opens, at once! If there was only a staircase in it, now, and regular doors to the rooms to go in at! But that’s the worst of my calling, I’m always deluding myself, and swindling myself.” - “You are speaking quite softly. You are not tired, father?” “Tired,” echoed Caleb, with a great burst of anima- tion, “what should tire me, Bertha? I was never tired. What does it mean?” g To give the greater force to his words, he checked himself in an involuntary imitation of two half-length stretching and yawning figures on the mantel-shelf, who were represented as in one eternal state of weari- ness from the waist upwards; and hummed a fragment of a song. It was a Bacchanalian Song, something about a Sparkling Bowl. He sang it with an assump- tion of a devil-may-care voice, that made his face a thousand times more meagre and more thoughtful than €Ver. “What! You’re singing, are you?” said Tackleton, putting his head in at the door. , “Go it! I can’t sing.” Nobody would have suspected him of it. He hadn’t what is generally termed a singing face, by any means. “I can’t afford to sing,” said Tackleton. “I’m glad gyou can. I hope you can afford to work, too. Hardly time for both, I should think?” “If you could only see him, Bertha, how he’s winking at me!” whispered Caleb. “Such a man to jokel you’d think, if you didn’t know him, he was in earnest— wouldn’t you now?” - § sº s |J §º:=, sees § § { sy | * >"&hlää \Sº ſº * $ 8 . §§§ - *.*.*, * º'E's S S. ( ſ.j. N. . . . º §§§ SA/ §s §§ & SN. '. Nº § * * * S Ş º |ºSº* :ſ§ :ºN w º|N º* N SN § N § º §ſº § N º º * § ; º º sº SNS i s º N N * † - ? & § WN N ſº --- SºS §§ s}} * - S - º * º V. “ THE ExTENT TO WIHICH HE's WLNKING AT TITIS MOMENT whispered CALEB TO HIS DAUGHTER. ‘oh, MY GRACIous | Christmas Books. THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 18? The Blind Girl smiled and nodded. “The bird that can sing and won’t sing, must be made to sing, they say,” grumbled Tackleton. “What about the Owl that can’t sing, and oughtn't to sing, and will sing; is there anything that he should be made to do?” “The extent to which he's winking at this moment!” whispered Caleb to his daughter. “Oh, my gracious!” “Always merry and light-hearted with us!” cried the Smiling Bertha. g “Oh! you’re there, are you?” answered Tackleton. ‘‘ POOr Idiot!” He really did believe she was an Idiot; and he founded the belief, I can’t say whether consciously- or not, upon her being fond of him. “Well! and being there, how are you?” said Tackle- ton in his grudging way. “Oh! well; quite well. And as happy as even you can wish me to be. As happy as you would make the whole world, if you could!” “Poor Idiot!” muttered Tackleton. “No gleam of reason. Not a gleam!” The Blind Girl took his hand and kissed it; held it for a moment in her own two hands; and laid her cheek against it tenderly, before releasing it, There was such unspeakable affection and such fervent gratitude in the act, that Tackleton himself was moved to say, in a milder growl than usual: “What’s the matter now?” “I stood it close beside my pillow when I went to Sleep last night, and remembered it in my dreams. And when the day broke, and the glorious red sun–the 7'ed sun, father?” “Red in the mornings and in the evenings, Bertha,” Said poor Caleb, with a woeful glance at his employer. “When it rose, and the bright light I almost fear to ‘strike myself against in walking, came into the room, I turned the little tree towards it, and blessed Heaven for making things so precious, and blessed you for sending them to cheer me!” “Bedlam broke loose!” said Tackleton under his breath. “We shall arrive at the strait waistcoat and mufflers soon. . . . We're getting on!” & Caleb, with his hands hooked loosely in each other, Stared vacantly before him while his daughter spoke, as 188 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. if he really were uncertain (I believe he was) whether Tackleton had done anything to deserve her thanks or not. If he could have been a perfectly free agent at that moment, required, on pain of death, to kick the Toy merchant, or fall at his feet, according to his merits, I believe it would have been an even chance which course he would have taken. Yet Caleb knew that with his own hands he had brought the little rose tree home for her, so carefully, and that with his own lips he had forged the innocent deception which should help to keep her from suspecting how much, how very much, he every day denied himself, that she might be the happier. “Bertha!”.said Tackleton, assuming, for the nonce, a little cordiality. “Come here.” - “Oh! I can come straight to you. You needn’t guide me!” she rejoined. “Shall I tell you a secret, Bertha?” “If you will!” she answered, eagerly. How bright the darkened face! How adorned with light, the listening head! “This is the day on which little what's-her-name, the spoilt child, Peerybingle's wife, pays her regular visit to you—makes her fantastic Pic-Nic here, an’t it?” said Tackleton, with a strong expression of distaste for the whole concern. - “Yes,” replied Bertha. “This is the day.” “I thought so,” said Tackleton. “I should like to join the party.” - “Do you hear that, father!” cried the Blind Girl, in an ecstasy. “Yes, yes, I hear it,” murmured Caleb, with the fixed look of a sleep-walker; “but I don’t believe it. It’s one of my lies, I’ve no doubt.” - “You see I—I want to bring the Peerybingles a little more into company with May Fielding,” said Tackleton, “I am going to be married to May.” - “Married!” cried the Blind Girl, starting from him. “She’s such a con-founded idiot,” muttered Tackleton “that I was afraid she’d never comprehend me. Ah, Bertha! Married! Church, parson, clerk, beadle, glass- coach, bells, breakfast, bride-cake, favours, marrow- bones, cleavers, and all the rest of the tom-foolery. A wedding, you know; a wedding. Don’t you know what a wedding is?” THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, 189 “I know,” replied the Blind Girl, in a gentle tone. ‘‘I understand!” - - “Do you?” muttered Tackleton. “It’s more than I expected. Well! On that account I want to join the party, and to bring May and her mother. I’ll send in a little something or other, before the afternoon. A cold leg of mutton, or some comfortable trifle of that sort. You'll expect me?” “Yes,” she answered. She had drooped her head, and turned away; and so stood, with her hands crossed, musing. “I don’t think you will,” muttered Tackleton, looking at her; “for you seem to have forgotten all about it al- ready. Caleb!” ‘‘I may venture to say I’m here, I suppose,” thought Caleb. “Sir!” - h ‘‘Take care she don’t forget what I’ve been saying to er.” “She never forgets,” returned Caleb. “It’s one of the few things she an’t clever in.” “Every man thinks his own geese swans,” observed the Toy merchant, with a shrug. “Poor devil!” Having delivered himself of which remark, with in- finite contempt, old Gruff and Tackleton withdrew. Bertha remained where he had left her, lost in medi- tation. The gaiety had vanished from her downcast face, and it was very sad. Three or four times she shook her head, as if bewailing some remembrance or some loss: but her sorrowful reflections found no vent in words. - It was not until Caleb had been occupied, some time, in yoking a team of horses to a wagon by the summary process of nailing the harness to the vital parts of their bodies, that she drew near to his working-stool, and sit- ting down beside him, said: “Father, I am lonely in the dark. I want my eyes, my patient, willing eyes.” “Here they are,” said Caleb. “Always ready. They are more yours than mine, Bertha, any hour in the . and twenty. What shall your eyes do for you, ear?” “Look round the room, father.” “All right,” said Caleb. “No sooner said than done, Bertha.” - 190 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. “Tell me about it.” - - “It’s much the same as usual,” said Caleb. “Homely, but very Snug. The gay colours on the walls; the bright flowers on the plates and dishes; the shining wood, where there are beams or panels; the general cheerfulness and neatness of the building; make it very pretty.” Cheerful and neat it was, wherever Bertha’s hands could busy themselves. But nowhere else were cheer- fulness and neatness possible, in the old crazy shed which Caleb’s fancy so transformed. - “You have your working-dress on, and are not so gal- lant as when you wear the handsome coat?” said Bertha, touching him. - “Not quite so gallant,” answered Caleb. “Pretty brisk, though.” - “Father,” said the Blind Girl, drawing close to his side; and stealing one arm round his neck, “tell me something about May. She is very fair?” “She is indeed,” said Caleb. And she was indeed. It was quite a rare thing to Caleb, not to have to draw on his invention. “Her hair is dark,” said Bertha, pensively, “darker than mine. Her voice is sweet and musical, I know. I have often loved to hear it. Her shape—” “There's not a Doll's in all the room to equal it,” said Caleb. “And her eyes!—” He stopped; for Bertha had drawn closer round his neck, and from the arm that clung about him, came a warning pressure which he understood too well. He coughed a moment, hammered for a moment, and then fell back upon the song about the sparkling bowl, his infallible resource in all such difficulties. “Our friend, father, our benefactor. I am never tired, you know, of hearing about him. Now, was I ever ?” she said, hastily. “Of course not,” answered Caleb, “and with reason.” “Ah! With how much reason” cried the Blind Girl. With such fervency, that Caleb, though his motives were so pure, could not endure to meet her face; but dropped his eyes, as if she could have read in them his innocent deceit. “Then tell me again about him, dear father,” said Bertha. “Many times again! His face is benevolent, 7 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 191 kind, and tender. Honest and true, I am sure it is. The manly heart that tries to cloak all favours with a show of roughness and unwillingness, beats in its every look and glance.” “And makes it noble, ” added Caleb, in his quiet des- peration. - “And makes it noble!” Cried the Blind Girl. “He is older than May, father.” “Ye-es,” said Caleb, reluctantly. “He’s a little older than May. But that don’t signify.” “Oh, father, yes! To be his patient companion in in- firmity and age; to be his gentle nurse in sickness, and his constant friend in suffering and Sorrow; to know no weariness in working for his sake; to watch him, tend him, sit beside his bed and talk to him awake, and pray for him asleep; what privileges these would be What opportunities for proving all her truth and her devotion to him! Would she do all this, dear father?” “No doubt of it P’’ said Caleb. “I love her, father; I can love her from my soul | * exclaimed the Blind Girl. And saying so, she laid her poor blind face on Caleb's shoulder, and so wept and wept that he was almost sorry to have brought that tearful happiness upon her. In the meantime, there had been a pretty sharp com- motion at John Peerybingle's, for little Mrs. Peery- bingle naturally” couldn’t think of going anywhere without the Baby; and to get the Baby under weigh, took time. Not that there was much of the Baby, speaking of it as a thing of weight and measure, but there was a vast deal to do about and about it, and it all had to be done by easy stages. For instance, when the Baby was got by hook and by crook to a certain point of dressing, and you might have rationally supposed that another touch or two would finish him .# and turn him out a tip-top Baby challenging the world, he was unexpectedly extinguished in a flannel cap, and hustled off to bed; where he simmered (so to speak) between two blankets for the best part of an hour. From this state of inaction he was then recalled, shining very much and roaring violently, to partake of well? I would rather say, if you’ll permit me to speak gener- erally—of a slight repast. After which, he went, to sleep again, Mrs. Peerybingle took advantage of this 192 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. interval to make herself as smart in a small way as ever you saw anybody in all your life; and, during the same short truce, Miss Slowboy insinuated herself into a spencer of a fashion so surprising and ingenious, that it had no connection with herself, or anything else in the universe, but was a shrunken, dog's-eared, inde- pendent fact, pursuing its lonely course without the least regard to anybody. By this time, the Baby, being all alive again, was invested, by the united efforts of Mrs. Peerybingle and Miss Slowboy, with a cream- coloured mantle for his body, and a sort of nankeen raised-pie for its head; and so in course of time they all three got down to the door, where the old horse had already taken more than the full value of his day’s toll out of the Turnpike Trust, by tearing up the road with his impatient autographs; and whence Boxer might be dimly seen in the remote perspective, standing looking back, and tempting him to come on without orders. As to a chair or anything of that kind for helping Mrs. Peerybingle into the cart, you know very little of John, if you think that was necessary. Before you could have seen him lift her from the ground, there she was in her place, fresh and rosy, saying, “John! How can you! Think of Tilly!” - - If I might be allowed to mention a young lady’s legs, on any terms, I would observe of Miss Slowby's that there was a fatality about them which rendered them singularly liable to be grazed; and that she never affected the smallest ascent or descent, without recording the circumstance upon them with a notch, as Robinson Crusoe marked the days upon his wooden calendar. But as this might be considered ungenteel, I’ll think of it. “John? You’ve got the basket with the Veal and Ham Pie and things, and the bottles of Beer?” said Dot. “If you haven’t, you must turn round again, this very minute.” “You’re a nice little article,” returned the Carrier, “to be talking about turning round, after keeping me a full quarter of an hour behind my time.” “I am sorry for it, John,” said Dot in a great bustle, “but I really could not think of going to Bertha’s—I would not do it, John, on any account—without the W. and Ham Pie and things, and the bottles of Beer. ay!” THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 193 This monosyllable was addressed to the horse, who didn’t mind it at all. “Oh, do way, John!” said Mrs. Peerybingle. ** Please!” - “It’ll be time enough to do that,” returned John, “when I begin to leave things behind me. The basket’s here safe enough.” . “What a hard-hearted monster you must be, John, not to have said so, at once, and save me such a turn! I declare I wouldn’t go to Bertha's without the Veal and Ham Pie and things, and the bottles of Beer, for any money. Regularly once a fortnight ever since we have been married, John, have we made our little Pic-Nic there. If anything was to go wrong with it, I should almost think we were never to be lucky again.” “It was a kind thought in the first instance,” said the Carrier; “and I honour you for it, little woman.” “My dear John,” replied Dot, turning very red. “Don’t talk about honouring me. Good gracious!” “By-the-bye—” observed the Carrier, “that old gen- tleman—” Again so visibly and instantly embarrassed. “He’s an odd fish,” said the Carrier, looking straight along the road before them. “I can’t make him out. I don’t believe there’s any harm in him.” “None at all. I’m-I’m sure there’s none at all.” “Yes,” said the Carrier, with his eyes attracted to her face by the great earnestness of her manner. “I am glad you feel SO certain of it, because it’s a confirmation to me. It’s curious he should have taken it into his head to ask leave to go on lodging with us, ain’t it? Things come about so strangely.” “So very strangely,” she rejoined in a low voice, scarcely audible. - ‘‘However, he’s a good-natured old gentleman,” said John, “and pays as a gentleman, and I think his word is to be relied upon, like a gentleman’s. I had quite a long talk with him this morning; he can hear me better already, he says, as he gets more used to my voice. He told me a great deal about himself, and I told him a good deal about myself, and a rare lot of questions he asked me. I gave him information about my having two beats, you know, in my business; one day to the right from our house and back again, another day to the 14 194 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. left fróm our house and back again (for he's a stranger and don’t know the names of places about here); and he seemed quite pleased. “Why, then I shall be returning home to-night your way,’ he says, “when I thought you’d be coming in an exactly opposite direction. That's capital! I may trouble you for another lift, perhaps, but I’ll engage not to fall so sound asleep again.” He was Sound asleep, Sure-ly!—Dot! what are you thinking of?” “Thinking of, John? I–I was listening to you.” “Oh! That's all right!” said the honest Carrier. “I. was afraid, from the look of your face, that I had gone rambling on so long, as to set you thinking about some- thing else. . I was very near it, I’ll be bound.” Dot making no reply, they jogged on, for some little time, in silence. But, it was not easy to remain silent very long in John Peerybingle's cart, for everybody on the road had something to say. Though it might only be, “‘How are you?” and indeed it was very often noth- ing else, still, to give that back again in the right spirit of cordiality, required not merely a nod and a smile, but as wholesome an action of the lungs, withal, as a long-winded Parliamentary speech. Sometimes, pas- sengers, on foot, or horseback, plodded on a little way beside the cart, for the express purpose of having a chat; and then there was a great deal to be said, on both sides. Then, Boxer gāve occasion to more good-natured recognitions of, and by, the Carrier, than half-a-dozen Christians could have done! Everybody knew him, all along the road—especially the fowls and pigs, who, when they saw him approaching, with his body all on One side, and his ears pricked up inquisitively, and that knob of a tail making the most of itself in the air, imme- (liately withdrew into remote back settlements, without waiting for the honour of a nearer acquaintance. He had business everywhere; going down all the turnings, looking into all the wells, bolting in and out of all the cottages, dashing into the midst of all the Dame-Schools, fluttering all the pigeons, magnifying the tails of all the cats, and trotting into the public-houses like a regular customer. Wherever he went, somebody or other might have been heard to cry, “Halloa. Here's Boxer!” and out came that somebody forth with, accompanied by at least two or three other somebodies, to give John Peery bingle and his pretty wife Good-Day. THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 195 The packages and parcels for the errand cart were numerous; and there were many stoppages to take them in and give them out, which were not by any means the worst parts of the journey. Some people were so full of expectation about their parcels, and other people were so full of wonder about their parcels, and other people were so full of inexhaustible directions about their par- cels, and John had such a lively interest in all the parcels, that it was as good as a play. Likewise, there were articles to carry, which required to be considered and discussed, and in reference to the adjustment and dispo- sition of which, councils had to be holden by the Car- rier and the senders: at which Boxer usually assisted, in short fits of the closest attention, and long fits of tearing round and round the assembled sages and bark- ing himself hoarse. Of all these little incidents, Dot was the amused and opened-eyed spectatress from her chair in the cart; and as she sat there, looking on—a charming little portrait framed to admiration by the tilt —there was no lack of nudgings and glancings and whisperings and envyings among the younger men. And this delighted John the Carrier beyond measure; for he was proud to have his little wife admired, know- ing that she didn’t mind it—that, if anything, she rather liked it, perhaps. The trip was a little foggy, to be sure, in the January Weather; and was raw and cold. But who cared for such trifles? Not Dot, decidedly. Not Tilly Slowboy, for she deemed sitting in a cart, on any terms, to be the highest point of human joys; the crowning circumstance of earthly hopes. Not the Baby, I’ll be sworn; for it's not in Baby nature to be warmer or more sound asleep, though its capacity is great in both respects, than that blessed young Peerybingle was, all the way. You couldn’t see very far in the fog, of course; but you could see a great deal | It's astonishing how much you may see, in a thicker fog than that, if you will only take the trouble to look for it. Why, even to sit watch-. ing for the Fairy-rings in the fields, and for the patches of hoar-frost still lingering in the shade, near hedges and by trees, was a pleasant occupation, to make no mention of the unexpected shapes in which the trees themselves came starting out of the mist, and glided into it again. The hedges were tangled and bare, and ... →--> 196 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. waved a multitude of blighted garlands in the wind; but there was no discouragement in this. It was agree- able to contemplate; for it made the fireside warmer in possession, and the Summer greener in expectancy. The river looked chilly; but it was in motion, and moving at a good pace—which was a great point. The canal was rather slow and torpid; that must be admitted. Never mind. It would freeze the sooner when the frost set fairly in, and then there would be skating and sliding; and the heavy old barges, frozen up somewhere near a wharf, would smoke their rusty iron chimney pipes all day, and have a lazy time of it. In one place there was a great mound of weeds or stubble burning, and they watched the fire, so white in the daytime, flaring through the fog, with only here and there a dash of red in it, until, in consequence as she observed of the smoke “getting up her nose,” Miss Slowboy choked—she could do anything of that sort on the smallest provocation—and woke the Baby, who wouldn’t go to sleep again. But Boxer, who was in ad- vance some quarter of a mile or so, had already passed the outposts of the town, and gained the corner of the street where Caleb and his daughter lived; and long be- fore they had reached the door, he and the Blind Girl were on the pavement waiting to receive them. - Boxer, by the way, made certain delicate distinctions of his own in his communication with Bertha, which persuade me fully that he knew her to be blind. He never sought to attract her attention by looking at her, as he often did with other people, but touched her inva- riably. What experience he could ever have had of blind people or blind dogs I don’t know. He had never lived with a blind master; nor had Mr. Boxer the elder, nor Mrs. Boxer, nor any of his respectable family on either side, ever been visited with blindness, that I am aware of. He may have found it out for himself, per- haps, but he had got hold of it somehow; and therefore he had hold of Bertha too, by the skirt, and kept hold, intil Mrs. Peerybingle and the Baby, and Miss Slowboy, and the basket, were all got safely within doors. May Fielding was already come; and so was her mother—a little querulous chip of an old lady with a eevish face, who, in right of having preserved a waist ike a bed-post, was supposed to be a most transcendant THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 19% figure; and who, in consequence of having once been better off, or of labouring under an impression that she might have been, if something had happened which never did happen, and seemed to have never been par- ticularly likely to come to pass—but it’s all the same— was very genteel and patronising indeed. Gruff and Tackleton was also there, doing the agreeable, with the evident sensation of being as perfectly at home, and as unquestionably in his own element, as a fresh young salmon on the top of the Great Pyramid. “May! My dear old friend " cried Dot, running up to meet her. “What a happiness to see you !” Her old friend was, to the full, as hearty and as glad as she; and it really was, if you’ll believe me, quite a pleasant sight to see them embrace. Tackleton was a man of taste, beyond all question. May was very pretty. You know sometimes, when you are used to a pretty face, how, when it comes into contact and comparison with another pretty face, it seems for the moment to be homely and faded, and hardly to deserve the high opin- ion you have had of it. Now, this was not at all the case, either with Dot or May; for May’s face set off Dot’s and Dot’s face set off May’s, so naturally and agreeably that, as John Peerybingle was very near saying when he came into the room, they ought to have been born sisters—which was the only improvement you could have suggested. : Tackleton had brought his leg of mutton, and, won- derful to relate, a tart besides—but we don’t mind a little dissipation when our brides are in the case; we don’t get married every day—and in addition to these dainties, there were the Veal and Ham Pie, and “things,” as Mrs. Peerybingle called them; which were chiefly nuts and oranges, and cakes, and such small deer. When the repast was set forth on the board, flamked by Caleb’s contribution, which was a great wooden bowl of smoking potatoes (he was prohibited, by solemn compact, from producing any other viands), Tackleton led his intended mother-in-law to the post of honour. For the better gracing of this place at the high festival, the majestic old soul had adorned herself with a cap calculated to inspire the thoughtless with sentiments of awe. . She also wore her gloves. But let us be genteel, or die! Caleb sat next his daughter; Dot and her old school- 198 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. fellow were side by side; the good Carrier took care of the bottom of the table. Miss Slowboy was isolated, for the time being, from every article of furniture but the chair she sat on, that she might have nothing else to knock the baby’s head against. As Tilly stared about her at the dolls and toys, they stared at her and at the company. The venerable old gentlemen at the street doors (who were all in full action) showed especial interest in the party, pausing occasionally before leaping, as if they were listening to the conversation, and then plunging wildly over and over, a great many times, without halting for breath— as in a frantic state of delight with the whole pro- ceedings. - , Certainly, if these old gentlemen were inclined to have a fiendish joy in the contemplation of Tackleton’s discomfiture, they had good reason to be satisfied. Tackleton couldn’t get on at all; and the more cheerful his intended bride became in Dot’s society, the less he liked it, though he had brought them together for that purpose. For he was a regular dog in the manger, was Tackleton; and when they laughed and he couldn’t, he took it into his head, immediately, that they must be laughing at him. “Ah, May!” said Dot. “Dear, dear, what changes! To talk of those merry school-days, makes one young again.” “Why, you an’t particularly old, at any time; are you?” said Tackleton. “Look at my sober, plodding husband there,” returned Dot. “He adds twenty years to my age at least. Don’t you, John?” “Forty,” John replied. “How many you’ll add to May’s, I am sure I don’t Know,” said Dot, laughing. “But she can’t be much less than a hundred years of age on her next birthday.” “Ha, ha!” laughed Tackleton. Hollow as a drum that laugh, though. And he looked as if he could have twisted Dot’s neck, comfortably. - “Dear, dear!” said Dot. “Only to remember how we used to talk, at school, about the husbands we would Choose. I don’t know how young, and how handsonne, and how gay, and how lively, mine was not to be! And as to May’s!—Ah, dear! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, when I think what silly girls we were.” THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 199 May seemed to know which to do; for the colour flashed into her face, and tears stood in her eyes. “Even the very persons themselves—real live young men—we fixed on sometimes,” said Dot. “We little thought how things would come about. I never fixed on John, I’m sure; I never so much as thought of him. And if I had told you, you were ever to be married to Mr. Tackleton, why you’d have slapped me. Wouldn’t you, May?” Though May didn’t say yes, she certainly didn’t say Ino, or express no, by any means. -> . Tackleton laughed—quite shouted, he laughed so loud. John Peerybingle laughed too, in his ordinary, good- natured and contented manner; but his was a mere whisper of a laugh, to Tackleton’s. - “You couldn’t help yourselves for all that. You couldn’t resist us, you see,” said Tackleton. “Here we are!. Here we are! Where are your gay young bride- grooms now !” “Some of them are dead,” said Dot; “and some of them forgotten. Some of them, if they could stand among us at this moment, would not believe we were the same creatures; would not believe that what they saw and heard was real, and we could forget them so. No! they would not believe one word of it!” “Why, Dot!” exclaimed the Carrier. “Little woman!” She had spoken with such earnestness and fire, that she stood in need of some recalling to herself, without doubt. Her husband’s check was very gentle, for he merely interfered, as he supposed, to shield old Tackle- ton; but it proved effectual, for she stopped, and said no more. There was an uncommon agitation even in her silence, which the wary Tackleton, who had brought his half-shut eye to bear upon her, noted closely, and remembered to some purpose, too. May uttered no word, good or bad, but sat quite still, with her eyes cast down, and made no sign of interest in what had passed. The good lady, her mother, now in- terposed, observing, in the first instance, that girls were girls, and bygones bygones, and that so long as young people were young and thoughtless, they would proba- bly conduct themselves like young and thoughtless per- sons: with two or three other positions of a no less sound and incontrovertible character. She then re- 200 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. marked, in a devout spirit, that she thanked Heaven she had always found in her daughter May, a dutiful and obedient child: for which she took no credit to herself, though she had every reason to believe it was entirely owing to herself. With regard to Mr. Tackleton, she said that he was in a moral point of view an undeniable individual, and that he was in an eligible point of view a son-in-law to be desired, no one in their senses could doubt. (She was very emphatic here.) With regard to the family into which he was so soon about, after some solicitation, to be admitted, she believed Mr. Tackleton knew that, although reduced in purse, it had some pre- tentions to gentility; and that if certain circumstances, not wholly unconnected, she would go so far as to say, with the Indigo Trade, but to which she would not more particularly refer, had happened differently, it might perhaps have been in possession of wealth. She then remarked that she would not allude to the past, and would not mention that her daughter had for some time rejected the suit of Mr. Tackleton; and that she would not say a great many other things which she did say, at great length. Finally, she delivered it as the general result of her observation and experience, that those marriages in which there was least of what was roman- tically and sillily called love, were always the happiest; and that she anticipated the greatest possible amount of bliss—not rapturous bliss; but the solid, steady-going article—from the approaching nuptials. She concluded by informing the company that to-morrow was the day she had lived for expressly; and that when it was over, she would desire nothing better than to be packed up and disposed of, in any genteel place of burial. As these remarks were quite unanswerable—which is, the happy property of all remarks that are sufficiently wide of the purpose—they changed the current of the conversation, and diverted the general attention to the Veal and Ham Pie, the cold mutton, the potatoes, and the tart. In order that the bottled beer might not be slighted, John Peerybingle proposed To-morrow: the Wedding-Day; and called upon them to drink a bumper to it, before he proceeded on his journey. For you ought to know that he only rested there, and gave the old horse a bait. He had to go some four or five miles farther on; and when he returned in the even- THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 201 ing, he called for Dot, and took another rest on his way home. This was the order of the day on all the Pic-Nic occasions, and had been, ever since their institution. There were two persons present, besides the bride and bridegroom elect, who did but indifferent honour to the toast. One of these was Dot, too flushed and discom- posed to adapt herself to any small occurrence of the moment; the other, Bertha, who rose up hurriedly before the rest, and left the table. * “Good-bye!” said stout John Peerybingle, pulling on his dreadnought coat, “I shall be back at the old time. Good-bye, all!” - “Good-bye, John,” returned Caleb. He seemed to say it by rote, and to wave his hand in the same unconscious manner; for he stood observing Bertha with an anxious, wondering face, that never altered its expression. “Good-bye, young shaver!” said the Jolly Carrier, bending down to kiss the child; which Tilly Slowboy, now intent upon her knife and fork, had deposited asleep (and strange to say, without damage) in a little cot of Bertha's furnishing; “good-bye! Time will come, I sup- pose, when you’ll turn out into the cold, my little friend, and leave your old father to enjoy his pipe and his rheumatics in the chimney-corner; ell? Where's Dot?” “I’m here, John ” she said, starting. . “Come, come!” returned the carrier, clapping, his Sounding hands. “Where's the pipe?” “I quite forgot the pipe, John.” Forgot the pipel Was such a wonder ever heard of] Shel Forgot the pipeſ “I’ll—I’ll fill it directly. It’s soon done.” But it was not so soon done, either. It lay in the usual place—the Carrier's dreadnought pocket—with, the little pouch, her own work, from which she was used to fill it; but her hand shook so, that she entangled it (and yet her hand was small enough to have come out easily, I am Sure), and bungled terribly. The filling of the pipe and lighting it, those little offices in which I have com- mended her discretion, were vilely done from first to last. During the whole process, Tackleton stood look- ing on maliciously with the half-closed eye; which, whenever it met hers—or caught it, for it can hardly be 202 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. said to have ever met another eye: rather being a kind of trap to snatch it up—augmented her confusion in a most remarkable degree. - - “Why, what a clumsy Dot you are, this afternoon!” said John. “I could have done it better myself, I verily believe!” With these good-natured words, he strode away, and presently was heard, in company with Boxer, and the old horse, and the cart, making lively music down the road. What time the dreamy Caleb still stood, watch- #. g his blind daughter, with the same expression on his a,C62. “Berthal” said Caleb, softly. “What has happened? How changed you are, my darling, in a few hours— since this morning. You silent and dull all day! What is it? Tell me!” “Oh, father, father!” cried the Blind Girl, bursting into tears. “Oh, my hard, hard fate!” Caleb drew his hand across his eyes before he an- swered her. “But think how cheerful and how happy you have been, Bertha! How good, and how much loved, by many people.” “That strikes me to the heart, dear father! Always so mindful of me! Always so kind to me!” Caleb was very much perplexed to understand her. ‘’ To be—to be blind, Bertha, my poor dear,” he fal- tered, “is a great affliction; but—” - ‘‘I have never felt it!” Cried the Blind Girl. “I have never felt it, in its fullness. Never! I have sometimes wished that I could see you, or could see him—only once, dear father, only for one little minute——that I might know what it is I treasure up,” she laid her hands upon her breast, “ and hold here! That I might be sure I have it right! And sometimes (but then I was a child) I have wept, in my prayers at night, to think that when your images ascended from my heart to Heaven, they might not be the true resemblance of yourselves. But I have never had these feelings long. They have passed away, and left me tranquil and contented.” - “And they will again,” said Caleb. “But, father! Oh, my good, gentle father, bear with me, if I am wicked!” said the Blind Girl. “This is not the gorrow that So Weighs me down!” THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 203 Her father could not choose butlet his moist eyes over- flow; she was so earnest and pathetic. But he did not understand her yet. “Bring her to me,” said Bertha. “I cannot hold it closed and shut within myself. Bring her to me, father!” She knew he hesitated, and said, “May. Bring May!” May heard the mention of her name, and coming quietly towards her, touched her on the arm. The Blind Girl turned immediately, and held her by both hands. “Look into my face, Dear heart, Sweet heart!” said Bertha. “Read it with your beautiful eyes, and tell me if the truth is written on it.” - “Dear Bertha, yes!” The Blind Girl, still upturning the blank, sightless face, down which the tears were coursing fast, addressed her in these words: - “There is not, in my soul, a wish or thought that is not for your good, bright May ! There is not, in my soul, a grateful recollection stronger than the deep re- membrance which is stored there, of the many, many times when, in the full pride of sight and beauty, you have had consideration for Blind Bertha, even when we two were children, or when Bertha was as much a child as ever blindness can be! Every blessing on your head! Light upon your happy course! Not the less, my dear May;” and she drew towards her, in a closer grasp; not the less, my bird, because, to-day, the knowledge that you are to be His wife has wrung my heart almost io breaking! Father, May, Mary! oh, forgive me that it is so, for the sake of all he has done to relieve the weariness of my dark life: and for the sake of the belief you have in me, when I call Heaven to witness that I could not wish him married to a wife more worthy of his goodness!” While speaking, she had released May Fielding's hands, and clasped her garments in an attitude of min- gled supplication and love. Sinking lower and lower down, as she proceeded in her strange confession, she dropped at last at the feet of her friend, and hid her blind face in the folds of her dress. “Great Power!” exclaimed her father, Smitten at One blow with the truth, “ have I deceived her from her cradle, but to break hor heart at last!” 204 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. It was well for all of them that Dot, that beaming, useful, busy little Dot—for such she was, whatever faults she had, and however you may learn to hate her, in good time—it was well for all of them, I say, that she was there: or where this would have ended, it were hard to tell. But Dot, recovering her self-possession, inter- º before May could reply, or Caleb Say another WOI’Ol. “Come come, dear Bertha! come away with me! Give her your arm, May. So! How composed she is, you see, already; and how good it is of her to mind us,” said the cheery little woman, kissing her upon the fore- head. “Come away, dear Bertha. Come! and here’s her good father will come with her; won’t you, Caleb” To–be—sure!” . Well, well! she was a noble little Dot in such things, and it must have been an obdurate nature that could have withstood her influence. When she had got poor Caleb and his Bertha away, that they might comfort and console each other, as she knew they only could, she presently came bouncing back,-the saying is, as fresh as any daisy; I say fresher—to mount guard Over that bridling little piece of consequence in the cap and gloves and prevent the dear old creature from making discoveries. “So bring me the precious Baby, Tilly,” said she, drawing a chair to the fire; and while I have it in my lap, here's Mrs. Fielding, Tilly, will tell me all about the management of Babies, and put me right in twenty points where I’m as wrong as can be. Won’t you, Mrs. Fielding?” Not even the Welsh Giant, who, according to the popular expression, was so “slow ’’ as to perform a fatal surgical operation upon himself, in emulation of a jug- gling-trick achieved by his arch enemy at breakfast-time; not even he fell half so readily into the snare prepared for him, as the old lady into this artful pitfall. The fact of Tackleton having walked out; and furthermore, of two or three people having been talking together at a distance, for two minutes, leaving her to her OWn resources; was quite enough to have put her on her dignity, and the bewailment of that mysterious Con- vulsion in the Indigo trade, for four-and-twenty hours. But this becoming deference to her experience, on the THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 205 part of the young mother, was so irresistible, that after a short affectation of humility, she began to enlighten her with the best grace in the world; and sitting bolt upright before the wicked Dot, she did, in half an hour, deliver more infallible domestic recipes and precepts, than would (if acted on) have utterly destroyed and done up that Young Peerybingle, though he had been an Infant Samson. . To change the theme, Dot did a little needlework—she carried the contents of a whole workbox in her pocket; however she contrived it, I don’t know—then did a little nursing; then a little more needlework; then had a little whispering chat with May, while the old lady dozed; and so in little bits of bustle, which was quite her manner always, found it a very short afternoon. Then, as it grew dark, and as it was a solemn part of this Institution of the Pic-Nic that she should perform all Bertha’s household tasks, she trimmed the fire, and swept the hearth, and set the tea-board out, and drew the curtain, and lighted a candle. Then she played an air or two on a rude kind of harp, which Caleb had con- trived for Bertha, and played them very well; for Nature had made her delicate little ear as choice a one for music as it would have been for jewels, if she fiad had any to wear. By this time it was the established hour for having tea; and Tackleton came back again, to share the meal and spend the evening. º Caleb and Bertha had returned some time before, an Caleb had sat down to his afternoon’s work. But he couldn’t settle to it, poor fellow, being anxious and remorseful for his daughter. It was touching to see him sitting idle on his working stool, regarding her so wistfully, and always saying in his face, “Have I deceived her from her cradle, but to break her heart!” When it was night and tea was done, and Dot had nothing more to do in washing up the cups and saucers; in a word—for I must come to it, and there is no use in putting it off—when the time drew nigh for expect- ing the Carrier's return in every sound of distant wheels, her manner changed again, her colour came and went, and she was very restless. Not as good wives are, when listening for their husbands, No, no, no. It was another sort of restlessness from that, Wheels heard. A horse's feet. The barking of a dog. 206 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. The gradual approach of all the sounds. The scratching paw of Boxer at the door! - “Whose step is that!” cried Bertha, starting up. ‘. “Whose step?”, returned the Carrier, standing in the portal, with his brown face ruddy as a winter berry from the keen night air. “Why, mine.” ; “The other step,” said Bertha, “ The man’s tread |behind you!” “She is not to be deceived,” observed the Carrier, ºins “Come along, sir. You’ll be welcome, never ear!” - * . He spoke in a loud tone; and as he spoke, the deaf old gentleman entered. - f “He’s not so much a stranger, that you haven’t seen him once, Caleb,” said the Carrier. “You’ll give him house-room till we go?” - “Oh, surely, John, and take it as an honour.” “He’s the best company on earth, to talk secrets in,” said John. “I have reasonable good lungs, but he tries 'em, I can tell you. Sit down, sir. All friends here, and glad to see you!” When he had imparted this assurance, in a voice that . amply corroborated what he had said about his lungs, he added in his natural tone, “A chair in the chimney- corner, and leave to sit quite silent and look pleasantly about him, is all he cares for. He's easily pleased.” Bertha had been listening intently. She called Caleb to her side, when he had set the chair, and asked him, in a low voice, to describe their visitor. When he had done so (truly now; with scrupulous fidelity), she moved, for the first time since he had come in, and sighed, and ł seemed to have no further interest concerning him. | The Carrier was in high spirits, good fellow that he was, and fonder of his little wife than ever. A clumsy Dot she was, this afternoon!” he said, en- circling her with his rough arm, as she stood, removed from the rest; “and yet I like her somehow. See yon- der, Dot!” He pointed to the old man. She looked down. I think she trembled. - “He’s—ha, ha, ha!—he's full of admiration for you said the Carrier. “Talked of nothing else, the whole }.} here. Why, he's a brave old boy. I like him Or it!” - . 12, THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 207 “I wish he had had a better subject, John,” she said, with an uneasy glance about the room. At Tackleton especially. - ** A better subject!” cried the jovial John. “There's rio such thing. Come! off with the great-coat, off with the thick shawl, off with the heavy wrappers! and a cosy half-hour by the fire! My humble service, mistress. A game at cribbage, you and I? That’s hearty. The cards and board, Dot. And a glass of beer here, if there’s any left, small wife!” His challenge was addressed to the old lady, who ac- cepting it with gracious readiness, they were soon en- gaged upon the game. At first, the Carrier looked about him sometimes, with a smile, or now and then called Dot to peep over his shoulder at his hand, and advise him on some knotty point. But his adversary being a rigid disciplinarian, and subject to an occa- sional weakness in respect of pegging more than she was entitled to, required such vigilance on his part, as left him neither eyes nor ears to spare. Thus, his whole attention gradually became absorbed upon the cards; and he thought of nothing else, until a hand upon his shoulder restored him to a consciousness of Tackleton. “I am Sorry to disturb you—but a word directly.” “I’m going to deal,” returned the Carrier. “It’s a crisis.” “It is,” said Tackleton. “Come here, man!” There was that in his pale face which made the other rise immediately, and ask him, in a hurry, what the matter was. - “Hush! John Peerybingle,” said Tackleton. “I am Sorry for this. I am indeed. I have been afraid of it. I have expected it from the first.” “What is it?” asked the Carrier, with a frightened aspect. * Hush? I’ll show you if you’ll come with me.” The Carrier accompanied him, without another word. They went across a yard, where the stars were shining, and by a little side door, into Tackleton's own counting- house, where there was a glass window, commanding the wareroom, which was closed for the night. There Was no light in the counting-house itself, but there were lamps in the long narrow wareroom; and consequently the window was bright. 208 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. “A moment!” said Tackleton. “Can you bear to look through that window, do you think?” “Why not?” returned the Carrier. - “A moment more,” said Tackleton. “Don’t commit any violence. It’s of no use. It’s dangerous too. You’re a strong-made man; and you might do murder before you know it.” The Carrier looked him in the face, and recoiled a step as if he had been struck. In One stride he was at the window, and he saw— Oh, Shadow on the Hearth! Oh, truthful Cricket! Oh, perfidious Wife! - He saw her with the old man—old no longer, but erect and gallant—bearing in his hand the false white hair that had won his way into their desolate and miserable home. He saw her listening to him, as he bent his head to whisper in her ear; and suffering him to clasp her round the waist, as “they moved slowly down the dim wooden gallery towards the door by which they had entered it. He saw them stop, and saw her turn—to have the face, the face he loved so, so presented to his view! —and saw her, with her own hands, adjust the lie upon his head, laughing, as she did it, at his unsuspicious nature! He clenched his strong right hand at first, as if it would have beaten down a lion. But opening it imme- diately again, he spread it out before the eyes of Tackle- ton (for he was tender of her, even then), and so, as they passed out, fell down upon a desk, and was as weak as any infant. He was wrapped up to the chin, and busy with his horse and parcels, when she came into the room prepared for going home. “Now, John, dear! Good-night, May! Good-night, Bertha.' Could she kiss them! Could she be blithe and cheerful in her parting? Could she venture to reveal her face to them without a blush? Yes. Tackleton observed her closely, and she did all this. Tilly was hushing the baby, and she crossed and re- crossed Tackleton a dozen times, repeating drowsily: “Did the knowledge that it was to be its wives, then wring its hearts almost to breaking; , and did its fathers deceive it from its cradles but to break its hearts at last!” ºz º ºf 2, . Zºº. s / / § : 3.- º tº ; ſº # § º C- f i * %tº sº: %:=::::::: % g a- 27.2 ſ º- Ž : º % º: t } g #3 -ë 3: 㺠: º : THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 209 “Now, Tilly, give me the baby! Good-night, Mr. Tackleton. Where's John, for goodness sake?” “He’s going to walk beside the horse's head,” said Tackleton, who helped her to her seat. “My dear John. Walk? To-night?” The muffled figure of her husband made a hasty sign in the affirmative; and the false stranger and the little nurse being in their places, the old horse moved off. Boxer, the unconscious Boxer, running on before, run- ning back, running round and round the cart, and bark- ing as triumphantly and merrily as ever. When Tackleton had gone off likewise, escorting May and her mother home, poor Caleb sat down by the fire beside his daughter; anxious and remorseful at the core; and still saying, in his wistful contemplation of her, “Have I deceived her from her cradle, but to break her heart at last!” The toys that had been set in motion for the Baby had all stopped and run down, long ago. In the faint light and silence, the imperturbably calm dolls, the agitated rock- ing horses with distended eyes and nostrils, the old gentle- men at the street doors, standing half doubled up upon their failing knees and ancles, the wry-faced nut- crackers, the very Beasts upon their way into the Ark, in twos, like a Boarding School out walking, might have been imagined to be stricken motionless with fantastic wonder, at Dot being false, or Tackleton beloved, under any combination of circumstances. 15 210 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, CHIRP THE THIRD. THE Dutch clock in the corneº struck Ten, when the Carrier sat down by his fireside. So troubled and grief- worn, that he seemed to scare the Cuckoo, who, having cut his ten melodious announcements as short as pos- sible, plunged back into the Moorish Palace again, and clapped his little door behind him, as if the unwonted spectacle were too much for his feelings. If the little Haymaker had been armed with the sharpest of scythes, and had cut at every stroke into the Carrier's heart, he never could have gashed and wounded it as Dot had done. It was a heart so full of love for her; so bound up and held together by innumerable threads of winning remembrance, spun from the daily working of her many qualities of endearment; it was a heart in which she had enshrined herself so gently and so closely; a heart so single and so earnest in its Truth, so strong in right, so weak in wrong; that it could cherish neither passion nor revenge at first, and had only room to hold the broken image of its Idol. But, slowly, slowly, as the Carrier sat brooding on his hearth, now cold and dark, other and fiercer thoughts began to rise within him, as an angry wind comes rising in the night. The Stranger was beneath his outraged roof. Three steps would take him to his chamber door. One blow would beat it in. “You might do murder before you know it,” Tackleton had said. How could it be murder, if he gave the villain time to grapple with him hand to hand! He was the younger man. - It was an ill-timed thought, bad for the dark mood of his mind. It was an angry thought, goading him to some avenging act, that should change the cheerful house into a haunted place which lonely travellers would dread to pass by night; and where the timid would see shadows struggling in the ruined windows when the moon was dim, and hear wild noises in the stormy weather. - THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 211 He was the younger man! Yes, yes; some lover who had won the heart that he had never touched. Some lover of her early choice, of whom she had thought and . dreamed, for whom she had pined and pined, when he had fancied her so happy by his side. Oh, agony to think of it! She had been above stairs with the Baby, getting it to bed. As he sat brooding on the hearth, she came close beside him, without his knowledge—in the turning of the rack of his great misery, he lost all other sounds— and put her little stool at his feet. He only knew it, when he felt her hand upon his own, and saw her look- ing up into his face. With wonder? No. It was his first impression, and he was fain to look at her again, to set it right. No, not with wonder. With an eager and inquiring look; but not with wonder. At first it was alarmed and serious; then, it changed into a strange, wild, dreadful smile of recognition of his thoughts; then, there was nothing but her clasped hands on her brow, and her bent head, and falling hair. Q. Though the power of Omnipotence had been his to wield at that moment, he had too much of its diviner property of Mercy in his breast, to have turned one feather's weight of it against her. But he could not bear to see her crouching down upon the little seat where he had often looked on her, with love and pride, so innocent and gay; and, when she rose and left him, sobbing as she went, he felt it a relief to have the vacant place beside him rather than her so long-cherished presence. This in itself was anguish keener than all, reminding him how desolate he was become, and how the great bond of his life was rent asunder. The more he felt this, and the more he knew, he could have better borne to see her lying prematurely dead before him with her little child upon her breast, the higher and the stronger rose his wrath against his enemy. He looked about him for a weapon. There was a gun hanging on the wall. He took it down, and moved a pace or two towards the door of the perfidious Stranger's room. He knew the gun was loaded. Some shadowy idea that it was just to shoot this man like a wild beast, seized him, and dilated in his mind until it grew into a monstrous demon in Com- 212 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. plete possession of him, casting out all milder thoughts and setting up its undivided empire. That phrase is wrong. Not casting out his milder thoughts, but artfully transforming them. Changing them into scourges to drive him on. Turning water into blood, love into hate, gentleness into blind ferocity. Her image, sorrowing, humbled, but still pleading to his tenderness and mercy with resistless power, never left his mind; but, staying there, it urged him to the door; raised the weapon to his shoulder; fitted and nerved his finger to the trigger; and cried “Kill him! In his bed!” He reversed the gun to beat the stock upon the door; he already held it lifted in the air; some indistinct design was in his thoughts of calling out to him to fly, for God’s sake—by the window— When, suddenly, the struggling fire illuminated the whole chimney with a glow of light; and the Cricket on the Hearth began to Chirp! No sound he could have heard, no human voice, not even hers, could so have moved and softened him. The artless words in which she had told him of her love for this same Cricket, were once more freshly spoken; her trembling, earnest manner at the moment, was again before him; her pleasant voice—oh, what a voice it was, for making household music at the fireside of an honest man!—thrilled through and through his better nature, and awoke it into life and action. He recoiled from the door, like a man walking in his sleep, awakened from a frightful dream; and put the gun aside. Clasping his hands before his face, he then sat down again beside the fire, and found relief in tears. - The Cricket on the Hearth came out into the room, and stood in Fairy shape before him. “‘I love it,’” said the Fairy Voice, repeating what he well remembered, “’ for the many times I have heard it, and the many thoughts its harmless music has given me.’” “She said so!” Cried the Carrier. “True!” “‘This has been a happy home, John; and I love the Cricket for its sake!’” “It has been, Heaven knows,” returned the Carrier. “She made it happy, always—until now.” THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 213 “So gracefully sweet-tempered; so domestic, joyful, busy, and light-hearted!” said the Voice. “Otherwise I never could have loved her as I did,” returned the Carrier. * The Voice, correcting him, said “ do.” - The Carrier repeated “as I did.” But not firmly. His faltering tongue resisted his control, and would speak in its own way for itself and him. The Figure, in an attitude of invocation, raised its hand and said: . * “Upon your own hearth—” “The hearth she has blighted,” interposed the Carrier. “The hearth she has—how often!—blessed and bright- ened,” said the Cricket; “the hearth which, but for her, were only a few stones and bricks and rusty bars, but which has been, through her, the Altar of your Home; on which you have nightly sacrificed some petty passion, selfishness, or care, and offered up the homage of a tranquil mind, a trusting nature, and an overflowing heart; so that the smoke from this poor chimney has gone upward with a better fragrance than the richest incense that is burnt before the richest shrines in all the gaudy temples of this world!—Upon your Own hearth; in its quiet sanctuary; surrounded by its gentle influences and associations; hear her! Hear me! Hear ºing that speaks the language of your hearth and Ome!” - ſº “And pleads for her?” inquired the Carrier. “All things that speak the language of your hearth and home, must plead for her!” returned the Cricket. “For they speak the truth.” And while the Carrier, with his head upon his hands, continued to sit meditating in his chair, the Presence stood beside him, suggesting his reflections by its power, and presenting them before him, as in a glass or picture. It was not a solitary Presence. From the hearthstone, from the chimney, from the clock, the pipe, the kettle, and the cradle; from the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and the stairs; from the cart without, and the cupboard within, and the household implements; from everything and every place with which she had ever been familiar, and with which she had ever ent wined one recollection of herself in her unhappy husband's mind; Fairies came trooping forth. Not to stand beside him as the Cricket 214 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. did, but to busy and bestir themselves. To do all honour to her image. To pull him by the skirts, and point to it when it appeared. To cluster round it, and embrace it, and strew flowers for it to tread on. To try to crown its fair head with their tiny hands. To show that they were fond of it, and loved it; and that there was not one ugly, wicked, or accusatory creature to claim ºxledge of it—none but their playful and approving Sel Wes. His thoughts were constant to her image. It was always there. She sat plying her needle, before the fire, and singing to herself. Such a blithe, thriving, steady little Dot! The fairy figures turned upon him all at once, by one consent, with one prodigious concentrated Stare, and seemed to say, “Is this the light wife you are mourn- ing for!” & - There were sounds of gaiety outside, musical instru- ments, and noisy tongues, and laughter. A crowd of young merry-makers came pouring in, among whom were May Fielding and a score of pretty girls. Dot was the fairest of them all; as young as any of them, too. They came to summon her to join their party. It was a dance. If ever little foot were made for dancing, hers was, surely. But she laughed, and shook her head, and pointed to her cookery on the fire, and her table ready spread; with an exulting defiance that rendered her more charming than she was before. And so she merrily dismissed them, nodding to her would-be part- ners, one by one, as they passed out, with a comical indifference, enough to make them go and drown them- selves immediately if they were her admirers—and they must have been so, more or less; they couldn’t help it. And yet indifference was not her charac- ter. Oh, no! For presently, there came a certain Car- rier to the door; and bless her, what a welcome she bestowed upon him! * Again the staring figures turned upon him all at once, and seemed to say, “Is this the wife who has for- saken you!” A shadow fell upon the mirror, or the picture; call it what you will. A great shadow of the Stranger, as he first stood underneath their roof; covering its surface, and blotting out all other objects. But, the miliable THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 215 Fairies worked like bees to clear it off again. And Dot again was there. Still bright and beautiful. Rocking her little Baby in its cradle, singing to it softly, and resting her head upon a shoulder which had its counterpart in the musing figure by which the Fairy Cricket stood. The night—I mean the real night: not going by Fairy clocks—was wearing now; and in this stage of the Car- rier's thoughts, the moon burst out, and shone brightly in the sky. Perhaps some calm and quiet light had . risen also, in his mind; and he could think more soberly of what had happened. - - Although the shadow of the Stranger fell at intervals upon the glass—always distinct, and big, and thoroughly defined—it never fell so darkly as at first. Whenever it appeared, the Fairies uttered a general cry of consterna- tion, and plied their little arms and legs, with incon- ceivable activity, to rub it out. And whenever they got at Dot again, and showed her to him once more, bright and beautiful, they cheered in the most inspiring Iſla, Illſley’. - They never showed her, otherwise than beautiful and bright, for they were Household Spirits to whom false- hood is an annihilation; and being so, what. Dot was there for them, but the one active, beaming, pleasant little creature who had been the light and sun of the Carrier’s Home! The Fairies were prodigiously excited when they showed lier, with the Baby, gossiping among a knot of sage old matrons, and affecting to be wondrously old and matronly herself, and leaning in a staid, demure old way upon her husband’s arm, attempting—she' such a bud of a little woman—to convey the idea of having abjured the vanities of the world in general, and of being the sort of person to whom it was no novelty at all to be a mother; yet in the same breath, they showed her, laughing at the Carrier for being awkward, and pulling up his shirt collar to make him smart, and minc- ing merrily about that very room to teach him how to dance! They turned, and stared immensely at him when they showed her with the Blind Girl; for, though she carried cheerfulness and animation with her wheresoever she wént, she bore those influences into Caleb Plummer's ** tº 216 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. home, heaped up and running over. The Blind Girl’s love for her, and trust in her, and gratitude to her; her own good busy way of setting Bertha's thanks aside; her dexterous little arts for filling up each moment of the visit in doing something useful to the house, and really working hard while feigning to make holiday; her bountiful provision of those standing delicacies, the Veal and Ham Pie and the bottles of Beer; her radiant little face arriving at the door, and taking leave; the wonderful expression in her whole self, from her neat Toot to the crown of her head, of being a part of the establishment—a something necessary to it, which it couldn’t be without; all this the Fairies revelled in, and loved her for. And once again they looked upon him all at once, appealingly, and seemed to say, while some among them nestled in her dress and fondled her, “Is this the wife who has betrayed your confidence!” More than once, or twice, or thrice, in the long thought- ful night, they showed her to him sitting on her favourite seat, with her bent head, her hands clasped on her brow, her falling hair. As he had seen her last. And when they found her thus, they neither turned nor looked upon him, but gathered close round her, and comforted and kissed her, and pressed on one another, to show sympathy and kindness to her, and forgot him altogether. Thus the night passed. The moon went down; the stars grew pale; the cold day broke; the sun rose. The Carrier still sat, musing, in the chimney corner. He had sat there, with his head upon his hands, all night. All night the faithful Cricket had been Chirp, Chirp, Chirping on the Hearth. All night he had listened to its voice. All night, the household Faries had been busy with him. All night, she had been amiable and blame- less in the glass, except when that one shadow fell upon it. - He rose up when it was broad day, and washed and dressed himself. He couldn’t go about his customary. cheerful avocations—hé wanted spirit for them—but it mattered the less, that it was Tackleton’s wedding-day, and he had arranged to make his rounds by proxy. He had thought to have gone merrily to church with Dot. But such plans were at an end. It was their own wed- ding-day, too. Ah! how little he had looked for such a close to such a year! - THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 217 The Carrier expected that Tackleton would pay him an early visit; and he was right. He had not walked to and fro before his own door, many minutes, when he saw the Toy Merchant coming in his chaise along the road. As the chaise drew nearer, he perceived that Tackleton was dressed out sprucely for his marriage, and that he had decorated his horse's head with flowers and favours. The horse looked much more like a bridegroom than Tackleton, whose half-closed eye was more disagreeably expressive than ever. But the Carrier took little heed of this. His thoughts had other occupation. “John Peerybingle!” said Tackleton, with an air of condolence. “My good fellow, how do you find your- self this morning?” * “I have had but a poor night, Master Tackleton,” re- turned the Carrier, shaking his head: “for I have been a good deal disturbed in my mind. But it's Over now! Can you spare me half an hour or so, for some private talk?” ‘‘I came on purpose,” returned Tackleton, alighting. “Never mind the horse. He'll stand quiet enough, with the reins over this post, if you’ll give him a mouthful of hav.” - ºie Carrier having brought it from his stable and set it before him, they turned into the house. “You are not married before noon?” he said, “I think?” - + “No,” answered Tackleton. “Plenty of time. Plenty Of time.” sº When they entered the kitchen, Tilly Slowboy was rapping at the Stranger's door; which was only removed from it by a few steps. One of her very red eyes (for Tilly had been crying all night long, because her mis- tress cried) was at the keyhole; and she was knocking very loud, and seemed frightened. “If you please, I can’t make nobody hear,” said Tilly, looking round. “I hope nobody an’t gone and been and died if you please!” - This philanthropic wish, Miss Slowboy emphasised with various new raps and kicks at the door, which led to no result whatever. “Shall I go?” said Tackleton. “It’s curious.” The Carrier, who had turned his face from the door, signed to him to gº if he would. 218 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. So Tackleton went to Tilly Slowboy’s relief; and he, too, kicked and knocked; and he, too, failed to get the least reply. But he thought of trying the handle of the door; and as it opened easily, he peeped in, went in, and Soon come running out again. “John Peerybingle,” said Tackleton, in his ear. “I hope there has been nothing—nothing rash in the night?” The Carrier turned upon him quickly. “Because he’s gone!” said Tackleton; “and the win- dows's open. I don’t see any marks—to be sure, it’s almost on a level with the garden: but I was afraid there might have been some—some scuffle. Eh?” -> He nearly shut up the expressive eye, altogether; he looked at him so hard. ' And he gave his eye, and his face, and his whole person, a sharp twist. As if he would have screwed the truth out of him. “Make yourself easy,” said the Carrier. “He went into that room last night, without harm in a word or deed from me, and no one has entered it since. He is away of his own free will. I’d go out gladly at that door, and beg my bread from house to house, for life, if I could so change the past that he had never come. But he has come and gone. And I have done with him!” “Oh!—Well, I think he has got off pretty easy,” said Tackleton, taking a chair. The sneer was lost upon the Carrier, who sat down, too, and shaded his face with his hand, for some little time, before proceeding. s “You showed me last night, he said, at length, “my wife; my wife that I love; secretly—” “And tenderly,” insinuated Tackleton. e º “Conniving at that man’s disguise, and giving him opportunities of meeting her alone. I think there's no sight I wouldn’t have rather seen than that. I think there’s no man in the world I wouldn’t have rather had to show it me.” - g “I confess to having had my suspicions always,” said Tackleton. “And that has made me objectionable here, I know.” e -- “But as you did show it me,” pursued the Carrier, not minding him; “ and as you saw her, my wife, my wife that I love”—his voice, and eye, and hand, grew steadier and firmer as he repeated these words: evidently in pursuance of a steadfast purpose—“ as you saw her at THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 219 this disadvantage, it is right and just that you should also see with my eyes, and look into my breast, and know what my mind is upon the subject. For it's settled,” said the Carrier, regarding him attentively. “And nothing can shake it now.” Tackleton muttered a few general words of assent, about its being necessary to vindicate something or other; but he was overawed by the manner of his com- panion. Plain and unpolished as it was, it had a some- thing dignified and noble in it, which nothing but the soul of generous honour dwelling in the man could have imparted. ‘‘I am a plain, rough man,” pursued the Carrier, “with very little to recommend me. I am not a clever man, as you very well know. I am not a young man. I loved my little Dot, because I had seen her grow up, from a child, in her father's house; because I knew how precious she was; because she had been my life, for years and years. There's many men I can’t compare with, who never could have loved my little Dot like me, I think!” He paused, and softly beat the ground a short time with his foot, before resuming: “I often thought that though I wasn’t good enough for her, I should make her a kind husband, and perhaps know her value better than another: and in this way I reconciled it to myself, and came to think it might be possible that we should be married. And in the end, it came about, and we were married.” - h é & an !” said Tackleton, with a significant shake of his €8,01. “I had studied myself; I had had experience of my- self; I knew how much I loved her, and how happy I should be,” pursued the Carrier. “But I had not—I feel it now—sufficiently considered her.” “To be sure,” said Tackleton. “Giddiness, frivolity, fickleness, love of admiration! Not considered! All left out of sight! Hah!” “You had best not interrupt me,” said the Carrier, With some sternness, “till you understand me; and you’re wide of doing so. If, yesterday, I’d have struck that man down at a blow, who dared to breathe a word against her, to-day I’d set my foot upon his face if he was my brother!” 220 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. The Toy Merchant gazed at him in astonishment. He went on in a softer tone: - “Did I consider,” said the Carrier, “that I took her— at her age, and with her beauty—from her young com- panions, and the many scenes of which she was the ornament; in which she was the brightest little star that ever shone, to shut her up from day to day in my dull house, and keep my tedious company? Did I consider how little suited I was to her sprightly humour, and how wearisome a plodding man like me must be, to one of her Quick spirit? Did I consider that it was no merit in me, or claim in me, that I loved her, when everybody must, who knew her? Never. I took advantage of her hope- ful nature and her cheerful disposition; and I married her. I wish I never had! For her sake; not for mine!” The Toy Merchant gazed at him, without winking. Even the half-shut eye was open now. “Heaven bless her!” said the Carrier, “for the cheer- ful constancy with which she has tried to keep the knowledge of this from me! And Heaven help me, that, in my slow mind, I have not found it out before! Poor child! Poor Dot! I not to find it out, who have seen her eyes fill with tears, when such a marriage as our own was spoken of] I, who have seen the secret trembling on her lips a hundred times, and never sus- pected it, till last night! Poor girl! That I could ever hope she would be fond of me! That I could ever be- lieve she was!” “She made a show of it,” said Tackleton. “She made such a show of it, that to tell you the truth it was the origin of my misgivings.” And here he asserted the superiority of May Fielding, who certainly made no sort of show of being fond of him. “She has tried,” said the poor Carrier, with greater emotion than he had exhibited yet; “I Only now begin to know how hard she has tried, to be my dutiful and zealous wife. How good she has been; how much she has done; how brave and strong a heart she has; let the happiness I have known under this roof bear wit: ness! It will be some help and comfort to me, when I am here alone.” “Here alone?” said Tackleton. “Oh! Then you do mean to take some notice of this?” - THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 221 “I mean,” returned the Carrier, “to do her the greatest kindness, and make her the best reparation, in my power. I can release her from the daily pain of an un- equal marriage, and the struggle to conceal it. She shall be as free as I can render her.” “Make her reparation!” exclaimed Tackletón, twist- ing and turning his great ears with his hands. “There must be something wrong here. You didn’t say that, Of course.” - - The Carrier set his grip upon the collar of the Toy Merchant, and shook him like a reed. “Listen to me!” he said. “And take care that you hear me right. Listen to me. Do I speak plainly * “Very plainly indeed,” answered Tackleton. “As if I meant it?” “Very much as if you meant it.” “I sat upon that hearth, last night, all night,” ex- claimed the Carrier. “On the spot where she has often sat beside me, with her sweet face looking into mine. I called up her whole life, day by day. I had her dear self, in its every passage, in review before me. And upon my soul she is innocent, if there is One to judge the innocent and guilty!” Staunch Cricket on the Hearth! Loyal household Fairies! “Passion and distrust have left me!” said the Carrier; “ and nothing but my grief remains. In an unhappy moment some old lover, better suited to her tastes and years than I; forsaken, perhaps, for me, against her will; returned. In an unhappy moment, taken by sur- prise, and wanting time to think of what she did, she made herself a party to his treachery, by concealing it. Last night she saw him, in the interview we witnessed. It was wrong. But otherwise than this, she is innocent if there is truth on earth!” Q “If that is your opinion ”—Tackleton began. “So, let her go!” pursued the Carrier. “Go, with my blessing for the many happy hours she has given me, and my forgiveness for any pang she has caused me. Let her go, and have the peace of mind I wish her! She’ll never hate me. She’ll learn to like me better, when I’m not a drag upon her, and she wears the chain I have riveted, more lightly. This is the day on which I took her, with so little thought for her enjoyment, *- 222 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. from her home. To-day she shall return to it, and I will trouble her no more. Her father and mother will be here to-day—we had made a little plan for keeping it together—and they shall take her home. I can trust her, there, or anywhere. She leaves me without blame, and she will live so, I am sure. If I should die—I may perhaps while she is still young; I have lost some courage in a few hours—she’ll find that I remembered her, and loved her to the last! This is the end of what you showed me. Now, it’s Over!” “Oh, no, John, not over. Do not say it’s over yet. Not Quite yet. I have heard your noble words. I could not Steal away, pretending to be ignorant of what has af- fected me with such deep gratitude. Do not say it’s over, till the clock has struck again!” - She had entered shortly after Tackleton, and had re- mained there. She never looked at Tackleton, but fixed her eyes upon her husband. But she kept away from him, setting as wide a space as possible between them; and though she spoke with most impassioned earnest- ness, she went no nearer to him even then. How dif- ferent in this from her old self! “No hand can make the clock which will strike again for me the hours that are gone,” replied the Car- rier, with a faint smile. “But let it be so, if you will, my dear. It will strike soon. It’s of little matter what we say. I’d try to please you in a harder case than when it strikes again, it will be necessary for me to be upon my way to church. Good-morning, John Peery- bingle. I’m sorry to be deprived of the pleasure of your company. Sorry for the loss, and the occasion of it too!” “I have spoken plainly?” said the Carrier, accompany- ing him to the door. “Oh, quite!” ſº “And you’ll remember what I have said?” “Why, if you compel me to make the observation,” said Tackleton; previously taking the precaution of getting into his chaise; “I must say that it was so very unexpected, that I’m far from being likely to forget it.” “The better for us both.” returned the Carrier. “Good- bye. I give you joy!” THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 223 “I wish I could give it to you,” said Tackleton. . “As I can’t; thank’ee. Between ourselves (as I told you before, eh?), I don’t much think I shall have the less joy in my married life, because May hasn’t been too officious about me, and too demonstrative. Good-bye! Take care of yourself.” The Carrier stood looking after him until he was smaller in the distance than his horse's flowers and favours near at hand; and then, with a deep sigh, went strolling like a restless, broken man, among some neigh- bouring elms; unwilling to return until the clock was on the eve of striking. His little wife, being left alone, sobbed piteously; but often dried her eyes and checked herself, to say how good he was, how excellent he was! and once or twice she laughed; so heartily, triumphantly, and incoherently (still crying all the time), that Tilly was quite horrified. “Ow, if you please, don't!” said Tilly. “It’s enough to dead and bury the Baby, so it is, if you please.” “Will you bring him sometimes to see his father, Tilly,” inquired her mistress, drying her eyes; “When I can’t live here, and have gone to my old home?” “Ow, if you please, don't!” cried Tilly, throwing back her head, and bursting out into a howl—she looked at the moment uncommonly like Boxer; ‘‘ Ow, if you please, don't! Ow, what has everybody gone and been and done with everybody, making everybody else so wretched? Ow-w-w-w!” The soft-hearted Slowboy tailed off at this juncture into such a deplorable howl, the more tremendous from its long suppression, that she must infallibly have awakened the Baby, and frightened him into something serious (probably convulsions), if her eyes had not en- countered Caleb Plummer. leading in his daughter. This spectacle restoring her to a sense of the proprieties, she stood for some few moments, silent, with her mouth wide open; and then, posting off to the bed on which the Baby lay asleep, danced in a weird, Saint Vitus man- ner on the floor, and at the same time rummaged with her face and head among the bedclothes, apparently de- riving much relief from those extraordinary operations. “Mary!” said Bertha. “Not at the marriage!” “I jã her you would not be there, mum,” whispered Caleb. “I heard as much last night. But bless you.” 224 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. said the little man, taking her tenderly by both hands, * I don’t care for what they say. I don’t believe them. There an’t much of me, but that little should be torn to pieces sooner than I’d trust a word against you!” He put his arms about her neck and hugged her, as a child might have hugged one of his own dolls. “Bertha couldn’t stay at home this morning,” said Caleb. “She was afraid, I know, to hear the bells ring, and couldn’t trust herself to be so near them on their wedding-day. So we started in good time, and came here. I have been thinking of what I have done,” said Caleb, after a moment's pause; “I have been blaming myself till I hardly knew what to do or where to turn, for the distress of mind I have caused her; and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d better, if you’ll stay with me, mum, the while, tell her the truth. You’ll stay with me the while?” he inquired, trembling from head to foot. “I don’t know what effect it may have upon her; I don’t know what she’ll think of me; I don’t know that she’ll ever care for her father afterwards. But its best for her that she should be undeceived, and I must bear the consequences as I deserve!” - “Mary,” said Bertha, “where is your hand? . Ah! here it is; here it is!” pressing it to her lips, with a smile, and drawing it through her arm. “I heard them speaking softly among themselves last night, of Some blame against you. They were wrong.” The Carrier's Wife was silent. Caleb answered for her. “They were wrong,” he said. “I knew it!” cried Bertha, proudly. “I told them so. I scorned to hear a word! Blame her with justice!” she pressed the hand between her own, and the Soft cheek against her face. “No ! I am not so blind as that.” - * Her father went on One side of her, while Dot re- mained upon the other: holding her hand. “I know you all,” said Bertha, “better than you think. But none so well as her. Not even you, father. There is nothing half so real and so true about me, as she is. If I could be restored to sight this instant, and not a word were spoken, I could choose her from a crowd! My sister!” º “Bertha, my dear!” said Caleb. “I have something on my mind I want to tell you, while we three are alone, THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, 225 Hear me kindly! I have a confession to make to you, my darling.” “A confession, father?” “I have wandered from the truth and lost myself, my child,” said Caleb, with a pitiable expression in his be- wildered face. “I have wandered from the truth, in- tending to be kind to you; and have been cruel.” She turned her wonder-stricken face towards him, and repeated, “Cruel!” “He accuses himself too strongly, Bertha,” said Dot. “You’ll say so, presently. You’ll be the first to tell him so.” - - - “He cruel to me !” cried Bertha, with a smile of incredulity. “Not meaning it, my child,” said Caleb. “But I have been: though I never suspected it till yesterday. My dear blind daughter, hear me and forgive me. The world you live in, heart of mine, doesn’t exist as I have represented it. The eyes‘you have trusted in have been false to you.” She turned her wonder-stricken face towards him still; but drew back, and clung closer to her friend. “Your road in life was rough, my poor one,” said Caleb, “and I meant to smooth it for you. I have al- tered objects, chaffged the characters of people, invented many things that never have been, to make you hap- pier. I have had concealments from you, put decep- tions on you, God forgive me! and surrounded you with fancies.” - “But living people are not fancies?” she said hur- riedly, and turning very pale, and still retiring from him. -“You can’t change them.” . “I have done so, Bertha,” pleaded Caleb. “There is One person that you know, my dove"— “Oh, father why do you say, I know?” she an- swered, in a term of keen reproach. “What and whom ; § know I who have no leader! I so miserably ind!” In the anguish of her heart, she stretched out her hands, as if she were groping her away; then spread them, in a manner most forlorn and sad, upon her face. “The marriage that takes place to-day,” said Caleb, “is with a stern, Sordid, grinding man. A hard master to you and me, my dear for many years, Ugly in his 16 226 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. looks and in his nature. Cold and callous always. Un- like what I have painted him to you in everything, my child. In everything.” “Oh, why,” cried the Blind Girl, tortured, as it seemed, almost beyond endurance, “why did you ever do this! Why did you ever fill my heart so full, and then come in like Death, and tear away the objects of my love! Oh, Heaven, how blind I am! How helpless and alone!” Her afflicted father hung his head, and offered no re- ply but in his penitence and Sorrow. She had been but a short time in this passion of regret, when the Cricket on the Hearth, unheard by all but her, began to chirp. Not merrily, but in a low, faint, sorrowing way. It was so mournful, that her tears began to flow; and when the Presence which had been beside the Carrier all night, appeared behind her, pointing to her father, they fell down like rain. She heard the Cricket-voice more plainly soon, and was conscious, through her blindness, of the Presence hovering about her father. “Mary,” said the Blind Girl, “tell me what my home is. What it truly is.” “It is a poor place, Bertha; very poor and bare in- deed. The house will scarcely keep out wind and rain another winter. It is as roughly shielded from the weather, Bertha,” Dot continued in a low, clear voice, “as your poor father in his sackcloth coat.” The Blind Girl, greatly agitated, rose, and led the Carrier's little wife aside. “Those presents that I took such care of; that came almost at my wish, and were so dearly welcome to me.” she said, trembling; where did they come from ? Did you send them?” “ No.” “Who then?” Dot saw she knew, already, and was silent. The Blind Girl spread her hands before her face again, but in quite a different manner now. “Dear Mary, a moment. One moment. More this way. Speak softly to me. You are true, I know. You’d not deceive me now; would you?” “No, Bertha, indeed!” “No, I am sure you would not. You have too much THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, 22% pity for me. Mary, look across the room to where we were just now—to where my father is—my father, so Compassionate and loving to me—and tell me what you see.” - “I see,” said Dot, who understood her well, “an old man sitting in a chair, and leaning sorrowfully on the back, with his face resting on his hand. As if † child should comfort him, Bertha.” “Yes, yes. She will. Go on.” “He is an old man, worn with care and work. He is a spare, dejected, thoughtful, grey-haired man. I see him now, despondent and bowed down, and striving against nothing. But, Bertha, I have seen him many times before, and striving hard in many ways for one great Sacred object. And I honour his grey head, and bless him!” The Blind Girl broke away from her ; and throwing herself upon her knees before him, took the grey head to her breast. “It is my sight restored. It is my sight!” she cried. “I have been blind, and now my eyes are open. I never knew him To think I might have died, and never truly seen the father who has been so loving to me!” There were no words for Caleb’s emotion. “There is not a gallant figure on this earth,” ex- claimed the Blind Girl, holding him in her embrace, “ that I would love so dearly, and would cherish so de- votedly, as this! The greyer, and more worn, the dearer, father! Never let them say I am blind again. There's not a furrow in his face, there’s not a hair upon his head, that shall be forgotten in my prayers and thanks to Heaven!” ſº Caleb managed to articulate, “My Bertha!” “And in my blindness, I believed him,” said the girl, Caressing him with tears of exquisite affection, “to be So different And having him beside me, day by day, so mindful of me always, never dreamed of this!” “The fresh, smart father in the blue coat, Bertha,” said poor Caleb. “He’s gone!” - “Nothing is gone,” she answered. “Dearest father, no Everything is here—in you. The father that I loved so well; the father that I never loved enough, and never knew; the benefactor whom I first began to rever- 228 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, ence and love, because he had such sympathy for me; all are here in you. . Nothing is dead to me. The soul of all that was most dear to me is here—here, with the worn face, and the grey head. And I am not blind, father, any longer!” * Dot’s whole attention had been concentrated, during. this discourse, upon the father and daughter; but look- ing, now, towards the little Haymaker in the Moorish meadow, she saw that the clock was within a few min- utes of striking, and fell, immediately, into a nervous and excited state. “Father,” said Bertha, hesitating. “Mary.” “Yes, my dear,” returned Caleb. “Here she is.” “There is no change in her. You never told me any- thing of her that was not true?” “I should have done it, my dear, I am afraid,” re- turned Caleb, “if I could have made her better than she was. But I must have changed her for the worse, if I had changed her at all. Nothing could improve her, Bertha.” - Confident as the Blind Girl had been when she asked the question, her delight and pride in the reply and her renewed embrace of Dot, were charming to behold. “More changes than you think for, may happen, though, my dear,” said Dot. “Changes for the better, I mean ; changes for great joy to some of us. You mustn't let them startle you too much, if any such should ever happen, and affect you! Are those wheels upon the road? You’ve a quick ear, Bertha. Are they wheels?” “Yes. Coming very fast.” - “I—I–I know you have a quick ear,” said Dot, placing her hand upon her heart, and evidently talking On, as fast as she could, to hide its palpitating State, “ because I have noticed it often, and because you were so quick to find out that strange step last night. Though why you should have said, as I very well recol- lect you did say, Bertha, “whose step is that?” and why you should have taken any greater observation of it than of any other step, I don’t know. Though, as I said just now, there are great changes in the world: great changes: and we can’t do better than prepare ourselves to be surprised at hardly anything.” Caleb wondered what this meant; perceiving that she THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 229 spoke to him, no less than to his daughter. He saw her, with astonishment, so fluttered and distressed that she could scarcely breathe; and holding to a chair, to save herself from falling. “They are wheels indeed!” she panted, “Coming nearer! Nearer! Very close! And now you hear them stopping at the garden gate! And now you hear a step outside the door—the same step, Bertha, is it not!—and now !”— . She uttered a wild cry of uncontrollable delight; and running up to Caleb, put her hands upon his eyes, as a young man rushed into the room, and flinging away his hat into the air, came sweeping down upon them. “Is it. Over?” Cried Dot. “Yes!” “Happily over?” “Yes!” “Do you recollect the voice, dear Caleb? Did you ever hear the like of it before?” cried Dot. “If my boy in the Golden South Americas was alive ’’ —said Caleb, trembling. “He is alive!” shrieked Dot, removing her hands from his eyes, and clapping them in ecstasy; “ look at him See where he stands before you, healthy and strong ! Your own dear son. Your own dear living, loving brother, Berthal” All honour to the little creature for her transports! All honour to her tears and laughter, when the three were locked in one another's arms! All honour to the hearti- ness with which she met the sunburnt sailor-fellow, with his dark, streaming hair, half way, and never turned her rosy little mouth aside, but suffered him to kiss it, freely, and to press her to his bounding heart! And honour to the Cuckoo, too—why not!—for burst- ing out of the trap-door in the Moorish Palace like a housebreaker, and hiccoughing twelve times on the assembled company, as if he had got drunk for joy! The Carrier, entering, started back. And well he might, to find himself in such good company. “Look, John!” said Caleb, exultingly, “ look here! My own boy, from the Golden South Americas! My own son! Him that you fitted out, and sent away your- self! Him that you were always such a friend tol” The Carrier advanced to seize him by the hand; but, 230 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. recoiling, as some feature in his face awakened a re- membrance of the Deaf Man in the Cart, said: “Edward! Was it you?” “Now tell him all!” cried Dot. “Tell him all, Ed- ward: and don’t spare me, for nothing shall make me spare myself in his eyes, ever again.” - “I was the man,” said Edward. “And could you steal, disguised, into the house of your old friend?” rejoined the Carrier. “There was a frank boy once—how many years is it, Caleb, since we heard that he was dead, and had it proved, we thought? —who never would have done that.” “There was a generous friend of mine, once; more a father to me than a friend,” said Edward, ‘‘ who never would have judged me, or any other man, unheard. You were he. So I am certain you will hear me now.” The Carrier, with a troubled glance at Dot, who still Fº away from him, replied, “Well, that’s but fair. will.” - “You must know that when I left here, a boy,” said Edward, “I was in love, and my love was returned. She was a very young girl, who perhaps (you may tell me) didn’t know her own mind. But I knew mine, and I had a passion for her.” - ‘‘You had ſ” exclaimed the Carrier. “You!” “Indeed I had,” returned the other. “And she re- turned it. I have ever since believed she did, and now I am sure she did.” * “Heaven help me!” said the Carrier. “This is worse than all.” “Constant to her,” said Edward, “ and returning full of hope, after many harships and perils, to redeem my part of our old contract, I heard, twenty miles away, that she was false to me; that she had forgotten me; and had best wed herself upon another and a richer man. I had no mind to reproach her; but I wished to see her, and prove beyond dispute that this was true. I hoped she might have been forced into it, against her own desire and recollection. It would be small comfort but it would be some, I thought, and on I came. That I might have the truth, the real truth; observing freely for myself, and judging for myself, without obstruction on the one hand, or presenting my own influence (if I had any) before her, on the other; I dressed myself un- THE CRICKET ON THE |HEARTH. 231 like myself—you know how; and waited on the road— you know where. You had no suspicion of me; neither had—had she,” pointing to Dot, “until I whispered in her ear at that fireside, and she so nearly betrayed me.” “But when she knew that Edward was alive, and had come back,” sobbed Dot, now speaking to herself, as she had burned to do, all through this narrative; “and when she knew his purpose, she advised him by all means to keep his secret close; for his old friend John Peerybingle, was much too open in his nature, and, too clumsy in all sº a clumsy man in general,” said Dot, half laughing and half crying—‘‘ to keep it for him. And when she-that's me, John,” sobbed the little woman—“told him all, and how his sweetheart had be- lieved him to be dead; and how she had at last been over-persuaded by her mother into a marriage which the silly, dear old thing called advantageous; and when she —that's me again, John—told him they were not yet married (though close upon it), and that it would be nothing but a sacrifice if it went on, for there was no love on her side; and when he went nearly mad with joy to hear it; then she-that’s me again—said she would go between them, as she had often done before in old times, John, and would sound his sweetheart and be sure that what she—me again, John—said and thought was right. And it was right, John! And they were brought to- gether, John! And they were married, John, an hour ago! And here's the Bride! And Gruff and Tackleton may die a bachelor! And I’m a happy little woman. May, God bless you!” She was an irresistible little woman, if that be any- thing to the purpose; and never so completely irresisti- ble as in her present transports. There never were con- gratulations so endearing and delicious, as those she lavished on herself and on the Bride. Amid the tumult of emotions in his breast, the honest Carrier had stood confounded. Flying now towards her, Dot stretched out her hand to stop him, and retreated as before. *. “No, John, no! Hear all! Don't love me any more, John, till you’ve heard every word I have to say. It was wrong to have a secret from you, John. I’m very sorry. I didn’t think it any harm, till I came and sat down by you on the little stool last night, But when I 232 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. knew by what was written in your face, that you had seen me walking in the gallery with Edward, and when I knew what you thought, I felt how giddy and how wrong it was. But oh, dear John, how could you, could you think so?” Little woman, how she sobbed again! John Peery- bingle would have caught her in his arms. But no; she wouldn’t let him. “Don’t love me yet, please, John! Not for a long time yet! When I was sad about this intended marriage, dear, it was because I remembered May and Edward such young lovers; and knew that her heart was away from Tackleton. You believe that now, don't you, John ” John was going to make another rush at this appeal; but she stopped him again. ‘‘ No; keep there, please, John! When I laugh at you as i sometimes do, John, and call you clumsy, and a dear old goose, and names of that sort, it’s because I love you, John, so well, and take such pleasure in your ways, and wouldn’t see you altered in the least respect to have you made a king to-morrow.” r “Hooroar!” said Caleb, with unusual vigour. “My opinion!” “And when I speak of people being middle-aged, and steady, John, and pretend that we are a humdrum couple, going on in a jog-trot sort of way, it's Only be- cause I’m such a silly little thing, John, that I like, sometimes, to act as a kind of Play with Baby, and all that: and make believe.” She saw that he was coming; and stopped him again. But she was very nearly too late. g “No, don’t love me for another minute or two, if you please, John! What I want most to tell you, I have kept to the last. My dear, good, generous John, when we were talking the other night about the Cricket, I had it on my lips to say, that at first I did not love you quite so dearly as I do now; when I first came home here, I was half afraid that I mightn't learn to love you every bit as well as I hoped and prayed I might—being so very young, John! But, dear John, every day and hour I loved you more and more. And if I could have loved you better than I do, the noble words I heard you say this morning would have made me. But I can’t. All THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 233 the affection that I had (it was a great deal, John) I gave you, as you well deserved, long, long ago, and I have no more to give. Now, my dear husband, take me to your heart again! That's my home, John; and never, never think of sending me to any other!” You never will derive so much delight from seeing a glorious little woman in the arms of a third party, as you would have felt if you had seen Dot run into the Carrier's embrace. It was the most complete, unmiti- gated, Soul-fraught little piece of earnestness that ever you beheld in all your days. You may be sure the Carrier was in a state of perfect rapture; and you may be sure Dot was likewise; and you may be sure they all were, inclusive of Miss Slowboy, who wept copiously for joy, and, wishing to include her young charge in the general interchange of congratula- tions, handed round the Baby to everybody in succes- sion, as if it were something to drink. But, now, the sound of wheels was heard again out- side the door; and somebody exclaimed that Gruff and Tackleton was coming back. Speedily that worthy gen- tleman appeared, looking warm and flustered. “Why, what the devil's this, John Peerybingle!” said Tackleton. “ There's some mistake. I appointed Mrs. Tackleton to meet me at the church, and I’ll swear I passed her on the road, on her way here. Oh! here she is! I beg your pardon, sir; I haven’t the pleasure of knowing you; but if you can do me the favour to spare this young lady, she has rather a particular engagement this morning.” - “But I can’t spare her,” returned Edward. “I couldn’t think of it.” “What do you mean, you vagabond?” said Tackleton. “I mean, that as I can make allowance for your be- ing vexed,” returned the other with a smile, “I am as deaf to harsh discourse this morning as I was to all dis- course last night.” The look that Tackleton bestowed upon him, and the start he gave! “I am sorry, sir,” said Edward, holding out May’s left hand, and especially the third finger, “that the young lady can’t accompany you to church; but as she has been there once, this morning, perhaps you’ll excuse her.” Tackleton looked hard at the third finger, and took a 234 . . THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. little piece of silver paper, apparently containing a ring, from his waistcoat pocket. - “Miss Slowboy,” said Tackleton. “Will you have the kindness to throw that in the fire? Thank’ee.” “It was a previous engagement, quite an old engage- ment, that prevented my wife from keeping her appoint- ment with you, I assure you,” said Edward. “Mr. Tackleton will do me the justice to acknowledge that I revealed it to him faithfully; and that I told him, many times, I never could forget it,” said May, blush- lrig. “Oh, certainly ſ” said Tackleton. “Oh, to be sure. Oh, it’s all right, it’s quite correct. Mrs. Edward Plum- mer, I infer?” “That’s the name,” returned the bridegroom. “Ah! I shouldn’t have known you, sir,” said Tackle- tion, Scrutimising his face narrowly, and making a low bow. “I give you joy, sir!” . ** Thank’ee.” “Mrs. Peerybingle,” said Tackleton, turning suddenly to where she stood with her husband; “I’m sorry. You haven’t done me a very great kindness, but, upon my life, I am sorry. You are better than I thought you. John Peerybingle, I am sorry. You understand me; that’s enough. It’s quite correct, ladies and gentlemen, all, and perfectly satisfactory. Good-morning!” With these words he carried it off, and carried him- self off, too: merely stopping at the door, to take tho flowers and favours from his horse's head, and to kick that animal Once, in the ribs, as a means of informing him that there was a screw loose in his arrangements. Of course, it became a serious duty now, to make such a day of it, as should mark these events for a high Feast and Festival in the Peerybingle Calendar for ever- more. Accordingly, Dot went to work to produce such an entertainment as should reflect undying honour on the house and on every one concerned; and in a very short space of time she was up to her dimpled elbows in flour, and whitening the Carrier’s coat, every time he came near her, by stopping him to give him a kiss. That good fellow washed the greens, and peeled the turnips, and broke the plates, and upset iron pots full of cold water on the fire, and made himself useful in all sorts of ways: while a couple of professional assistants, hastily THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 235 - * -º- called in from somewhere in the neighbourhood, as on a point of life or death, ran against each other in all the doorways and round all the corners, and everybody tumbled over Tilly Slowboy and the Baby, everywhere. Tilly never came out in such force before. Her ubiquity was the theme of general admiration. She was a stumbling-block in the passage at five-and-twenty min- utes past two; a man-trap in the kitchen at half-past two precisely; and a pit-fall in the garret at five-and- twenty minutes to three. The Baby’s head was, as it were, a test and touchstone for every description of matter, animal, vegetable, and mineral. Nothing was in use that day that didn’t come, at some time or other, into close acquaintance with it. Then there was a great Expedition set on foot to go and find out Mrs. Fielding; and to be dismally penitent to that excellent gentlewoman; and to bring her back, by force, if needful, to be happy and forgiving. And when the Expedition first discovered her, she would listen to no terms at all, but said, an unspeakable number of times, that ever she should have lived to see the day! and couldn’t be got to say anything else, except “Now carry me to the grave:” which seemed absurd, on account of her not being dead, or anything at all like it. After a time she lapsed into a state of dreadful calmness, and observed that when that unfortunate train of circum- stances had occurred in the Indigo Trade, she had fore- seen that she would be exposed, during her whole life, to every species of insult and contumely; and that she was glad to find it was the case; and begged they wouldn't trouble themselves about her—for what was she?—oh, dear!' a nobody!—but would forget that such a being lived, and would take their course in life without her. From this bitterly sarcastic mood, she passed into an angry one, in which she gave vent to the remarkable expression that the worm would turn if trodden on; and, after that, she yielded to a soft regret, and said, if they had only given her their confidence, what might she not have had it in her power to suggest! Taking advantage of this crisis in her feelings, the Expedition embraced her; and she very soon had her gloves on, and was on her way to John Peery bingle's in a state of unimpeach- able gentility; with a paper parcel at her side containing a cap of State, almost as tall, and quite as stiff, as a mitre, 236 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, Then, there were Dot’s father and mother to come, in another little chaise; and they were behind their time; and fears were entertained; and there was much looking out for them down the road; and Mrs. Fielding always would look in the wrong and morally impossible direc- tion; and being apprised thereof, hoped she might take the liberty of looking where she pleased. At last they came; a chubby little couple, joggling along in a Snug and comfortable little way that quite belonged to the Dot family; and Dot and her mother, side by side, were wonderful to see. They were so like each other. Then Dot’s mother had to renew her acquaintance with May's mother; and May’s mother always stood on her gentility; and Dot’s mother never stood on anything but her active little feet. And old Dot—so to call Dot’s father, I forgot it wasn’t his right name, but never mind —took liberties, and shook hands at first sight, and seemed to think a cap but so much starch and muslin, and didn’t defer himself at all to the Indigo Trade, but said there was no help for it now; and, in Mrs. Field- ing's summing up, was a good-natured kind of man—but coarse, my dear. I wouldn’t have missed Dot, doing the honours in her wedding-gown, my benison on her bright face! for any money. No! nor the good Carrier, so jovial and so ruddy, at the bottom of the table. Nor the brown, fresh sailor-fellow, and his handsome wife. Nor any one among them. To have missed the dinner would have been to miss as jolly and as Stout a meal as man need eat; and to have missed the overflowing cups in which they drank The Wedding Day, would have been the greatest miss of all. After dinner, Caleb sang the song about the Sparkiing Bowl. As I’m a living man, hoping to keep So, for a year or two, he sang it through. And, by-the-bye, a most unlooked-for incident oc- curred, just as he finished the last verse. There was a tap at the door; and a man came Stag- gering in, without saying with your leave, or by your leave, with something heavy on his head. Setting this down in the middle of the table, symmetrically in the centre of the nuts and apples, he said: - “Mr. Tackleton’s compliments, and as he hasn’t got no use for the cake himself, p'raps you’ll eat it.” THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 237 And with those words, he walked off. There was some surprise among the company, as you may imagine. Mrs. Fielding, being a lady of infinite discernment, suggested that the cake was poisoned, and related a narrative of a cake which, within her knowl- edge, had turned a seminary for young ladies blue. But she was overruled by acclamation; and the cake was cut by May; with much ceremony and rejoicing. I don’t think any one had tasted it, when there came another tap at the door, and the same man appeared again, having under his arm a vast brown paper parcel. “Mr. Tackleton’s compliments, and he's sent a few toys for the Babby. They ain’t ugly.” After the delivery of which expressions, he retired 2,978,111. * whole party would have experienced great diffi- culty in finding words for their astonishment, even if they had had ample time to seek them. But they had none at all; for the messenger had scarcely shut the door behind him, when there came another tap, and Tackleton himself walked in. “Mrs. Peery bingle!” said the Toy Merchant, hat in hand, “I’m sorry. I’m more sorry than I was this morn- ing. I have had time to think of it. John Peerybingle! I am sour by disposition; but I can’t help being Sweet- ened, more or less, by coming face to face with such a man as you. Caleb! This unconscious little nurse gave me a broken hint last might, of which I have found the thread. I blush to think how easily I might have bound . you and your daughter to me, and what a miserable idiot I was, when I took her for one! Friends, one and all, my house is very lonely to-night, I have not so much as a Cricket on my Hearth. I have scared them all away. Be gracious to me; let me join this happy party!” He was at home in five minutes. You never saw such a fellow. What had he been doing with himself all his life, never to have known, before, his great capacity of being jovial! Or what had the Fairies been doing with him, to have effected such a change! “John!' you won’t send me home this evening, will you?” whispered Dot. He had been very near it, though. * There wanted but one living creature to make the 238 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. party complete; and, in the twinkling of an eye, there he was, very thirsty with hard running, and engaged in hopeless endeavours to squeeze his head into a narrow pitcher. He had gone with the cart to its journey’s end, very much disgusted with the absence of his master, and stupendously rebellious to the Deputy. After lingering about the stable for some little time, vainly attempting to incite the old horse to the mutinous act of returning On his own account, he had walked into the tap-room and laid himself down before the fire. But suddenly yielding to the conviction that the Deputy was a hum- bug, and must be abandoned, he had got up again, turned tail, and come home. There was a dance in the evening. With which gen- eral mention of that recreation, I should have left it alone, if I had not some reason to suppose that it was #. an Original dance, and one of a most uncommon gure. It was formed in an odd way; in this way. Edward, that sailor-fellow—a good, free, dashing sort of fellow he was—had been telling them various mar- vels concerning parrots, and mines, and Mexicans, and gold dust, when all at once he took it in his head to jump up from his seat and propose a dance; for Bertha’s harp was there, and she had such a hand upon it as you seldom hear. Dot (sly little piece of affectation when she chose) said her dancing days were over; I think be- cause the Carrier was smoking his pipe, and she liked sitting by him best. Mrs. Fielding had no choice, of - course, but to say her dancing days were over, after that; and everybody said the same, except May; May was ready. So, May and Edward got up, amid great applause, to dance alone; and Bertha plays her liveliest tune. Well! if you’ll believe me, they have not been dancing five minutes, when suddenly the Carrier flings his pipe away, takes Dot round the waist, dashes out into the room, and starts off with her, toe and heel, quite won- derfully. Tackleton no sooner sees this, than he skims across to Mrs. Fielding, takes her round the waist, and follows suit. Old Dot no sooner sees this, than up he is, all alive, whisks off Mrs. Dot into the middle of the dance, and is the foremost there. Caleb no sooner sees this, than he clutches Tilly Slowboy by both hands and goes off at score; Miss Slowboy, firm in the belief that © THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 239 diving hotly in among the other couples, and effecting any number of concussions with them, is your only principle of footing it. Hark!, how the Cricket joins the music with its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp; and how the kettle hums! sk sk :* * * But what is this! Even as I listen to them, blithely, and turn towards Dot, for one last glimpse of a little #. very pleasant to me, she and the rest have van- ished into air, and I am left alone. A Cricket sings upon the Hearth; a broken child’s-toy lies upon the ground; and nothing else remains. THE BATTLE OF LIFE. A. L. O V E S T O R. Y. PART THE FIRST. ONCE upon a time, it matters little when, and in stal- wart England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was fought. It was fought upon a long summer day, when the waving grass was green. Many a wild flower, formed by the Almighty hand to be a perfumed goblet for the dew, felt its enamelled cup filled high with blood that day, and shrinking dropped. Many an insect, de- riving its delicate colour from harmless leaves and herbs, was stained anew that day by dying men, and marked its frightened way with an unnatural track. The painted butterfly took blood into the air upon the edges of its wings. The stream ran red. The trodden ground became a quagmire, whence, from sullen pools collected in the prints of human feet and horses’ hoofs, the One prevailing hue still lowered and glimmered at the sun. Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the sights the moon beheld upon that field, when, coming up above the black line of distant rising-ground, softened and blurred at the edge by trees, she rose into the sky and looked upon the plain, strewn with upturned faces that had once at mothers’ breasts sought mothers’ eyes, or slumbered happily. Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the secrets whispered afterwards upon the tainted wind that blew across the scene of that day’s work and that night's death and suffering! Many a lonely moon was bright upon the battle-ground, and many a star kept mournful watch upon it, and many a wind from 17 -- - - - P241. 242 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. every quarter of the earth blew over it, before the traces of the fight were worn away. t - 3- They lurked and lingered for a long time, but survived in little things; for Nature, far above the evil passions of men, soon recovered Her serenity, and smiled upon the guilty battle-ground as she had done before, when it. was innocent. The larks sang high above it; the Swal- lows skimmed and dipped and flitted to and fro; the shadows of the flying clouds pursued each other swiftly, over grass, and corn, and turnip-field, and wood, and over roof and church-spire in the nestling town among the trees, away into the bright distance on the borders of the sky and earth, where the red Sunsets faded. Crops were sown, and grew up, and were gath- ered in; the stream that had been crimsoned, turned a water-mill; men whistled at the plough; gleaners, and haymakers were seen in quiet groups at work; sheep and oxen pastured; boys whooped and called, in fields, to scare away the birds; smoke rose from cottage chim- neys; Sabbath belis rang peacefully; old people lived and died; the timid creatures of the field, and simple flowers of the bush and garden, grew and withered in their destined terms; and all upon the fierce and bloody battle-ground, where thousands upon thousands had been killed in the great fight. But there were deep green patches in the growing corn at first, that people looked at awfully. Year after year they reappeared; and it was known that under- neath those fertile spots, heaps of men and horses lay buried, indiscriminately, enriching the ground. The husbandmen who ploughed those places, shrunk from the great worms ałºś. there; and the sheaves they yielded were, for many a long year, called the Battle Sheaves, and set apart; and no one ever knew a Battle Sheaf to be among the last load at a Harvest Home. For a long time, every furrow that was turned revealed some fragments of the fight. For a long time, there were wounded trees upon the battle-ground; and scraps of hacked and broken fence and wall, where deadly struggles had been made; and trampled parts where not a leaf or blade would grow. For a longtime, no village irl would dress her hair or bosom with the sweetest ower from that field of death: and after many a year had come and gone, the berries growing there were THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 248 still believed to leave too deep a stain upon the hand that plucked them. - - The Seasons in their course, however, though they passed as lightly as the summer clouds themselves, Ob- literated, in the lapse of time, even these remains of the old conflict; and wore away such legendary traces of it as the neighbouring people carried in their minds, until they dwindled into old wives’ tales, dimly remembered round the winter fire, and waning every year. Where the wild flowers and berries had so long remained upon the stem untouched, gardens arose, and houses were built, and children played at battles on the turf. The wounded trees had long ago made Christmas logs, and blazed and roared away. The deep green patches were no greener now than the memory of those who lay in dust below. The ploughshare still turned up from time to time some rusty bits of metal, but it was hard to say what use they had ever served, and those who found them wondered and disputed. An old dinted corslet, and a helmet, had been hanging in the church so long, that the same weak half-blind old man, who tried in vain to make them out above the white-washed arch, had marvelled at them as a baby. If the host slain upon the field could have been for a moment reanimated in the forms in which they fell, each upon the spot that was the bed of his untimely death, gashed and ghastly sol- diers would have stared in, hundreds deep, at household door and window; and would have risen on the hearths of quiet homes; and would have been the garnered store of barns and granaries; and would have started up be- tween the cradled infant and its nurse; and would have floated with the stream, and whirled round on the mill, and crowded the orchard, and burdened the meadow, and piled the rickyard high with dying men. So altered was the battle-ground, where thousands upon thousands had been killed in the great fight. Nowhere more altered, perhaps, about a hundred years ago, than in one little orchard attached to an old stone house with a honeysuckle porch; where, on a bright autumn morning, there were sounds of music and laughter, and where two girls danced merrily together on the grass, while some half-dozen peasant women standing on ladders, gathering the apples from the trees, stopped in their work to look down, and share 244 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. their enjoyment. It was a pleasant, lively, natural scene; a beautiful day, a retired spot; and the two girls, quite unconstrained and careless, danced in the freedom and gaiety of their hearts. g If there were no such thing as display in the world, my private opinion is, and I hope you agree with me, that we might get on a great deal better than we do, and might be infinitely more agreeable company than we are. It was charming to see how these girls danced. They had no spectators but the apple-pickers on the ladders. They were very glad to please them, but they danced to please themselves (or at least you would have supposed so); and you could no more help ºne, than they could help dancing. How they did ance! - Not like opera-dancers. Not at all. And not like Madame Anybody’s finished pupils. Not the least. It was not quadrille dancing, nor minuet dancing, nor even country-dance dancing. It was neither in the old style, nor the new style, nor the French style, nor the English style: though it may have been, by accident, a trifle in the Spanish style, which is a free and joyous one, I am told, deriving a delightful air of off-hand in- spiration, from the chirping little castanets. As they danced among the orchard trees, and down the groves of stems and back again, and twirled each other lightly round and round, the influence of their airy motion seemed to spread and spread, in the sun-lighted scene, like an expanding circle in the water. Their streaming hair and fluttering skirts, the elastic grass beneath their feet, the boughs that rustled in the morning air—the flashing leaves, the speckled shadows on the soft green ground—the balmy wind that swept along the landscape, glad to turn the distant windmill, cheerily—everything between the two girls, and the man and team at plough upon the ridge of land, where they showed against the sky as if they were the last things in the world—seemed dancing too. At last, the younger of the dancing sisters, out of breath, and laughing gaily, threw herself upon a bench to rest. The other leaned against a tree hard by. The music, a wandering harp and fiddle, left off with a flourish, as if it boasted of its freshness; though, the truth is, it had gone at such a pace, and worked itself THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 245 to such a pitch of competition with the dancing, that it never could have held on half a minute longer. The apple-pickers on the ladders raised a hum and murmur of applause, and then, in keeping with the sound, be- stirred themselves to work again like bees. The more actively, perhaps, because an elderly gen- tleman, who was no other than Doctor Jeddler himself —it was Doctor Jeddler's house and orchard, you should know, and these were Doctor Jeddler's daughters—came bustling out to see what was the matter, and who the deuce played music on his property, before breakfast. For he was a great philosopher, Doctor Jeddler, and not very musical. “Music and dancing to-day!” said the Doctor, stop- ping short, and speaking to himself, “I thought they dreaded to-day. But it’s a world of contradictions. Why, Grace, why, Marion!” he added, aloud, “is the world more mad than usual this morning?” “Make some allowance for it, father, if it be,” replied his younger daughter, Marion, going close to him, and looking into his face, “for it’s somebody’s birthday.” “Somebody’s birthday, Puss,” replied the Doctor. “Don’t you know it’s always somebody’s birthday? Did you never hear how many new performers enter on this—ha! haſ ha!—it’s impossible to speak gravely of it —on this preposterous and ridiculous business called Life, every minute?” “No, father!” “No, not you, of course; you’re a woman—almost,” said the Doctor. “By-the-bye,” and he looked into the º face, still close to his, “I suppose it's your birth- ay.” - “No! Do you really, father?” cried his pet daughter, pursing up her red lips to be kissed. “There! Take my love with it,” said the Doctor, im- printing his upon them; “and many happy returns of the-the idea!—of the day. The notion of wishing happy returns in such a farce as this,” said the Doctor to himself, “is good! Ha! haſ hal” Doctor Jeddler was, as I have said, a great philoso- pher, and the heart and mystery of his philosophy was, to look upon the world as a gigantic practical joke; as Something too absurd to be considered seriously by any rational man. His system of belief had been, in the be- 246 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. ginning, part and parcel of the battle-ground on which he lived, as you shall presently understand. “Well! But how did you get the music?” asked the Doctor. “Poultry-stealers, of course! Where did the minstrels come from?” “Alfred sent the music,” said his daughter Grace, ad- justing a few simple flowers in her sister's hair, with which, in her admiration of that youthful beauty, she had herself adorned it half an hour before, and which the dancing had disarranged. “Oh! Alfred sent the music, did he?” returned the Doctor. “Yes. He met it coming out of the town as he was entering early. The men are travelling on foot, and rested there last night; and as it was Marion's birthday, and he thought it would please her, he sent them on, with a pencilled note to me, saying that if I thought so, too, they had come to serenade her.” “Ay, ay,” said the Doctor, carelessly, “he always takes your opinion.” “And my opinion being favourable,” said Grace, good- humouredly; and pausing for a moment to admire the pretty head she decorated, with her own thrown back; ‘‘ and Marion being in high spirits, and beginning to dance, I joined her. And so we danced to Alfred's music till we were out of breath. And we thought the music all the gayer for being sent by Alfred. Didn’t we, dear Marion?” “Oh, I don’t know, Grace. How you tease me about Alfred,” “Tease you by mentioning your lover?” said her sister. “I am sure I don’t much care to have him mentioned,” said the wilful beauty, stripping the petals from some flowers she held, and scattering them on the ground. ‘‘I am almost tired of hearing of him; and as to his being my lover—” “Hush! Don’t speak lightly of a true heart, which is all your own, Marion,” cried her sister, “even in jest. There is not a truer heart than Alfred's in the world!” “No–no,” said Marion, raising her eyebrows with a pleasant air of careless consideration, “perhaps not. But I don’t know that there’s any great merit in that. I—I don’t want him to be so very true. I never asked THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 247 him. If he expects that I–. But, dear Grace, why reed we talk of him at all, just now!” - It was agreeable to see the graceful figures of the blooming sisters twined together, lingering among the trees, conversing thus, with earnestness opposed to light- ness, yet, with love responding tenderly to love. And it was very curious indeed to see the younger sister’s eyes suffused with tears, and something fervently and deeply felt, breaking through the wilfulness of what she said, and striving with it painfully. The difference between them, in respect of age, could not exceed four years at most; but Grace, as often hap- pens in such cases, when no mother watches over both (the Doctor’s wife was dead), seemed, in her gentle care of her young sister, and in the steadiness of her devotion to her, older than she was; and more removed, in course of nature, from all competition with her, or participation, otherwise than through her sympathy and true affection, in her wayward fancies, than their ages seemed to war- rant. Great character of mother, that, even in this shadow and faint reflection of it, purifies the heart, and raises the exalted nature nearer to the angels! The Doctor’s reflections, as he looked after them, and heard the purport of their discourse, were limited at first to certain merry meditations on the folly of all loves and likings, and the idle imposition practised on them- selves by young people, who believed for a moment, that there could be anything serious in such bubbles, and were always undeceived—always! But the home-adorning, self-denying qualities of Grace, and her sweet temper, so gentle and retiring, yet including, so much constancy and bravery of spirit, seemed all expressed to him in the contrast between her quiet household figure and that of his younger and more beautiful child; and he was sorry for her sake— Sorry for them both—that life should be such a very ridiculous business as it was. The Doctor never dreamed of inquiring whether his children, or either of them, helped in any way to make the scheme a serious one. But then he was a Phi- losopher. A kind and generous man by nature, he had stumbled, by chance, over that common Philosopher's stone (much more easily discovered than the object of the alchemist's * ! 248 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. researches), which sometimes trips up kind and generous men, and has the fatal property of turning gold to dross and every precious thing to poor account. - “Britain!” cried the Doctor. “Britain! Halloa." A small man, with an uncommonly sour and discon- tented face, emerged from the house, and returned to #. call the unceremonious acknowledgment of “Now en!” “Where's the breakfast table?” said the Doctor. “In the house,” returned Britain. “Are you going to spread it out here, as your were told last night?” said the Doctor. “Don’t you know that there are gentlemen coming? That there’s business to be done this morning, before the coach comes by ? That this is a very particular occasion?” “I couldn’t do anything, Doctor Jeddler, till the woman had done getting in the apples, could I?” said Britain, his voice rising with his reasoning, so that it was very loud at last. - “Well, have they done now?” returned the Doctor, looking at his watch, and clapping his hands. “Come! make haste! where’s Clemency?” “Here am I, Mister,” said a voice from one of the ladders, which a pair of clumsy feet descended briskly. “It’s all done now. Clear away, gals. Everything shall be ready for you in half a minute, mister.” With that she began to bustle about most vigourously; presenting, as she did so, an appearance sufficiently peculiar to justify a word of introduction. She was about thirty years old, and had a sufficiently plump and cheerful face, though it was twisted up into an odd expression of tightness that made it comical. But the extraordinary homeliness of her gait and man- ner would have superseded any face in the world. To say that she had two left legs, and somebody else’s arms, and that all four limbs seemed to be out of joint, and to start from perfectly wrong places when they were set in motion, is to offer the mildest outline of the reality. To say that she was perfectly content and satisfied with these arrangements, and regarded them as being no business of hers, and that she took her arms and legs as they came, and allowed them to dispose of them- selves just as it happened, is to render faint justice to her equanimity. Her dress was a prodigious pair of THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 249 self-willed shoes, that never wanted to go where her . feet went; blue stockings; a printed gown of many col- ours and the most hideous pattern procurable for money; and a white apron. She always wore short sleeves, and always had, by some accident, grazed elbows, in which she took so lively an interest, that she was continually trying to turn them round and get impossible views of them. In general, a little cap perched somewhere on her head; though it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied in other subjects, by that article of dress; but, from head to foot she was scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed, her laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called a busk), and wrestle as it were with her garments, until they fell into a symmetrical arrangement. Such, in outward form and garb, was Clemency New- come; who was supposed to have unconsciously origi- nated a corruption of her own Christian name, from Clementina (but nobody knew, for the deaf old mother, a very phenomenon of age, whom she had supported almost from a child, was dead, and she had no other relation); who now busied herself in preparing the table, and who stood, at intervals, with her bare red arms crossed, rubbing her grazed elbows with opposite hands, and staring at it very composedly, until she suddenly remembered something else it wanted, and jogged off to fetch it. “Here are them two lawyers a-coming, mister!” said Clemency, in a tone of no very great good-will. “Aha!” cried the Doctor, advancing to the gate to meet them. “Good-morning, good-morning! Grace, my dear! Marion' Here are Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs. Where's Alfred?” “He’ll be back directly, father, no doubt,” said Grace. “He had so much to do this morning in his preparation for departure, that he was up and out by daybreak. Good-morning, gentlemen.” “Ladies!” said Mr. Snitchey, “for Self and Craggs,” who bowed, “good-morning, miss,” to Marion, “I kiss your hand.” Which he did. “And I wish you”—which 250 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. sº he might or might not, for he didn’t look, at first sight, like a gentleman troubled with many warm outpourings of Soul, in behalf of other people—“a hundred happy returns of this auspicious day.” “Ha,ha, ha!” laughed the Doctor thoughtfully, with his hands in his pockets. “The great farce in a hundred acts!” “You wouldn't, I am sure,” said Mr. Snitchey, stand- ing a small professional blue bag against one leg of the table, “cut the great farce short for this actress, at all events, Doctor Jeddler.” - “No,” returned the Doctor. “God forbid! May she live to laugh at it, as long as she can laugh, and then say, with the French wit, ‘The farce is ended; draw the Curtain.’” “The French wit,” said Mr. Snitchey, peeping sharply into his blue bag, was wrong, Doctor Jeddler, and your philosophy is altogether wrong, depend upon it, as I have often told you. Nothing serious in life! What do you call law?” “A joke,” replied the Doctor. “Did you ever go to law?” asked Mr. Snitchey, look- ing out of the blue bag. - “Never,” returned the Doctor. , “If you ever do,” said Mr. Snitchey, “perhaps you’ll alter that opinion.” Craggs, who seemed to be represented by Snitchey, and to be conscious of little or no separate existence or personal individuality, offered a remark of his own in this place. It involved the only idea of which he did not stand seized and possessed in equal moieties with Snitchey; but he had some partners in it among the wise men of the world. . “It’s made a great deal too easy,” said Mr. Craggs. “Law is?” asked the Doctor. “Yes,” said Mr. Craggs, “everything is. Everything appears to me to be made too easy, now-a-days. It’s the vice of these times. If the world is a joke (I am not prepared to say it isn’t), it ought to be made a very dif- ficult joke to crack. It ought to be as hard a struggle, sir, as possible. That’s the intention. But it’s being made far too easy. We are oiling the gates of life. They ought to be rusty. We shall have them beginning to turn, soon, with a smooth sound. Whereas they Ought to grate upon their hinges, sir,” - - THE BATTLE OF LIFE. º 251 Mr. Craggs seemed Pº. to grate upon his own hinges, as he delivered this opinion; to which he com- municated immense effect—being a cold, hard, dry man, dressed in grey and white, like a flint; with small twinkles in his eyes, as if something struck sparks out of them. The three natural kingdoms, indeed, had each a fanciful representative among this brotherhood of disputants: for Snitchey was like a magpie or a raven (only not so sleek), and the Doctor had a streaked face like a winter-pippin, with here and there a dimple to ex- press the peckings of the birds, and a very little bit of pigtail behind that stood for the stalk. As the active figure of a handsome young man, dressed for a journey, and followed by a porter bearing several packages and baskets, entered the Orchard at a brisk pace, and with an air of gaiety and hope that ac- corded well with the morning, these three drew together, like the brothers of the sister Fates, or like the Graces most effectually disguised, or like the three weird pro- phets on the heath, and greeted him. “Happy returns, Alf!” said the Doctor, lightly. “A hundred happy returns of this auspicious day, |Mr. Heathfield!” said Snitchey, bowing low. is Returns!” Craggs murmured in a deep voice, all a, ] () {} 62. “Why, what a battery!” exclaimed Alfred, stopping short; “and one—two—three—all foreboders of no good, in the great Sea before me. I am glad you are not the first I have met this morning: I should have taken it for a bad omen. But Grace was the first—sweet, pleasant Grace—so I defy you all!” “If you please, mister, I was the first, you know,” said Clemency Newcomb. “She was walking out here before sunrise, you remember. I was in the house.” “That’s true!” Clemency was the first,” said Alfred. “So I defy you with Clemency.” “Ha, ha, ha!—for Self and Craggs,” said Snitchey. “What a defiance!” “Not so bad a one as it appears, may be,” said Alfred, shaking hands heartily with the Doctor, and also with Snitchey and Craggs, and then looking around. “Where are the-Good Heavens!” • “With a start, productive for a moment of a closer partnership between Jonathan Snitchey and Thomas 252 THE BATTLE OF LIFE Craggs than the subsisting articles of agreement in that wise contemplated, he hastily betook himself to where the sisters stood together, and—however, I needn’t more particularly explain his manner of saluting Marion first, and Grace afterwards, than by hinting that Mr. Craggs may possibly have considered it “too easy.” & Perhaps, to change the subject, Doctor Jeddler made a hasty move toward the breakfast, and they all sat down at table. Grace presided, but so discreetly stationed herself as to cut off her sister and Alfred from the rest of the company. Snitchey and Craggs sat at opposite corners, with the blue bag between them for safety; the Doctor took his usual position, opposite to Grace. Clem- ency hovered galvanically about the table as waitress; and the melancholy Britain, at another and a smaller - º, acted as Grand Carver of a round of beef and a la, Iſl. “Meat?” said Britain, approaching Mr. Snitchey, with the carving knife and fork in his hands, and throwing the question at him like a missile. “Certainly,” returned the lawyer. “Do you want any?” to Craggs. “Lean and well done,” replied that gentleman. Having executed these orders, and moderately sup- plied the Doctor (he seemed to know that nobody else wanted anything to eat), he lingered as near the firm as he decently could, watching with an austere eye their disposition of the viands, and but once relaxing the severe expression of his face. This was on the occasion of Mr. Craggs, whose teeth were not of the best, partially choking, when he cried out with great animation, “I thought he was gone!” “Now, Alfred,” said the Doctor, “for a word or two of business, while we are yet at breakfast.” - - “While we are yet at breakfast,” said Snitchey and Craggs, who seemed to have no present idea of leaving OTI. - Although Alfred had not been breakfasting, and seemed to have quite enough business on his hands as it was, he respectfully answered: “If you please, sir.” ..? “If anything could be serious,” the Doctor began, “ in such a-’ t “Farce as this, sir,” hinted Alfred. THE BATTLE OF I.IFE. 253 “In such a farce as this,” observed the Doctor; “it might be this recurrence, on the eve of separation, of a double birthday, which is connected with many associ- ations pleasant to us four, and with the recollection of a long and amicable intercourse. That’s not to the pur- Ose.” “Ah! yes, yes, Dr. Jeddler,” said the young man. “It is to the purpose—much to the purpose—as my heart bears witness this morning, and as yours does, too, I know, if you would let it speak. I leave your house to- day; I cease to be your ward to-day; we part with ten- der relations stretching far behind us, that never can be exactly renewed, and with others dawning yet before us,” he looked down at Marion beside him, “fraught with such considerations as . I must not trust myself to speak of now. Come, come!” he added, rallying his spirits and the Doctor at once, “there’s a serious grain in this large foolish dust-heap, Doctor. Let us allow to- day that there is One.” “To-day!” cried the Doctor. “Hear him! Ha, ha, ha! Of all days in the foolish year. Why, on this day the great battle was fought on this ground. On this ground where we now sit, where I saw my two girls dance this morning, where the fruit has just been gathered for our eating from these trees, the roots of which are stuck in Men, not earth, so many lives were lost, that within my recollection, generations afterwards, a churchyard full of bones, and dust of bones, and chips of cloven skulls, has been dug up from underneath our feet here. Yet not a hundred people in that battle knew for what they fought, or why; not a hundred of the in- considerate rejoicers in the victory, why they rejoiced. Not half a hundred people were the better for the gain or loss. Not half-a-dozen men agree to this hour on the cause or merits; and nobody, in short, ever knew anything distinct about it but the mourners of the slain. Serious, too !” said the Doctor, laughing. “Such a systemſ” - “But all this seems to me,” said Alfred, “to be very serious.” - “Serious!” cried the Doctor. “If you allowed such things to be serious, you must go mad, or die, or climb up to the top of the mountain and turn hermit.” “Besides—so long ago,” said Alfred. 254 . THE BATTLE OF LIFE. “Long ago!” returned the Doctor. “Do you know what the world has been doing, ever since? Do you know what else it has been doing? I don't!” “It has gone to law a little,” observed Mr. Snitchey, stirring his tea. “Although the way out has been always made too. easy,” said his partner. ‘. And you’ll excuse my saying, Doctor,” pursued Mr. Snitchey, “having been already put a thousand times in possession of my opinion, in the course of our dis- cussions, that, in its having gone to law, and in its legal System altogether, I do observe a serious side—now, really, a Something tangible, and. with a purpose and intention in it—” Clemency Newcome made an angular tumble against the table, occasioning a sounding clatter among the Cups and saucers. - “Heyday! what’s the matter there?” exclaimed the T)octor. “It’s this evil-inclined blue bag,” said Clemency, “always tripping up somebody!” - “With a purpose and intention in it, I was saying,” resumed Snitchey, “that commands respect. Life a farce, Doctor Jeddler? With law in it?” The Doctor laughed and looked at Alfred. ‘‘ Granted, if you please, that war is foolish,” said Snitchey. “There we agree. For example. Here’s a smiling country,” pointing it out with his fork, ‘‘ once Overrun by soldiers—trespassers every man of 'em—and laid waste by fire and sword. He, he, hel The idea of any man exposing himself, voluntarily, to fire and sword! Stupid, wasteful, positively ridiculous; you laugh at your fellow-creatures, you know, when you think of it! But take this smiling country as it stands. Think of the laws appertaining to real property; to the bequest and devise of real property; to the mortgage and redemption of real property; to leasehold, freehold, and copyhold estate; think,” said Mr. Snitchey, with such great emotion that he actually smacked his lips, “of the complicated laws relating to title and proof of title, with all the contradictory precedents and numerous acts of Parliament connected with them; think of the infinite number of ingenious and interminable Chancery Suits, to which this pleasant prospect may give rise; THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 255 and acknowledge, Doctor Jeddler, that there is a green spot in the scheme about us! I believe,” said Mr. Snitchey, looking at his partner, “that I speak for Self and Craggs?” g Mr. Craggs having signified assent, Mr. Snitchey, somewhat freshened by his recent eloquence, observed º he would take a little more beef and another cup Of tea. “I don’t stand up for life in general,” he added, rub- bing his hands and chuckling, “it’s full of folly; full of something worse. Professions of trust, and confidence, and unselfishness, and all that! Bah, bah, bah! We see what they’re worth. But you mustn't laugh at life; you’ve got a game to play; a very serious game indeed! Everybody’s playing against you, you know, and you’re playing against them. . Oh! it’s a very interesting thing. There are deep moves upon the board. You must only laugh, Doctor Jeddler, when you win—and then not much. He, he, hel And then not much,” repeated Snitchey, rolling his head and winking his eye, as if he would have added, “you may do this instead!” - “Well, Alfred!” cried the Doctor, “what do you say now P” “I say, sir,” replied Alfred, “that the greatest favour you could do me, and yourself, too, I am inclined to think, would be to try sometimes to forget this battle- field, and others like it, in that broader battle-field of Life, on which the sun looks every day.” “Really, I’m afraid that wouldn’t soften his opinions, Mr. Alfred,” said Snitchey. “The combatants are very eager and very bitter in that same battle of Life. There's a great deal of cutting and slashing, and firing into people's heads from behind. There is terri- ble treading down and trampling on. It is rather a bad business.” - - “I believe, Mr. Snitchey,” said Alfred, “there are quiet victories and struggles, great sacrifices of self, and noble acts of heroism, in it—even in many of its #." lightnesses and contradictions—not the less difficult to achieve, because they have no earthly chroni- cle or audience—done every day in nooks and corners, and in little households, and in men’s and women’s hearts—any one of which might reconcile the sternest man to such a World, and fill him with belief and hope 256 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. in it, though two-fourths of its people were at war, and another fourth at law; and that’s a bold word.” Both the sisters listened keenly. “Well, well!” said the Doctor, “I am too old to be converted, even by my friend Snitchey here, or my good spinster sister, Martha Jeddles; who had what she calls her domestic trials ages ago, and has led a sympathising life with all sorts of people ever since; and who is so much of your opinion (only she’s less reasonable and more obstinate, being a woman), that we can't agree, and seldom meet. I was born upon this battle-field. I began, as a boy, to have my thoughts directed to the real history of a battle-field. Sixty years have gone over my head, and I have never seen the Christian world, including Heaven knows how many loving mothers and good enough girls like mine here, anything but mad for a battle-field. The same contradictions prevail in every- thing. One must either laugh or cry at such stupen- dous inconsistencies; and I prefer to laugh.” Britain, who had been paying the profoundest and most melancholy attention to each speaker in his turn, seemed suddenly to decide in favour of the same prefer- ence, if a deep sepulchral sound that escaped him might be construed into a demonstration of risibility. His face, however, was so perfectly unaffected by it, both before and afterwards, that although one or two of the breakfast party looked round as being startled by a mysterious noise, nobody connected the offender with it. Except his partner in attendance, Clemency Newcome; who, rousing him with one of those favourite joints, her elbows, inquired, in a reproachful whisper, what he laughed at. “Not you!” said Britain. “Who then?” “Humanity,” said Britain. “That’s the joke!” “What between master and them lawyers, he’s get- ting more and , more addle-headed every day!” cried Clemency, giving him a lunge with the other elbow, as a mental stimulant. “Do you know where you are? Do you want to get warning?” “I don’t know anything,” said Britain, with a leaden eye and an immovable visage. “I don’t care for any- thing. I don’t make out anything. I don’t believe any- thing. And I don’t want anything.” THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 257 Although this forlorn summary of his general condi- tion may have been overcharged in an excess of de- spondency, Benjamin Britain—sometimes called Little Britain, to distinguish him from Great; as we might say Young England, to express Old England with a decided difference—had defined his real state more accurately than might be supposed. For, serving as a sort of man Miles to the Doctor's Friar Bacon, and listening day after day to innumerable orations addressed by the Doctor to various people, all tending to show that his very existence was at best a mistake and an absurdity, this unfortunate servitor had fallen, by degrees, into such an abyss of confused and contradictory sugges- tions from within and from without, that Truth at the bottom of her well, was on the level surface as compared with Britain in the depths of his mystification. The only point he clearly comprehended, was, that the new element usually brought into these discussions by Snitchey and Craggs, never served to make them clearer, and always seemed to give the Boctor a species of ad- vantage and confirmation. Therefore, he looked upon the Firm as one of the proximate causes of his state of mind, and held them in abhorrence accordingly. “But this is not our business, Alfred,” said the Doc- tor. “Ceasing to be my ward (as you have said) to- day; and leaving us full to the brim of such learning as the Grammar School down here was able to give you, and your studies in London could add to that, and such practical knowledge as a dull old country Doctor like myself could graft upon both: you are away, now, into the world. The first term of probation appointed by your poor father being over, away you go now, your own master, to fulfil his second desire. And long before your three year's tour among the foreign schools of medicine is finished, you’ll have forgotten us. Lord, you’ll forget us easily in six months!” “If I do—but you know better; why should I speak to you!” said Alfred, laughing. “I don’t know anything of the sort,” returned the Doctor. “What do you say, Marion?” Marion, trifling with her teacup, seemed to say—but she didn’t say it—that he was welcome to forget them, if he could. Grace pressed the blooming face against her cheek, and smiled. 18 258 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. “I haven’t been, I hope, a very unjust steward in the execution of my trust,” pursued the Doctor; “but I am to be, at any rate, formally discharged, and released, and what not this morning; and here are our good friends Snitchey and Craggs, with a bagful of papers, and accounts, and documents, for the transfer of the balance of the trust fund to you (I wish it was a more . difficult one to dispose of, Alfred, but you must get to be a great man, and make it so), and other drolleries of that sort, which are to be signed, sealed and delivered.” “And duly witnessed as by law required,” said Snitchey, pushing away his plate, and taking out the papers, which his partner proceeded to spread upon the table; “and Self and Craggs having being co-trustees with you, Doctor, in so far as the fund was concerned, we shall want your two servants to attest the signatures —can you read, Mrs. Newcome?” . “I a’n’t married, mister,” said Clemency. “Oh, I beg your pardon. I should think not,” chuckled Snitchey, casting his eyes over her extraor- dinary figure. “You can read?” “A little,” answered Clemency. `s “The marriage service, night and morning, eh?” ob- served the lawyer, jocosely. ‘‘No,” said Clemency. “Too hard. I only reads a thimble.” & - “Read a thimble!” echoed Snitchey. “What are you talking about, young woman?” Clemency nodded. “And a nutmeg-grater.” “Why, this is a lunatic! a subject for the Lord High Chancellor!” said Snitchey, staring at her. —“If possessed of any property,’” stipulated Craggs. Grace, however, interposing, explained that each of the articles in question bore an engraved motto, and so formed the pocket library of Clemency Newcome, who was not much given to study of books. “Oh, that’s it, is it, Miss Grace!”*said Snitchey. “Yes, yes. Ha, ha, ha! I thought our friend was an idiot. She looks uncommonly like it,” he muttered, with a supercilious glance. “And what does the thimble say, Mrs. Newcome?” - • . “I a’n’t married, mister,” observed Clemency. “Well, Newcome. Will that do?” said the lawyer, “What does the thimble say, Newcome?” * THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 259 How Clemency, before replying to this question, held one pocket open, and looked down into its yawning depths for the thimble which wasn’t there—and how she then held an opposite pocket open, and seeming to descry it, like a pearl of great price, at the bottom, cleared away such intervening obstacles as a handker- chief, an end of wax candle, a flushed apple, an Orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a pair of scis- . sors in a sheath more expressly describable as promising young shears, a handful or so of loose beads, several balls of cotton, a needle-case, a cabinet collection of curl-papers, and a biscuit, all of which articles she en- trusted individually and severally to Britain to hold—is of no consequence. Nor how, in her determination to grasp this pocket by the throat and keep it prisoner (for it had a tendency to swing, and twist itself round the nearest corner), she assumed and calmly maintained an attitude apparently inconsistent with the human anat- omy and the laws of gravity. It is enough that at last shes triumphantly produced the thimble on her finger, and rattled the nutmeg-grater: the literature of both these trinkets being obviously in course of wearing out and wasting away, through excessive friction. “That's the thimble, is it, young woman?” said Mr. Snitchey, diverting himself at her expense. “And what does the thimble say?” - “It says,” replied Clemency, reading slowly round as if it were a tower, “For-get and for-give.” Snitchey, and Craggs laughed heartily. “So new!” said Snitchey. “So easy!” said Craggs. “Such a knowledge of human nature in it!” said Snitchey. “So applicable to the affairs of life!” said Craggs. rº" the nutmeg-grater?” inquired the head of the II’Iſl. - “The grater says,” returned Clemency, “Do as you —would—be—done by.” - ‘‘DO, or you’ll be done brown, you mean,” said Mr. Snitchey. g “I don't understand,” retorted Clemency, shaking her head vaguely. “I a’n’t no lawyer.” “I am afraid that if she was, Doctor,” said Mr. Snitchey, turning to him suddenly, as if to anticipate any effect that might otherwise be consequent on this retort, “she'd find it to be the golden rule of half her * : * * *. . • * ~, 260 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. " clients. They are serious enough in that—whimsical as your world is—and lay the blame on us afterwards. We, in our profession, are little else than mirrors after all, Mr. Alfred; but we are generally consulted by angry and quarrelsome people who are not in their best looks, and its rather hard to quarrel with us if we reflect un- pleasant aspects. I think,” said Mr. Snitchey, “I speak for Self and Craggs?” “Decidedly,” said Craggs. - “And so, if Mr. Britain will oblige us with a mouth- ful of ink,” said Mr. Snitchey, returning to the papers, “we’ll sign, seal, and deliver as soon as possible, or the coach will be coming past before we know where we are.” - If one might judge from his appearance, there was every probability of the coach coming past before Mr. Britain knew where he was; for he stood in a state of abstraction, mentally, balancing the Doctor against the lawyers, and the lawyers against the Doctor, and their clients against both, and engaged in feeble attempts to make the thimble and nutmeg-grater (a new idea to him) square with anybody’s system of philosophy; and, in short, bewildering himself as much as ever his great namesake has done with theories and schools. But, Clemency, who was his good Genius—though he had the meanest possible opinion of her understanding, by rea- son of her seldom troubling herself with abstract specu- lations, and being always at hand to do the right thing at the right time—having produced the ink in a twink- ling, tendered him the further service of recalling him to himself by the application of her elbows; with which gentle flappers she so jogged his memory, in a more lit- eral construction of that phrase than usual, that he soon became quite fresh and brisk. How he laboured under an apprehension not uncom- non to persons in his degree, to whom the use of pen and ink is an event, that he couldn’t append his name to a document, not of his own writing, without commit- ting himself in some shadowy manner, or somehow signing away vague and enormous sums of money; and how he approached the deeds under protest, and by dint of the Doctor's coercion, and insisted on pausing to look at them before writing º cramped hand, to say noth- ing of the phraseology, being so much Chinese to him), * - * * THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 261 and also on turning them round to see whether there was anything fraudulent underneath; and how, having signed his name, he became desolate as one who had parted with his property and rights; I want the time to tell. Also, how the blue bag containing his signature, afterwards had a mysterious interest for him, and he couldn’t leave it; also, how Clemency Newcome, in an ecstasy of laughter at the idea of her own importance and dignity, brooded over the whole table with her two elbows, like a spread eagle, and reposed her head upon her left arm as a preliminary to the formation of certain cabalistic characters, which required a deal of ink, and imaginary counterparts whereof she executed at the same time with her tongue. Also, how, having once tasted ink, she became thirsty in that regard, as tame tigers are said to be after tasting another sort of fluid, and wanted to sign everything, and put her name in all kinds of places. In brief, the Doctor was discharged of his trust and all its responsibilities; and Alfred, taking it on himself, was fairly started on the journey of life. “ Britain!” said the Doctor. “Run to the gate, and watch for the coach. Time flies, Alfred!” “Yes, sir, yes,” returned the young man, hurriedly. “Dear Grace! a moment! Marion—so young and beau- tiful, so winning and so much admired, dear to my heart as nothing else in life is—remember! I leave Marion to you!” - ‘‘ She has always been a sacred charge to me, Alfred. She is doubly so, now. I will be faithful to my trust, believe me.” “I do believe it, Grace. I know it well. Who could look upon your face, and hear your voice, and not know it! Ah, Grace! If I had your well-governed heart, and ºil mind, how bravely I would leave this place to- ay p. “Would you?” she answered with a quiet smile. “And yet, Grace—Sister, seems the natural word.” “ Use it!” she said quickly. “I am glad to hear it. Call me nothing else.” “And yet, sister, then,” said Alfred, “ Marion and I had better have your true and steadfast qualities serv- ing us here, and making us both happier and better. I wouldn’t carry them away, to sustain myself, if I could!” “Coach upon the hill-top!” exclaimed Britain. - *- * * * ** 262 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. ‘‘Time flies, Alfred,” said the Doctor. Marion had stood apart, with her eyes fixed upon the ground; but, this warning being given, her young lover brought her tenderly to where her sister stood, and gave her into her embrace. “I have been telling Grace, dear Marion,” he said, “that you are her charge; my precious trust at parting. And when I come back and reclaim you, dearest, and the bright prospect of our married life lies'stretched be- fore us, it shall be one of our chief pleasures to consult how we can make Grace happy; how we can anticipate her wishes; how we can show our gratitude and love to her; how we can return her something of the debt she will have heaped upon us.” The younger sister had one hand in his hand; the other rested on her sister's neck. She looked into that sister's eyes, so calm, serene, and cheerful, with a gaze in which affection, admiration, sorrow, wonder, almost veneration, were blended. She looked into that sister’s face, as if it were the face of some bright angel. Calm, Serene, and cheerful, the face looked back on her and on her lover. “And when the time comes, as it must one day,” said Alfred—“I wonder it has never come yet, but Grace knows best, for Grace is always right—when she will want a friend to open her whole heart to, and to be to her something of what she has been to us—then, Marion, how faithful we will prove, and what delight to us to know that she, our dear, good sister, loves and is loved again, as we would have her!” • Still the younger sister looked into her eyes, and turned not—even towards him. And still those honest eyes looked back, so calm, serene, and cheerful, on her- self and on her lover. “And when all that is past, and we are old, and living (as we must!) together—close together—talking often of old times,” said Alfred—“these shall be our favourite times among them—this day most of all; and, telling each other what we thought and felt, and hoped and feared at parting; and how we couldn’t bear to say good-bye—” . “Coach coming through the wood!” cried Britain. “Yes! I am ready—and how we met again, so hap- pily, in spite of all; we’ll make this day the happiest in THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 263 º th: year, and keep it as a treble birthday. Shall we, ear? * “Yes!” interposed the elder sister, eagerly, and with a . radiant smile. “Yes! Alfred, don’t linger. There’s no . time. Say good-bye to Marion. And Heaven be with you!” . He pressed the younger sister to his heart. Released from his embrace, she again clung to her sister; and her eyes, with the same blended look, again sought those SO calm, serene, and cheerful. . - “Farewell, my boy!” said the Doctor. “To talk about any serious correspondence or serious affections, and en- gagements and so forth, in such a-ha, ha, ha!—you know what I mean—why that, of course, would be sheer nonsense. All I can say is, that if you and Marion should continue in the same foolish minds, I shall not object to have you for a son-in-law one of these days.” “Over the bridge!” cried Britain. - “Let it come!” said Alfred, wringing the Doctor's hand stoutly. “Think of me sometimes, my old friend and guardian, as seriously as you can! Adieu, Mr. Snitchey! Farewell, Mr. Craggs!” . “Coming down the road!” cried Britain. “A kiss of Clemency Newcome, for long acquaintance’ sake! Shake hands, Britain! Marion, dearest heart, good-bye! Sister Grace! remember!” The quiet household figure, and the face so beautiful in its serenity, were turned towards him in reply; but Marion’s look and attitude remained unchanged. The coach was at the gate. There was a bustle with the luggage. The coach drove away. Marion never moved. p “He waves his hat to you, my love,’ “YQur chosen husband, darling, Look!” The younger sister raised her head, and, for a mo- ment, turned it. Then, turning back again, and fully meeting, for the first time, those calm eyes, fell sobbing on her neck. º “Oh, Grace. God bless you! But I cannot bear to see it, Grace! It breaks my heart.” 5 said Grace. 264 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. PART THE SECOND. SNITCHEY AND CRAGGS had a snug little office on the old Battle Ground, where they drove a snug little busi- ness, and fought a great many small pitched battles for a great many contending parties. Though it could hardly be said of these conflicts that they were running fights —for in truth they generally proceeded at a snail’s pace —the part the Firm had in them came so far within the general denomination, that now they took a shot at this Plaintiff, and now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now made a heavy charge at an estate in Chancery, and now had some light skirmishing among an irregular body of small debtors, just as the , occasion served, and the enemy happened to present himself. The Gazette was an important and profitable feature in some of their fields, as in fields of greater renown; and in most of the Actions wherein they showed their generalship, it was afterwards observed by the combatants that they had had great difficulty in making each other out, or in knowing with any degree of distinctness what they were about, in consequence of the vast amount of Smoke by which they were surrounded. The offices of Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs stood con- venient, with an open door down two smooth steps, in the market-place; so that any angry farmer, inclining towards hot water, might tumble into it at once. Their special council-chamber and hall of conference was an old back room up-stairs, with a low dark ceiling, which seemed to be knitting its brows gloomily in the gon: sideration of tangled points of law. It was furnished with some high-backed leathern chairs, garnished with great goggle-eyed brass nails, of which, every here and there, two or three had faller out—or had been picked out, perhaps, by the wandering thumbs and forefingers of bewildered clients. There was a framed print of a great judge in it, every curl in whose dreadful wig had made a man’s hair stand on end. Bales of papers filled the dusty closets, shelves and tables; and round the wainscot there were tiers of boxes, padlocked and THE BATTLE OF LIFE 265 fireproof, with people's names painted outside, which anxious visitors felt themselves, by a cruel enchant- ment, obliged to spell backwards and forwards, and to make anagrams of, while they sat, seeming to listen to Snitchey and Craggs, without comprehending one word of what they said. Snitchey and Craggs had each, in private life as in professional existence, a partner of his own. Snitchey and Craggs were the best friends in the world, and had a real confidence in one another; but Mrs. Snitchey, by a dispensation not uncommon in the affairs of life, was on principle suspicious of Mr. Craggs; and Mrs. Craggs was of principle suspicious of Mr. Snitchey. “Your Snitcheys. indeed,” the latter lady would observe, some- times, to Mr. Craggs; using that imaginative plural as if in disparagement of an objectionable pair of pan- taloons, or other articles not possessed of a singular number; “I don’t see what you want with your Snitcheys, for my part. You trust a great deal too much to your Snitcheys, I think, and I hope you may never find my words come true.” While Mrs. Snitchey would observe to Mr. Snitchey, of Craggs, “that if ever he was led away by man he was led away by that man, and that if ever she read a double purpose in a mortal eye, she read that purpose in Cragg's eye.” Notwith- standing this, however, they were all very good friends in general, and Mrs. Smitchey and Mrs. Craggs main- tained a close bond of alliance against “the office,” which they both considered the Blue Chamber, and Common enemy, full of dangerous (because unknown) machinations. In this office, nevertheless, Snitchey and Craggs made honey for their several hives, Here, sometimes, they would linger of a fine evening, at the window of their Council-chamber, Overlooking the old battle-ground, and wonder (but that was generally at assize time, when much business had made them sentimental) at the folly Of mankind, who couldn’t always be at peace with one another and go to law comfortably. Here, days, and weeks, and months, and years passed over them: their calendar, the gradually diminishing number of brass nails in the leathern chairs, and the increasing bulk of º on the tables, Here, nearly three years' flight had thinned the one and swelled the other, since the **. º 266 . THE BATTLE OF LIFE. breakfast in the orchard; when they sat together in con- Sultation at night. Not alene; but with a man of thirty, or about that time of life, negligently dressed, and somewhat hag- gard in the face, but well-made, well-attired, and well- looking; who sat in the arm-chair of state, witli one hand in his breast, and the other in his dishevelled hair, pondering moodily. Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs sat opposite each other at a neighbouring desk. One of the fireproof boxes, unpadlocked and opened, was upon it; a part of its contents lay strewn upon the table, and the rest was then in course of passing through the hands of Mr. Snitchey; who brought it to the candle, document by document; looked at every paper singly, as he produced it; shook his head, and handed it to Mr. Craggs; who looked it over also, shook his head, and laid it down. Sometimes, they would stop, and shaking their heads in concert, look towards the abstracted client. And the name on the box being Michael Warden, Esquire, we may conclude from these prem- ises that the name and the box were both his, and that the affairs of Michael Warden, Esquire, were in a bad way. “That’s all,” said. Mr. Snitchey, turning up the last paper. “Really there’s no other resource. No other resource.” “All lost, spent, wasted, pawned, borrowed and sold, eh?” said the client, looking up. “All,” returned Mr. Snitchey. “Nothing else to be done, you say?” “Nothing at all.” The client bit his nails, and pondered again. “And I am not even personally safe in England? You hold to that, do you?” “In no part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,” replied Mr. Snitchey. “A mere prodigal son with no father to go back to, no swine to keep, and no husks to share with them? Eh?” pursued the client, rocking one leg over the other, and searching the ground with his eyes. 3. Mr. Snitchey coughed as if to deprecate the being sup- osed to participate in any figurative illustration of a egal position. Mr. Craggs, as if to express that it was a partnership view of the subject, also coughed, THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 267 “Ruined at thirty!” said the client. “Humph!” “Not ruined, Mr. Warden,” returned Snitchey. “Not so bad as that. You have done a good deal towards it, I must say, but you are not ruined. A little nurs- ling ”— - “A little devil,” said the client. -* “Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, “will you oblige me with a pinch of snuff? Thank you, sir.” As the imperturbable lawyer applied it to his nose, with great apparent relish and a perfect absorption of his at- tention in the proceeding, the client gradually broke into a Smile, and, looking up, said: “You talk of nursing. How long nursing?” “How long nursing?” repeated Snitchey, dusting the Snuff from his fingers, and making a slow calculation in his mind. “ For your involved estate, sir? In good hands? S. and C.’s, say? Six or seven years.” * “To starve for six or seven years!” said the client with a fretful laugh, and an impatient change of his position. & “To starve for six or seven years, Mr. Warden,” said Snitchey, “would be very uncommon, indeed. You might get another estate by showing yourself, the while. But, we don’t think you could do it—speaking for Self and Craggs—and consequently don’t advise it.” “What do you advise?” * * “Nursing, I say,” repeated Snitchey. “Some few years nursing by Self and Craggs would bring it round. But to enable us to make terms, and hold terms, and you to keep terms, you must go away; you must live abroad. As to starvation, we could insure you some hundreds a year to starve upon, even in the beginning— I dare say, Mr. Warden.” - “Hundreds,” said the client. “And I have spent thousands!” “That,” retorted Mr. Snitchey, putting the papers slowly back into the cast-iron box, ‘‘there is no doubt about, No doubt a-bout,” he repeated to himself, as he thoughtfully pursued his occupation. The lawyer very likely knew his man; at any rate his dry, shrewd, whimsical manner, had a favourable influ- ence on the client's moody state, and disposed him to be more free and unreserved. Or, perhaps the client knew his man, and had elicited such encouragement as he 268. THE BATTLE OF LIFE. had received, to render some purpose he was about to disclose the more defensible in appearance. Grad- ually raising his head, he sat looking at his immov- able adviser with a smile, which presently broke into a laugh. - “After all,” he said, “my iron-headed friend—” Mr. Snitchey pointed out his partner. “Self and—ex- Cuse me—Craggs.” “I beg Mr. Craggs's pardon,” said the client. “After all, my iron-headed friends,” he leaned forward in his chair, and dropped his voice a little, “you don’t know half my ruin yet.” - - - Mr. Snitchey stopped and stared at him. Mr. Craggs also stared. “I am not only deep in debt,” said the client, “but I am deep in-” * “Not in love!” cried Snitchey. - - “Yes!” said the client, falling back in his chair, and surveying the Firm with his hands in his pockets. “Deep in love.” & ‘And not with an heiress, sir?” said Snitchey. “Not with an heiress.”” “Nor a rich lady?” “Nor a rich lady that I know of except in beauty an merit.” •. “A single lady, I trust?” said Mr. Snitchey, with grea expression. - “Certainly.” - “It’s not one of Doctor Jeddler's daughters?” said Snitchey, suddenly squaring his elbows on his knees, and advancing his face at least a yard. “Yes!” returned the client. “Not his younger daughter?” said Snitchey. “Yes!” returned the client. “Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, much relieved, “will you oblige me with another pinch of snuff? Thank you! I am happy to say it don’t signify, Mr. Warden; she's engaged, sir; she's bespoke. My partner can corrobo- rate me. We know the fact.” - “We know the fact,” repeated Craggs. “Why, so do I, perhaps,” returned the client quietly. “What of that! Are you men of the world, and did you never hear of a woman changing her mind?” “There certainly have been actions for breach,” said THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 269 Mr. Snitchey, “brought against both spinsters and widows, but, in the majority of cases—” “Cases!” interposed the client, impatiently. “Don’t talk to me of cases. The general precedent is in a much larger volume than any of your law books. Besides, do you think I have lived six weeks in the Doctor’s house for nothing?” - “I think, sir,” observed Mr. Snitchey, gravely address- ing himself to his partner, “that of all the scrapes Mr. Warden’s horses have brought him into at one time and another—-and they have been pretty numerous, and pretty expensive, as none know better than himself, and you, and I–the worst scrape may turn out to be, if he talks in this way, his having been ever left by one of them at the Doctor's garden wall, with three broken ribs, a snapped collar-bone, and the Lord knows how many bruises. We didn’t think so much of it, at the time when we knew he was going on well under the Doctor’s hands and roof; but it looks bad now, sir. Bad? It looks very bad. Doctor Jeddler, too—our client, Mr. Craggs.” “Mr. Alfred Heathfield, too—a sort of client, Mr. Snitchey,” said Craggs. “Mr. Michael Warden, too, a kind of client,” said the careless visitor, “and no bad One either: having played the fool for ten or twelve years. However, Mr. Michael Warden has sown his wild oats now—there’s their crop, in that box; and he means to repent and be wise. And in proof of it, Mr. Michael Warden means, if he can, to marry Marion, the Doctor's lovely daughter, and to carry her away with him.” “Really, Mr. Craggs,” Snitchey began. “Really, Mr. Snitchey and Mr. Craggs, partners, both,” said the client, interrupting him; “you know your duty to your clients, and you know well enough, I am sure, that it is no part of it to interfere in a mere love affair, which I am obliged to confide to you. I am not going to carry the young lady off, without her own consent. There’s nothing illegal in it. I never was Mr. Heathfield’s bosom friend. I violate no confidence of his. I love where he loves, and I mean to win where he would win, if I can.” “He can’t, Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, evidently anx- ious and discomfited. “He can’t do it, sir. She dotes On Mr. Alfred.” 270 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. “Does she?” returned the client. “Mr. Craggs, she dotes on him, sir,” persisted Snitchey. “I didn’t live six weeks, some few months ago, in the Doctor's house for nothing; and I doubted that soon,” observed the client. “She would have doted on him, if. her sister could have brought it about; but I watched them. Marion, avoided his name, avoided the subject: lººk from the least allusion to it, with evident dis- ress.” “Why should , she, Mr. Craggs, you know? Why should she, sir?” inquired Snitchey. . “I don’t know why she should, though there are many likely reasons,” said the client, smiling at the attention and perplexity expressed in Mr. Snitchey's shining eye, and at his cautious way of carrying on the conversa- tion, and making himself informed upon the subject; “but I know she does. She was very young when she made the engagement—if it may be called one, I am not even sure of that—and has repented of it, perhaps. Perhaps—it seems a foppish thing to say, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light—she may have fallen in love with me, as I have fallen in love with her.” “He, hel Mr. Alfred, her old playfellow, too, you remember, Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, with a discon- certed laugh; “ knew her almost from a baby!” “Which makes it the more probable that she may be • tired of his idea,” calmly pursued the client, ‘‘ and not indisposed to exchange it for the newer one of another lover, who presents himself (or is presented by his horse) under romantic circumstances; has the not unfavour- able reputation—with a country girl—of having lived thoughtlessly and gaily, without doing much harm to anybody; and who, for his youth and figure, and so forth—this may seem foppish again, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light—might perhaps pass muster in a crowd with Mr. Alfred himself.” - There was no gainsaying the last clause, certainly; and Mr. Snitchey, glancing at him, thought so. There was something naturally graceful and pleasant in the very carelessness of his air. It seemed to suggest, of his comely face and well-knit figure, that they might be greatly better if he chose: and that once roused and made earnest (but he never had been earnest yet), he could be full of fire and purpose. “A dangerous sort of THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 271 libertine,” thought the shrewd lawyer, “to seem to catch the spark he wants from a young lady’s eyes.” e “Now, observe, Snitchey,” he continued, rising and taking him by the button, “and Craggs,” taking him by the button also, and placing one partner on either side of him, so that neither might evade him. “I don’t ask you for any advice. You are right to keep quite aloof from all parties in such a matter, which is not one in which grave men like you could interfere on any side. I am briefly going to review, in half-a-dozen words, my position and intentions, and then I shall leave it to you to do the best for me, in money matters, that you can: seeing that, if I run away with the Doctor's beautiful daughter (as I hope to do, and to become another man under her bright influence), it will be, for the moment, more chargeable than running away alone. But I shall Soon make all that up in an altered life.” “I think it will be better not to hear this, Mr. º ?” said Snitchey, looking at him across the Cllent. “I think not,” said Craggs. Both listening attentively. “Well ! You needn’t hear it,” replied their client. “I’ll mention it, however. I don’t mean to ask the Doctor's consent, because he wouldn’t give it me. But I mean to do the Doctor no wrong or harm, because (besides there being nothing serious in such trifles, as he says) I hope to rescue his child, my Marion, from what I see—I know—she dreads, and contemplates with mis- ery: that is, the return of this old lover. If anything in this world is true, it is true that she dreads his re- turn. Nobody is injured so far. I am so harried and worried here, just now, that I lead the life of a flying- fish. I skulk about in the dark, I am shut out of my own house, and warned off my own grounds; but, that house, and those grounds, and many an acre besides, will come back to me one day, as you know and say; and Marion will probably be richer—on your showing, who are never sanguine—ten years hence as my wife, than as the wife of Alfred Heathfield, whose return she dreads (remember that), and in whom or in any man, my passion is not surpassed. Who is injured yet?. It is a fair case throughout. My right is as good as his, if she decide in my favour; and I will try my right by her alone. You will like to know no more after this, 272 - THE BATTLE OF LIFE. and I will tell you no more. Now you know my pur- pose, and wants. When must I leave here?” “In a week,” said Snitchey. “Mr. Craggs?” “In something less, I should say,” responded Craggs. “In a month,” said the client, after attentively watch- ing the two faces. “ This day month. To-day is Thurs- day, Succeed or fail, on this day month I go.” “It’s too long a delay,” said Snitchey; “much too long. But let it be so. I thought he’d have stipulated for three,” he murmured to himself. “Are you going? Good-night, sir!” 3. “Good-night!” returned the client, shaking hands with the Firm. “You’ll live to see me making a good use of 1.iches yet. Henceforth the star of my destiny is, Marion ſ” - * “Take care of the stairs, sir,” replied Snitchey; “for she don’t shine there. Good-night!” “Good-night!” So they both stood at the stair-head with a pair of office candles, watching him down. When he had gone away, they stood looking at each other. “What do you think of all this, Mr. Craggs?” said Snitchey. Mr. Craggs shook his head. “It was our opinion, on the day when that release was executed, that there was something curious in the parting of that pair, I recollect,” said Snitchey. “It was,” said Mr. Craggs. “Perhaps he deceives himself altogether,” pursued Mr. Snitchey, locking up the fireproof box, and putting it away; ‘‘ or, if he don’t, a little bit of fickleness and perfidy is not a miracle, Mr. Craggs. And yet I thought that pretty face was very true. I thought,” said Mr. Snitchey, putting on his great-coat (for the weather was very cold), drawing on his gloves, and snuffing out one candle, “that I had even seen her character becoming stronger and more resolved of late. More like her sister’s.” - “Mrs. Craggs was of the same opinion,” returned Craggs. “I’d really give a trifle to-night,” observed Mr. Snitchey, who was a good-natured man, “if I could be- lieve that Mr. Warden was reckoning without his host; but, light-headed, capricious, and unballasted as he is, THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 273 he knows something of the world and its people (he ought to, for he has bought what he does know, dear enough); and I can’t quite think that. We had better not interfere: we can do nothing, Mr. Craggs, but keep quiet.” “Nothing,” returned Craggs. “Our friend the Doctor makes light of such things,” said Mr. Snitchey, shaking his head. “I hope he mayn’t stand in need of his philosophy. Our friend Alfred talks of the battle of life,” he shook his head again; “I hope he mayn’t be cut down early in the day. Have you got your hat, Mr. Craggs? I am going to put the other candle out.” Mr. Craggs replying in the affirmative, Mr. Snitchey suited the action to the word, and they groped their way Out of the council-chamber, now as dark as the subject, or the law in general. My Story passes to a quiet little study, where, on that same night, the sisters and the hale old Doctor sat by a cheerful fireside. Grace was working at her needle. Marion read aloud from a book before her. The Doc- tor in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his feet spread out upon the warm rug, leaned back in his easy chair, and listened to the book, and looked upon his daughters. They were very beautiful to look upon. Two better faces for a fireside, never made a fireside bright and sacred. Something of the difference between them had been softened down in three years’ time; and enthroned upon the clear brow of the younger sister, looking through her eyes, and thrilling in her voice, was the same earnest nature that her own motherless youth had ripened in the elder sister long ago. But she still ap- peared at once the lovelier and weaker of the two; still seemed to rest her head upon her sister's breast, and put her trust in her, and look into her eyes for counsel and reliance. Those loving eyes, so calm, serene, and cheer- ful, as of old. - “‘And being in her own home,’” read Marion, from the book; “‘her home made exquisitely dear by these remembrances, she now began to know that the great trial of her heart must soon come on, and could not be delayed. Oh, Home, our comforter and friend when others fall away, to part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave’”— :** . . . . 19 274 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. “Marion, my love!” said Grace. “Why, Puss!” exclaimed her father, “what’s the matter?” g She put her hand upon the hand her sister stretched towards her, and read on; her voice still faltering and trembling, though she made an effort to command it when thus interrupted. “‘To part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave, is always sorrowful. Oh,' home, so true to us, so often slighted in return, be lenient to them that turn away from thee, and do not haunt their erring foot- steps too reproachfully! Let no kind looks, no well-re- membered smiles, be seen upon thy phantom face. Let no ray of affection, welcome, gentleness, forbearance, cordiality, shine from thy white head. Let no old lov- ing word, or tone, rise up in judgment against thy de- serter; but if thou canst look harshly and severely, do, in mercy to the Penitent!’” “Dear Marion, read no more to-night,” said Grace— for she was weeping. “I cannot,” she replied, and closed the book. “The words seem all on fire!” The Doctor was amused at this; and laughed as he patted her on the head. - “What! Overcome by a story...book!” said Doctor Jed- dler. “Print and paper! Well, well, it’s all one. It's as rational to make a serious matter of print and paper as of anything else. But, dry your eyes, love, dry your eyes. I dare say the heroine has got home again long ago, and made it up all round—and if she hasn’t, a real home is only four walls; and a fictitious one, mere rags and ink. What’s the matter now?” “It’s only me, mister,” said Clemency, putting in her head at the door. - th “And what’s the matter with you?” said the Doctor. “Oh, bless you, nothing ain’t the matter with me,” re- turned Clemency—and truly, too, to judge from her well- shaped face, in which there gleamed, as usual, the very soul of good-humour, which, ungainly as she was, made her quite engaging! Abrasions on the elbows are not generally understood, it is true, to range within that class of personal charms called beauty-spots. But, it is better, going through the world, to have the arms chafed in that narrow passage, than tho temper; and THE BATTLE OF LIFE. - 275 Clemency’s was sound, and whole as any beauty’s in the land. “Nothing ain’t the matter with me,” said Clemency, entering, “but—come a little closer, mister.” The Doctor, in some astonishment, complied with this invitation. . “You said I wasn’t to give you one before them, you . xnow,” said Clemency. A novice in the family might have supposed, from her extraordinary ogling as she said it, as well as from a singular rapture of ecstasy which pervaded her elbows, as if she were embracing herself, that “one,” in its most favourable interpretation, meant a chaste salute. In- deed the Doctor himself seemed alarmed, for the mo- ment; but quickly regained his composure, as Clemency, having had recourse to both her pockets—beginning with the right one, going away to the wrong one, and after- wards coming back to the right one again—produced a letter from the Post-office. - . “Britain was riding by on an errand,” she chuckled, handing it to the Doctor; “and see the mail come in, and waited for it. There’s A. H. in the corner. Mr. Alfred's on his journey home, I bet. We shall have a wedding in the house—there was two spoons in my saucer this morning. Oh Luck, how slow he opens it!” - All this she delivered, by way of soliloquy, gradu- ally rising higher and higher on tiptoe, in her impatience to hear the news, and making a corkscrew of her apron, and a bottle of her mouth. At last, arriving at a climax of suspense, and seeing the Doctor still engaged in the perusal of the letter, she came down flat upon the soles of her feet again, and cast her apron, as a veil, over her head, in a mute despair, and inability to bear it any longer. - - “Here! Girls!” cried the Doctor. “I can’t help it: I never could keep a secret in my life. There are not many secrets, indeed, worth being kept in such a-well! never mind that. Alfred's coming home, my dears, directly.” “J)irectly!” exclaimed Marion. “What! The story-book is soon forgotten!” said the Doctor, pinching her, cheek. “I thought the news would dry those tears. Yes, ‘Let it be a surprise,’ he 276 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. says, here. But I can’t let it be a surprise. He must have a welcome.” “Directly!” repeated Marion. “Why, perhaps, not what your impatience calls ‘directly,” returned the Doctor; “but pretty soon too. Let us see, Let us see. To-day is Thursday, is it not? Then he promises to be here, this day month.” “This day month!” repeated Marion, softly. “A gay day and a holiday for us,” said the cheerful voice of her sister Grace, kissing her in congratulation. “Long looked forward to, dearest, and come at last.” She answered with a smile; a mournful smile, but full of sisterly affection. As she looked in her sister’s face, and listened to the quiet music of her voice, pic- turing the happiness of this return, her own face glowed with hope and joy. And with a something else; a something shining more and more through all the rest of its expression; for which I have no name. It was not exultation, triumph, proud enthusiasm. . They are not so calmly shown. It was not love and gratitude alone, though love and grati- tude were part of it. It emanated from no sordid thought, for sordid thoughts do not light up the brow, and hover on the lips, and move the Spirit like a flut- tered light, until the sympathetic figure trembles. Doctor Jeddler, in spite of his system of philosophy— which he was continually contradicting and denying in practice, but more famous philosophers have done that —could not help having as much interest in the return of his old ward and pupil, as if it had been a serious event. So, he sat himself down in his easy chair again, stretched out his slippered feet once more upon the rug, read the letter over and over a great many times, and talked it over more times still. “Ah! The day was,” said the Doctor, looking at the fire, “when you and he, Grace, used to trot about arm-in-arm, in his holiday time, like a couple of walk- ing dolls. You remember?” “I remember,” she answered, with her pleasant laugh, and plying her needle busily. e “This day month, indeed!” mused the Doctor. “That hardly seems a twelvemonth ago. And where was my little Marion then!” - “Never far from her sister,” said Marion, cheerily, 2 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. * 277 “however little. Grace was everything to me, even when she was a young child herself.” “True, Puss, true,” returned the Doctor. She was a staid little woman, was Grace, and a wise housekeeper, and a busy, quiet, pleasant body; bearing with our humours, and anticipating our wishes, and always ready to forget her own, even in those times... I never knew you positive or obstinate, Grace, my darling, even them, on any subject but One.” tº “I am afraid I have changed sadly for the worse, since,” laughed Grace, still busy at her work. “What was that One, father?” - “Alfred, of course,” said the Doctor. “Nothing would serve you but you must be called Alfred's wife; so we called you Alfred's wife; and you liked it better, I believe (odd as it seems now), than being called a i}uchess, if we could have made you one.” “Indeed?” said Grace placidly. “Why, don’t you remember?” inquired the Doctor. “I think I remember something of it,” she returned, “but not much. It’s so long ago.” And as she sat at work, she hummed the burden of an old song, which the i)Octor liked. “Alfred will find a real wife soon,” she said, breaking off; “and that will be a happy time indeed for all of us. My three years' trust is nearly at an end, Marion. It has been a very easy one. I shall tell Alfred, when I give you back to him, that you have loved him dearly a!! the time, and that he has never once needed my good services. M hy. I tell him so, love?” “Tell him, dean Grace,” replied Marion, “that there never was a trust so generously, nobly, steadfastly dis- charged; and that I have loved you, all the time, dearer and dearer every day; and oh! how dearly now!” “Nay,” said her cheerful sister, returning her embrace, ‘‘I can scarcely tell him that; we will leave my deserts to Alfred’s imagination. It will be liberal enough, dear Marion; like your own.” With that she resumed the work she had for a moment laid down, when her sister spoke so fervently: and with it the old song the Doctor liked to hear. And the Doctor, still reposing in his easy chair, with his slippered feet stretched out before him on the rug, listened to the tune, and beat time on his knee with 278 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. Alfred’s letter, and looked at his two daughters, and thought that among the many trifles of the trifling World, these trifles were agreeable enough. Clemency Newcome, in the meantime, having accom- plished her mission and lingered in the room until she had made herself a party to the news, descended to the kitchen, where her coadjutor, Mr. Britain, was regaling after supper, surrounded by such a plentiful collection of bright pot-lids, well-scoured saucepans, burnished dinner cowers, gleaming kettles, and other tokens of her industrious habits, arranged upon the walls and shelves, that he sat as in the centre of a hall of mirrors. The majority did not give forth very flattering portraits of him, certainly; nor were they by any means unanimous in their reflections; as some made him very long-faced, others very broad-faced, some tolerably well-looking, Others vastly ill-looking, according to their several manners of reflecting: which were as various, in respect of one fact, as those of so many kinds of men. But they all agreed that in the midst of them sat, quite at his ease, an individual with a pipe in his mouth, and a jug of beer at his elbow, who nodded condescendingly tºlemeney, when she stationed herself at the same table. “Well, Clemmy,” said Britain, “how are you by this time, and what’s the news?” º Clemency told him the news, which he received very graciously. A gracious change had come over Benjamin from head to foot. He was much broader, much redder, much more cheerful, and much jollier in all respects. It seemed as if his face had been tied up in a knot before, and was now untwisted and smoothed out. “There’ll be another job for Snitchey and Craggs, I suppose,” he observed, puffing slowly at his pipe. “More witnessing for you and me, perhaps, Clemmy!” “Lor!” replied his fair companion, with her favourite twist of her favourite joints. “I wish it was me, Britain!” º, “Wish what was you?” - “A going to be married,” said Clemency. Benjamin took his pipe out of his mouth and laughed heartily. “Yes! you’re a likely subject for that!” he said. “Poor Clem!” Clemency for her part laughed as heartily as he, and seemed as much amused by the THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 279 idea. “Yes,” she assented, “I’m a likely subject for that; an't I?” - - “You’ll never be married, you know,” said Mr. Britain, resuming his pipe. “Don’t you think I ever shall, though?” said Clemency, in perfect good faith. - r - Mr. Britain shook his head. “Not a chance of it!” “Only think!” said Clemency. “Well!—I suppose you mean to, Britain, one of these days; don’t you?” A question so abrupt, upon a subject so momentous, required consideration. After blowing out a great cloud of Smoke, and looking at it with his head now on this side and now on that, as if it were actually the ques- tion, and he were surveying it in various aspects, Mr. Britain replied that he wasn’t altogether clear about ; but—ye-es—he thought he might come to that at a.St. “I wish her joy, whoever she may be!” cried Clemency. “Oh, she’ll have that,” said Benjamin, “safe enough.” “But she wouldn’t have led quite such a joyful life as she will lead, and wouldn’t have had quite such a sociable sort of husband as she will have,” said Clem- ency, spreading herself half over the table, and staring retrospectively at the candle, “if it hadn’t been for—not that I went to do it, for it was accidental, I am sure—if it hadn’t been for me; now, would she, Britain?” “Certainly not,” returned Mr. Britain, by this time in that high state of appreciation of his pipe, when a man can Open his mouth but a very little way for speaking purposes; and sitting luxuriously immovable in his chair, can afford to turn only his eyes towards a com- panion, and that very passively and gravely. “Oh! I’m greatly beholden to you, you know, Clem.” : “Lor, how nice that is to think of" said Clemency. At the same time bringing her thoughts as well as her sight to bear upon the candle grease, and becoming ab- ruptly reminiscent of its healing qualities as a balsam, she anointed her left elbow with a plentiful application of that remedy. - “You see I’ve made a good many investigations of One sort and another in my time,” pursued Mr. Britain, with the profundity of a sage; “having been always of an inquiring turn of mind; and I’ve read a good many books about the general Rights of things and Wrongs of lº 280 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. things, for I went into the literary line myself when I began life.” - “Did you, though!” cried the admiring Clemency. - “Yes,” said Mr. Britain: “I was hid for the best part of two years behind a bookstall, ready to fly out if any- body pocketed a volume; and after that, I was light por- ter to a stay and mantua-maker, in which capacity I was employed to carry about, in oilskin baskets, nothing but deceptions—which soured my spirits and disturbed my confidence in human nature; and after that, I heard a world of discussions in this house, which soured my spirits fresh; and my opinion after all is, that, as a safe and comfortable sweetener of the same, and as a pleasant guide through life,there’s nothing like a nutmeg-grater.” Clemency was about to offer a suggestion, but he stopped her by anticipating it. - “Com-bined,” he added gravely, “with a thimble.” “Do as you wold, you know, and cetrer, eh?” observed Clemency, folding her arms comfortably in her delight at this avowal, and patting her elbows. “Such a short cut, an’t it?” “I’m not sure,” said Mr. Britain, “that it’s what would be considered good philosophy. I’ve my doubts about that; but it were as well, and saves a quantity of snarling, which the genuine article don’t always.” “See how you used to go on once, yourself, you know!” said Clemency. “Ah!” said Mr. Britain. “But the most extraordinary thing, Clemmy, is that I should live to be brought round, through you. That’s the strange part of it. Through you! Why, I suppose you haven’t so much as half an idea in your head.” , Clemency, without taking the least offence, shook it, and laughed, and hagged herself, and said, “No, she didn’t suppose she had.” “I’m pretty sure of it,” said Mr. Britain. “Oh! I dare say you’re right,” said Clemency. “I don’t pretend to none. I don’t want any.” Benjamin took his pipe from his lips, and laughed till the tears ran down his face. “What a natural you are, Clemmy!” he said, shaking his head, with an infinite relish of the joke, and, wiping his eyes. Clemency, with- out the smallest inclination to dispute it, did the like, and laughed as heartily as he. Aº •. * THE BATTLE OF LIFE. " 281 “I can’t help liking you,” said Mr. Britain; “you’re a regular good creature in your way, so shake hands, Clem. Whatever happens, I’ll always take notice of you, and be a friend to you.” ...' ' “Will you?” returned Clemency. “Well! that's very good of you.” “Yes, yes,” said Mr. Britain, giving her his pipe to knock the ashes out of it; “I’ll stand by you. Hark! That’s a curious noise!” - “Noise!” repeated Clemency. - “A footstep outside. Somebody dropping from the wall, it sounded like,” said Britain. “Are they all abed up-stairs?” “Yes, all abed by this time,” she replied. “Didn’t you hear anything?” & 4 INOs” They both listened, but heard nothing. “I tell you what,” said Benjamin, taking down a lantern, “I’ll have a look round, before I go to bed my- self, for satisfaction’s sake. Undo the door while I light this, Clemmy.” Clemency complied briskly, but observed as she did so, that he would only have his walk for his pains, that it was all his fancy, and so forth. Mr. Britain said “very likely;” but sallied out, nevertheless, armed with the poker, and casting the light of the lantern far and near in all directions. * - “It’s as quiet as a churchyard,” said Clemency, look- ing after him; “and almost as ghostly, too!” Glancing back into the kitchen, she cried fearfully, as a light figure stole into her view, “What's that!” - “Hush!” said Marion, in an agitated whisper. “You have always loved me, have you not?” - “Loved you, child! You may be sure I have.” “I am sure. And I may trust you, may I not? There is no one else just now, in whom I can trust.” “Yes,” said Clemency, with all her heart. “There is some one out there,” pointing to the door, “whom I must see, and speak with to-night. Michael Warden, for God’s sake retire! Not now!” Clemency started with surprise and trouble as, follow- ing the direction of the speaker's eyes, she saw a dark figure standing in the doorway. - “In another moment you may be discovered,” said 282 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. Marion. “Not now! Wait, if you can, in some con- cealment. I will come presently.” He waved his hand to her, and was gone. “Don’t go to bed. Wait here for me!” said Marion, hurriedly. “I have been seeking to speak to you for an hour past. Oh, be true to me!” - Eagerly seizing her bewildered hand, and pressing it with both her own to her breast—an action more ex- pressive, in its passion of entreaty, than the most elo- quent appeal in words—Marion withdrew; as the light of the returning lantern flashed into the room. “All still and peaceable. Nobody there. Fancy, I suppose,” said Mr. Britain, as he locked and barred the door. “One of the effects of having a lively imagina- tion. Halloa. Why, what’s the matter?” - Clemency, who could not conceal the effects of her surprise and concern, was sitting in a chair: pale, and trembling from head to foot. “Matter!” she repeated, chafing her hands and elbows, nervously, and looking anywhere but at him. “That’s good in you, Britain, that is! After going and frightening one out of one’s life with noises, and lanterns, and I don’t know what all. Matter! Oh, yes!” - “If you’re frightened out of your life by a lantern, Clemmy,” said Mr. Britain, composedly blowing it out and hanging it up again, “that apparition’s very. Soon got rid of. But you’re as bold as brass in general,” he said, stopping to observe her; “and were, after the noise and lantern too. What have you taken into your head? Not an idea, eh?” But, as Clemency bade him good-night, very much after her usual fashion, and began to bustle about with a show of going to bed herself immediately, Little Britain, after giving utterance to the original remark that it was impossible to account for a woman’s whims, bade her good-night in return, and taking up his candle, strolled drowsily away to bed. When all was quiet, Marion returned. “Open the door,” she said; “and stand there close be- side me, while I speak to him, outside.” Timid as her manner was, it still evinced a resolute and settled purpose, such as Clemency could not resist, She softly unbarred the door; but before turning the THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 283 key, looked round on the . creature waiting to issue forth when she should open it. - The face was not averted or cast down; but looking full upon her, in its pride of youth and beauty. Some simple sense of the slightness of the barrier that inter- posed itself between the happy home and honoured love of the fair girl, and what might be the desolation of that home, and shipwreck of its dearest treasure, Smote SQ keenly on the tender heart of Clemency, and so filled it to overflowing with sorrow and compassion, that, bursting into tears, she threw her arms round Marion's neck. “It’s little that I know, my dear,” cried Clemency, “very little; but I know that this should not be. Think of what you do!” º “I have thought of it many times,” said Marion, gently. © . e “Once more,” urged Clemency. “Till to-morrow.” Marion shook her head. - - “For Mr. Alfred’s sake,” said Clemency, with homely earnestness. “Him that you used to love so dearly, Once!” She hid her face, upon the instant, in her hands, re- peating “Once!” as if it rent her heart. “Let me go out,” said Clemency, soothing her. “I’ll tell him what you like. Don’t cross the door-step to- night. I’m sure no good will come of it. Oh, it was an unhappy day when Mr. Warden was ever brought here! Think of your good father, darling—of your sister.” “I have,” said Marion, hastily raising her head. “You don’t know what I do. You don’t know what I do. I must speak to him. You are the best and truest friend in all the world for what you have said to me, but I must take this step. Will you go with me, Clemency,” she kissed her on her friendly face, “ or shall I go alone?” . Sorrowing and wondering, Clemency turned the key, and opened the door. Into the dark and doubtful night that lay beyond the threshold, Marion passed quickly, holding by her hand. In the dark night he joined her, and they spoke to- gether earnestly and long; and the hand that held so fast by Clemency’s, now trembled, now turned deadly cold, now clasped and closed on hers, in the strong feel- 284 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. ing of the speech it emphasised unconsciously. When they returned, he followed to the door, and pausing there a moment, seized the other hand, and pressed it to his lips. Then stealthily withdrew. The door was barred and locked again, and once again she stood beneath her father’s roof. Not bowed down by the secret that she brought there, though so young; but with that same expression on her face for which I had no name before, and shining through her tears. Again she thanked and thanked her humble friend, and trusted to her, as she said, with confidence, im- plicitly. Her chamber safely reached, she fell upon her knees; and with her secret weighing on her heart, could ray! p Could rise up from her prayers so tranquil and serene, and bending over her fond sister in her slumber, look upon her face and smile—though sadly: murmuring as she kissed her forehead, how that Grace had been a mother to her, ever, and she loved her as a child! - Could draw the passive arm about her neck when lying down to rest—it seemed to cling there, Čf its own will, protectingly and tenderly even in sleep—and breathe upon the parted lips, God bless her! Could sink into a peaceful sleep, herself; but for one dream, in which she cried out in her innocent and touching voice, that she was quite alone, and they had all forgotten her. ~, A month soon passes, even at its tardiest pace. The month appointed to elapse between that night and the return, was quick of foot, and went by, like a vapour. The day arrived. A raging winter day, that shook the old house, sometimes, as if it shivered in the blast. A day to make home doubly home. To give the chimney-corner new delights. To shed a ruddier glow upon the faces gathered round the hearth, and draw each fireside group into a closer and more social league, against the roaring elements without. Such a wild winter day as best prepares the way for shut-out night; for curtained rooms, and cheerful looks; for music, laughter, dancing, light, and jovial entertainment! All these the Doctor had in store to welcome Alfred back. They knew that he could not arrive till night; ºx- , , THE BATTLE OF LIFE. - 285 and they would make the night air ring, he said, as he approached. All his old friends should congregate about him. He should not miss a face that he had known and liked. No! . They should every one be there! So, guests were bidden, and musicians were engaged, and tables spread, and floors prepared for active feet, and bountiful provision made of every hospitable kind. Because it was the Christmas season, and his eyes were all unused to English holly and its sturdy green, the dancing-room was garlanded and hung with it; and the red berries gleamed an English welcome to him, peeping from among the leaves. It was a busy day for all of them: a busier day for none of them than Grace, who noiselessly presided everywhere, and was the cheerful mind of all the prepa- rations. Many a time that day (as well as many a time within the fleeting month preceding it), did Clemency glance anxiously, and almost fearfully, at Marion. She saw her paler, perhaps, than usual; but there was a sweet composure on her face that made it lovelier than €V €I’. At night when she was dressed, and wore upon her head a wreath that Grace had proudly twined about it— its mimic flowers were Alfred's favourites, as Grace remembered when she chose them—that old expression, pensive, almost sorrowful, and yet so spiritual, high, and stirring, sat again upon her brow, enhanced a hundred fold. “The next wreath I adjust on this fair head, will be a marriage wreath,” said Grace; “ or I am no true pro- phet, dear.” - º Her sister smiled, and held her in her arms. “A moment, Grace. Don’t leave me yet. Are you sure that I want nothing more?” . Her care was not for that. It was her sister's face she thought of, and her eyes were fixed upon it tenderly. “My art,” said Grace, “can go no farther, dear girl; nor your beauty. I never saw you look so beautiful as now.” “I never was so happy,” she returned. - “Ay, but there is a greater happiness in store. In such another home, as cheerful and as bright as this looks now,” said Grace, “ Alfred and his young wife will soon be living.” - - - te. 286 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. She smiled again. “It is a happy home, Grace, in your fancy. I can see it in your eyes. I know it will be happy, dear. How glad I am to know it.” “Well,” cried the Doctor, bustling in. “Here we are, all ready for Alfred, eh? He can’t be here until pretty late—an hour or so before midnight—so there’ll be plenty of time for making merry before he comes. He'll not find us with the ice unbroken. Pile up the fire here, Britain! Let it shine upon the holly till it winks again. It’s a world of nonsense, Puss; true lovers and all the rest of it—all nonsense; but we’ll be non- sensical with the rest of 'em and give our true lover a mad welcome. Upon my word!” said the old Doctor, looking at his daughters proudly, “I’m not clear to- night, among other absurdities, but that I’m the father of two handsome girls.” “All that one of them has ever done, or may do—may do, dearest father—to cause you pain or grief, forgive her,” said Marion, “forgive her now, when her heart is full. Say that you forgive her. That you will forgive her. That she shall always share your love, and—” and the rest was not said, for her face was hidden on the old man’s shoulder. “Tut, tut, tut,” said the Doctor gently. “Forgive! What have I to forgive? Heydey, if our true lovers come back to flurry us like this, we must hold them at a distance; we must send expresses out to stop 'em short upon the road, and bring 'em On a mile or two a day, until we’re properly prepared to meet 'em. Kiss me, Puss. Forgive! Why, what a silly child you are. If you had vexed and crossed me fifty times a day, instead of not at all, I’d forgive you everything, but such a sup- plication. Kiss me again, Puss. There ! Prospective and retrospective—a clear score between us. Pile up the fire here! Would you freeze the people on this bleak December night! Let us be light, and warm, and merry, or I’ll not forgive some of you!” So gaily the old Doctor carried it! And the fire was piled up, and the lights were bright, and company ar- rived, and a murmuring of lively tongues began, and already there was a pleasant air of cheerful excitement stirring through all the house. More and more company came flocking in. Bright eyes sparkled upon Marion; Smiling lips gave her joy of Yºg---- • * : ..., ,” “ - THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 287 his return; sage mothers fanned themselves, and hoped she mightn’t be too youthful and inconstant for the quiet round of home; impetuous fathers fell into dis- grace, for too much exaltation of her beauty; daughters envied her; sons envied him; innumerable pairs of lovers profited by the occasion; all were interested, animated, and expectant. Mr. and Mrs. Craggs came arm-in-arm, but Mrs. Snitchey came alone. “Why, what’s become of him?” inquired the Doctor. The feather of a Bird of Paradise in Mrs. Snitchey's turban trembled as if the Bird of Paradise were alive º when she said that doubtless Mr. Craggs knew. She was never told. • “That nasty office,” said Mrs. Craggs. “I wish it was burnt down,” said Mrs. Snitchey. “He’s—he's—there’s a little matter of business that keeps my partner rather late,” said Mr. Craggs, looking uneasily about him. “Oh–h! Business. Don’t tell me!” said Mrs. Snitchey. “ We know what business means,” said Mrs. Craggs. But their not knowing what it meant, was perhaps the reason why Mrs. Snitchey's Bird of Paradise feather quivered so portentously, and why all the pendant bits on Mrs. Craggs's ear-rings shook like little bells. “I wonder you could come away, Mr. Craggs,” said his wife. - “Mr. Craggs is fortunate, I’m sure!” said Mrs. Snitchey. “That office so engrosses 'em!” said Mrs. Craggs. “A person with an office has no business to be mar- ried at all,” said Mrs. Snitchey. “Then, Mrs. Snitchey said, within herself, that that look of hers had pierced to Craggs's soul, and he knew it; and Mrs. Craggs, observed to Craggs, that “ his Snitcheys” were deceiving him behind his back, and he would find it out when it was too late. Still, Mr. Craggs, without much heeding these re- marks, looked uneasily about him until his eye rested on Grace, to whom he immediately presented himself. “Good-evening, ma'am,” said Craggs. “You look ºrmingly. Your—Miss—your sister, Miss Marion, is S he—” . “Oh, she's quite well, Mr. Craggs.” 2SS THE BATTLE OF LIFE. “Yes—I–is she here?” asked Craggs. “Here! Don’t you see her yonder? Going to dance?” said Grace. . - - Mr. Craggs put on his spectacles to see the better; looked at her through them for some time; coughed; and put them, with an air of satisfaction, in their sheath again, and in his pocket. Now the music struck up, and the dance commenced. The bright fire crackled and sparkled, rose and fell, as though it joined the dance itself, in right good-fellow- ship. Sometimes it roared as if it would make music, too. Sometimes it flashed and beamed as if it were the eye of the old room: it winked, too, sometimes, like a knowing Patriarch, upon the youthful whisperers in corners. Sometimes it sported with the holly-boughs; and, shining on the leaves by fits and starts, made them look as if they were in the cold winter night again, and fluttering in the wind. Sometimes its genial humour grew obstreperous, and passed all bounds; and then it cast into the room, among the twinkling feet, with a loud burst, a shower of harmless little sparks, and in its exultation leaped and bounded like a mad thing, up the broad old chimney. Another dance was near its close, when Mr. Snitchey touched his partner, who was looking on, upon the arm. Mr. Craggs started, as if his familiar had been a spectre. “Is he gone?” he asked. - “Hush! He has been with me,” said Snitchey, “for three hours and more. He went over everything. He looked into all our arrangements for him, and was very particular indeed. He-Humph!” The dance was finished. Marion passed close before him, as he spoke. She did not observe him, or his part- her; but looked over her shoulder towards her sister in the distance, as she slowly made her way into the crowd, and passed out of their view. “You see! All safe and well,” said Mr. Craggs. “He didn’t recur to that subject, I suppose?” “ Not a word.” “And is he really gone? Is he safe away?” “He keeps to his word. He drops down the river with the tide in that shell of a boat of his, and so goes out to sea on this dark night!—a dare-devil he is—before THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 289 the wind. There’s no such lonely road anywhere else. That’s one thing. The tide flows, he says, an hour be- fore midnight—about this time. I’m glad it’s over. Mr. Snitchey wiped his forehead, which looked hot and anxious. “What do you think,” said Mr. Craggs, “about—” “Hush!” replied his cautious partner, looking straight before him. “I understand you. Don’t mention names, and don’t let us seem to be talking secrets. I don’t know what to think; and, to tell you the truth, I don’t care, now. It’s a great relief. His self-love deceived him, I supposé. Perhaps the young lady coquetted a little. The evidence would seem to point that way. Alfred not arrived?” “Not yet,” said Mr. Craggs. “Expected every minute.” “Good.” Mr. Snitchey wiped his forehead again. “It’s a great relief. I haven’t been so nervous since we’ve been in partnership. I intend to spend the even- ing now, Mr. Craggs.” - Mrs. Craggs and Mrs. Snitchey joined them as he an- nounced this intention. The Bird of Paradise was in a state of extreme vibration, and the little bells were ringing quite audibly. “It has been the theme of general comment, Mr. jºy." said Mrs. Snitchey. “I hope the office is sat- isfied.” “Satisfied with what, my dear?” asked Mr. Snitchey. “With the exposure of a defenceless woman to ridi- cule and remark,” returned his wife. “That is quite in the way of the office, that is.” - * “I really, myself,” said Mrs. Craggs, “have been so long accustomed to connect the office with everything Opposed to domesticity, that I am glad to know it as the avowed enemy of my peace. There is something honest in that, at all events.” “My dear,” urged Mr. Craggs, “ your good opinion is invaluable, but I never avowed that the office was the enemy of your peace.” “No,” said Mrs. Craggs, ringing a perfect peal upon the little bells. “Not you, indeed. "You wouldn’t be worthy of the office, if you had the candour to.” - “As to my having been away to-night, my dear,” said Mr. Snitchey, giving her his arm, “the deprivation has been mine, I’m sure; but, as Mr. Craggs knows—” 20 290 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. Mrs. Snitchey cut this reference very short by hitch- ing her husband to a distance, and asking him to look at that man. To do her the favour to look' at him! “At which man, my dear?” said Mr. Snitchey. “Your chosen companion; I’m no companion to you, Mr. Snitchey.” “Yes, yes, you are, my dear,” he interposed. “No, no, I’m not,” said Mrs. Snitchey with a majestic smile. “I know my station. Will you look at your chosen companion, Mr. Snitchey; at your referee, at the keeper of your secrets, at the man you trust; at your other self, in short.” - The habitual association of Self with Craggs, occa- sioned Mr. Snitchey to look in that direction. “If you can look that man in the eye this night,” said Mrs. Snitchey, “and not know that you are deluded, practised upon, made the victim of his arts, and bent down prostrate to his will by some unaccountable fas- cination which it is impossible to explain and against which no warning of mine is of the least avail, all I can say is—I pity you!” At the very same moment Mrs. Craggs was oracular on the cross subject. Was it possible, she said, that Craggs could so blind himself to his Snitcheys, as not to feel his true position. Did he mean to say that he had seen his Snitcheys come into that room, and didn’t plainly see that there was reservation, cunning, treach- ery, in the man? Would he tell her that his very action, when he wiped his forehead and looked so stealthily about him, didn’t show that there was something weighing on the conscience of his precious Snitcheys (if he had a conscience), that wouldn’t bear the light? Did anybody but his Snitcheys come to festive entertain- ments like a burglar? which, by the way, was hardly a clear illustration of the case, as he had walked in very mildly at the door. And would he still assert to her at noon-day (it being nearly midnight), that his Snitcheys were to be justified through thick and thin, against all facts, and reason, and experience? Neither Snitchey nor Craggs openly attempted to stem the current which had thus set in, but both were content to be carried gently along it, until its force abated, This happened at about , the same time as a general movement,for a country dance; when Mr. Snitchey pro- THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 291 posed himself as a partner to Mrs. Craggs, and Mr. Craggs gallantly offered himself to Mrs. Snitchey; and after some such slight evasions as “why don’t you ask somebody else?” and “you’ll be glad, I know, if I de- cline,” and “I wonder you can dance out of the office” (but this jocosely now), each lady graciously accepted, and took her place. * -4. It was an old custom among them, indeed, to do so, and to pair off, in like manner, at dinners and Suppers; for they were excellent friends, and on a footing of easy familiarity. Perhaps the false Craggs and the wicked Snitchey was a recognised fiction with the two wives, as Doe and Roe, incessantly running up and down baili- wicks, were with the two husbands; or, perhaps the ladies had instituted, and taken upon themselves, these two shares in the business, rather than be left out of it alto- gether. But, certain it is, that each wife went as gravely and steadily to work in her vocation as her hus- band did in his, and would have considered it almost impossible for the Firm to maintain a successful and respectable existence without her laudable exertions. But, now, the Bird of Paradise was seen to flutter down the middle; and the little bells began to bounce and jingle in poussette; and the Doctor’s rosy face spun round and round, like an expressive peg top highly var- nished; and breathless Mr. Craggs began to doubt, already, whether country dancing had been made “too easy,” like the rest of life; and Mr. Snitchey, with his nimble cuts and capers, footed it for Self, and Craggs, and half-a-dozen more. : Now, too, the fire took fresh courage, favoured by the lively wind the dance awakened, and burnt clear and high. It was the Genius of the room, and present everywhere. It shone in people's eyes, it sparkled in the jewels on the snowy necks of girls, it twinkled at their ears as if it whispered to them slyly, it flashed about their waists, it flickered on the ground and made it rosy for their feet, it bloomed upon the ceiling that its glow might set off their bright faces, and it kindled up a general illumination in Mrs. Craggs's little belfry. Now, too, the lively air that fanned it, grew less gentle as the music quickened and the dance proceeded with new spirit; and a breeze arose that made the leaves and berries dance upon the wall, as they had often done 292 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. upon the trees; and the breeze rustled in the room as if an invisible company of fairies, treading in the foot- steps of the good substantial revellers, were whirling after them. Now, too, no feature of the Doctor’s face could be distinguished as he spun and spun; and now there seemed a dozen Birds of Paradise in fitful flight; . and now there were a thousand little bells at work; and now a fleet of flying skirts was ruffled by a little tempest, when the music gave in, and the dance was over. Hot and breathless as the Doctor was, it only made him the more impatient for Alfred's coming. “Anything been seen, Britain? Anything been heard?” N “Too dark to see far, sir. Too much noise inside the house to hear.” “That’s right! The gayer welcome for him. How goes the time?” “Just twelve, sir. He can’t be long, sir.” “Stir up the fire, and throw another log upon it,” said the Doctor. “Let him see his welcome blazing out upon the night—good boy!—as he comes along!”. He saw it—Yes! From the chaise he caught the light. as he turned the corner by the old church. He knew the room from which it shone. He saw the wintry branches of the old trees between the light and him. He knew that one of those trees rustled musically in the summer time at the window of Marion’s chamber. The tears were in his eyes. His heart throbbed so violently that he could hardly bear his happiness. How often he had thought of this time—pictured it under all , circumstances—feared that it might never come— yearned, and wearied for it—far away! Again the light! Distinct and ruddy; kindled, he knew, to give him welcome, and to speed him home. He beckoned with his hand, and waved his hat, and cheered out, loud, as if the light were they, and they could see and hear him, as he dashed towards them through the mud and mire, triumphantly. Stop! He knew the Doctor, and understood what he had done. He would not let it be a surprise to them. But he could make it one, yet, by going forward on foot. If the orchard gate were open, he could enter there; if not, the wall was easily climbed, as he knew of old; and he would be among them in an instant. THE BATTLE OF T.IFE. .293 He dismounted from the chaise, and telling the driver —even that was not easy in his agitation—to remain behind for a few minutes, and then to follow slowly, ran on with exceeding swiftness, tried the gate, scaled the wall, jumped down on the other side, and stood panting in the old Orchard. There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands. Withered leaves crackled and snapped beneath his feet, as he crept softly on towards the house. The desolation of a winter night sat brooding on the earth, and in the sky. But the red light came cheerily towards him from the windows; figures passed and repassed there; and the hum and murmur of voices greeted his ear, sweetly. Listening for hers: attempting, as he crept on, to detach it from the rest, and half-believing that he heard it: he had nearly reached the door, when it was abruptly opened, and a figure coming out encountered his. It instantly recoiled with a half-suppressed cry. “Clemency,” he said, “don’t you know me?” “Don’t come inſ” she answered, pushing him back. “Go away. Don’t ask me why. Don’t come in.” “What is the matter?” he exclaimed. - - hº don’t know. I—I am afraid to think. Go back. ark I’’ There was a sudden tumult in the house. She put her hands upon her ears. A wild scream, such as no hands could shut out, was heard; and Grace—distrac- tion in her looks and manner—rushed out at the door. “Grace!” He caught her in his arms. “What is it! Is she dead!” & She disengaged herself, as if to recognise his face, and fell down at his feet. A crowd of figures came about them from the house. Among them was her father, with a paper in his hand. “What is it!” cried Alfred, grasping his hair with his hands, and looked in an agony from face to face, as he bent upon his knee beside the insensible girl. “Will no one look at me? Will no one speak to me? Does no one know me? Is there no voice among you all, to tell me what it is!” There was a murmur among them. “She is gone.” “GOne!” he echoed. 294 THE BATTLE OF LIFE “Fled, my dear Alfred!” Said the Doctor, in a broken voice, and with his hands before his face. “Gone from her home and us. To-night! She writes that she has made her innocent and blameless choice—entreats that we will forgive her—prays that we will not forget her— and is gone.” s - ‘‘ With whom? Where?” He started up, as if to follow in pursuit; but, when they gave way to let him pass, looked wildly round upon them, staggered back, and sank down in his former at- titude, clasping one of Grace's cold hands in his own. There was a hurried running to and fro, confusion, hoise, disorder, and no purpose. Some proceeded to disperse themselves about the roads, and some took horse, and some got lights, and some conversed together, urging that there was no trace or track to follow. Some approached him kindly, with the view of offering con- solation; some admonished him that Grace must be re- moved into the house, and that he prevented it. He never heard them, and he never moved. The snow fell fast and thick. He looked up for a mo- ment in the air,and thought that those white ashes strewn upon his hopes and misery, were suited to them well. He looked round on the whitening ground, and thought how Marion’s footprints would be hushed and covered up, as soon as made, and even that remembrance of her º: out. But he never felt the weather, and he never stirred. - * PART THE THIRD. THE world had grown six years older since that night of the return. It was a warm autumn afternoon, and there had been heavy rain. The sun burst suddenly from among the clouds; and the old battle-ground, spark- ling brilliantly and cheerfully at sight of it in one green place, flashed a responsive welcome there, which spread along the country side as if a joyful beacon had been lighted up, and answered from a thousand stations. How beautiful the landscape kindling in the light, and that luxuriant influence passing on like a celestial presence brightening everything! The wood, a sombre mass before. revealed its varied tints of yellow, green, THE BATTLE OF LINE. 295. brown, red: its different forms of trees, with raindrops glittering on their leaves and twinkling as they fell. The verdant meadow-land bright and glowing, seemed as if it had been blind, a minute since, and now had found a sense of sight where with to look up at the shining sky. Cornfields, hedge-rows, fences, home- steads, the clustered roofs, the steeple of the church, the stream, the water-mill, all sprang out of the gloomy darkness, smiling. Birds sang sweetly, flowers raised their drooping heads, fresh scents arose from the invigo- rated ground; the blue expanse above, extended and diffused itself: already the sun’s slanting rays pierced mortally the sullen bank of cloud that lingered in its flight; and a rainbow, spirit of all the colours that adorned the earth and sky, spanned the whole arch with its triumphant glory. At such a time, one little roadside Inn, snugly sheltered behind a great elm tree with a rare seat for idlers encir- cling its capacious bole, addressed a cheerful front to- wards the traveller, as a house of entertainment ought, and tempted him with many mute but significant assur- ances of a comfortable welcome. The ruddy sign-board perched up in the tree, with its golden letters winking in the sun, Ogled the passer-by, from among the green leaves, like a jolly face, and promised good cheer. The horse trough, full of clear, fresh water, and the ground below it sprinkled with droppings of fragrant hay, made every horse that passed, º: up his ears. The crimson curtains in the lower rooms, and the pure white hangings in the little bed-chambers above beckoned, Come in! with every breath of air. Upon the bright green shutters, there were golden legends about beer and ale, and neat wines, and good beds; and an affecting picture of a brown jug frothing over at the top. Upon the window-sills were flowering plants in bright red pots, which made a lively show against the white front of the house; and in the darkness of the doorway there were streaks of light, which glanced off from the surface of bottles and tankards. On the door-step appeared a proper figure of a land- lord, too; for, though he was a short man, he was round and broad, and stºod with his hands in his pockets, and his legs just wide enough apart to express a mind at rest upon the subject of the cellar, and an easy confi- 296 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. dence—too calm and virtuous to become a swagger—in the general resources of the Inn. The superabundant moisture trickling from everything after the late rain, set him off well. Nothing near him was thirsty. Cer- tain top-heavy dahlias, looking over the palings of his meat, well-Ordered garden, had swilled as much as they could carry—perhaps a trifle more—and may have been the worse for liquor; but, the sweet-briar, roses, wall- flowers, the plants at the windows, and the leaves on the old tree, were in the beaming state of moderate com- pany that had taken no more than was wholesome for them, and had served to develop their best qualities. Sprinkling dewy drops about them on the ground, they seemed profuse of innocent and sparkling mirth, that did good where it lighted, softening neglected corners which the steady rain could seldom reach, and hurting nothing. - This village Inn had assumed, on being established, an uncommon sign. It was called the Nutmeg Grater. And underneath that household word, was inscribed, up in the tree, on the same flaming board, and in the like golden characters, By Benjamin Britain. At a second glance, and on a more minute examina- tion of his face, you might have known that it was no other than Benjamin Britain himself who stood in the doorway—reasonably changed by time, but for the bet- ter; a very comfortable host indeed. “Mrs. B.,’” said Mr. Britain, looking down the road, “is rather late. It’s tea time.” As there was no Mrs. Britain coming, he strolled leis- urely out into the road and looked up at the house, very much to his satisfaction. “It’s just the sort of house,” said Benjamin, “I should wish to stop at, if I didn’t keep it.” Then he strolled towards the garden paling, and took a look at the dahlias. They looked over at him, with a helpless, drowsy hanging of their heads: which bobbed again, as the heavy drops of wet dripped off them. “You must be looked after,” said Benjamin. “Mem- orandum, not to forget to tell her so. She's a long time coming.” Mr. Britain’s better half seemed to be by so very much his better half, that his own moiety of himself was ut- terly cast away and helpless without her. THE BATTLE OF IIFE. 297 “She hadn’t much to do, I think,” said Ben. “There were a few little matters of business after market, but not many. Oh! here we are at last!” A chaise cart, driven by a boy, came clattering along the road: and seated in it, in a chair, with a large well- saturated umbrella spread out to dry behind her, was the plump figure of a matronly woman, with her bare arms folded across a basket which she carried on her knee, several other baskets and parcels lying crowded about her, and a certain bright good-nature in her face and contented awkwardness in her manner, as she jogged to and fro with the motion of her carriage, which smacked of old times, even in the distance. Upon her nearer approach, this relish of bygone days was not diminished; and when the car stopped at the Nutmeg Grater door, a pair of shoes, alighting from it, slipped nimbly through Mr. Britain’s open arms, and came down with a substantial weight upon the pathway, which shoes could hardly have belonged to any one but Clem- ency Newcome. In fact they did belong to her, and she stood in them, and a rosy comfortable-looking soul she was: with as much soap on her glossy face as in times of yore, but with whole elbows now, that had grown quite dimpled in her improved condition. “You’re late, Clemmy! said Mr. Britain. “Why, you see, Ben, I’ve had a deal to do!” she re- plied, looking busily after the safe removal into the house of all the packages and baskets; “eight, nine, ten —where’s eleven P Oh! my basket’s eleven! It's all right. Put the horse up, Harry, and if he coughs again give him a warm mash to-night. Eight, nine, ten. Why, where's eleven? Oh, I forgot, it's all right. How’s the children, Ben?” “Hearty, Clemmy, hearty.” “Bless their precious faces!” said Mrs. Britain, unbon- neting her own round cotintenance (for she and her husband were by this time in the bar), and smoothin her hair with her open hands. “Give us a kiss, ol man!” Mr. Britain promptly complied. “I think,” said Mrs. Britain, applying herself to her pockets and drawing forth an immense bulk of thin books and crumpled papers: a very kennel of dog’s ears: “I’ve 298 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. done everything. Bills all settled—turnips sold—brewer’s account looked into and paid—ºbacco pipes ordered— seventeen pound four paid into the Bank—Doctor Heathfield’s charge for little Clem—you'll guess what ; is—Doctor Heathfield won’t take nothing again, im.” . “I thought he wouldn’t,” returned Britain. “No. He says whatever family you was to have, Tim, he’d never É. you-to the cost of a halfpenny. Not if you was to have twenty.” Mr. Britain’s face assumed a serious expression, and looked hard at the wall. “A’nt it kind of him?” said Clemency. “Very,” returned Mr. Britain. “It’s the sort of kindness that I wouldn’t presume upon on any account.” “No,” retorted Clemency. “Of course not. Then there's the pony—he fetched eight pound two, and that a’nt bad, is it?” - “It’s very good,” said Ben. “I’m glad you’re pleased!” exclaimed his wife. “I thought you would be; and I think that’s all, and so no more at present from yours and cetrer, C. Britain. . Ha, ha, ha! There! Take all the papers, and lock 'em up. Oh! Wait a minute. Here’s a printed bill to stick on the wall. Wet from the printer's. How nice it smells!” “What's this?” said Tim, looking over the document. “I don’t know,” replied his wife. “I haven’t read a word Of it.” “‘To be sold by Auction,’” read the host of the Nut- meg Grater, “‘unless previously disposed of by private contract.’” “They always put that,” said Clemency. “Yes, but they don’t always put this,” he returned. “Look here, ‘Mansion,’ &c.—‘offices,’ &c., “shrubber- ies,’ &c., ‘ring fence,’ &c., ‘Messrs. Snitchey, and Craggs,’ &c., “ ornamental portion of the unincumbered freehold property of Michael Warden, Esquire, intend- ing to continue to reside abroad' " “Intending to continue to reside abroad!” repeated Clemency. “Here it is,” said Mr. Britain. “Ilook!” “And it was only this very day that I heard it whis- pered at the old house, that better and plainer news had THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 299 been half-promised of her, soon!” said Clemency, shaking her head sorrowfully, and patting her elbows as if the recollection of old times unconsciously awakened her old habits. “Dear, dear, dear! There’ll be heavy hearts, Ben, yonder.” * Mr. Britain heaved a sigh, and shook his head, and said he couldn’t make it out: he had left off trying long ago. With that remark, he applied himself to putting up the bill just inside the bar window. Clemency, after meditating in silence for a few moments, roused herself, cleared her thoughtful brow, and bustled off to look after the children. - Though the host of the Nutmeg Grater had a lively. regard for his good wife, it was of the old patronising kind, and she amused him mightily. Nothing would have astonished him so much, as to have known for certain from any third party, that it was she who man- aged the whole house, and made him, by her plain, straightforward thrift, good-humour, honesty, and in- dustry, a thriving man. So easy it is, in any degree of life (as the world very often finds it), to take those cheerful natures that never assert their merit, at their Own modest valuation; and to conceive a flippant liking of people for their outward oddities and eccentricities, whose innate worth, if we would look so far, might make us blush in the comparrison! It was comfortable to Mr. Britain to think of his own condescension in having married Clemency. She was a perpetual testimony to him of the goodness of his heart, and the kindness of his disposition; and he felt that her being an excellent wife was an illustration of the old precept that virtue is its own reward. He had finished wafering up the bill, and had locked the vouchers for her day’s proceedings in the cupboard —chuckling all the time over her capacity for busi- ness—when, returning with the news that the two Mas- ter Britains were playing in the coach-house under the Superintendence of one Betsey, and that little Clem was sleeping “like a picture,” she sat down to tea, which had awaited her arrival on a little table. It was a very meat little bar, with the usual display of bottles and glasses; a sedate clock, right to the minute (it was half- ; five); everything in its place, and everything fur- ished and polished up to the very utmost, - 300 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. “It’s the first time I’ve sat down quietly to-day, I de- clare,” said Mrs. Britain, taking a long breath, as if she had sat down for the night; but getting up again imme- diately to hand her husband his tea, and cut him his bread and butter; : “how that bill does set me to think- ing of old times!” - “Ah!” said Mr. Britain, handling his saucer like an oyster, and disposing of its contents on the same principle. “That same Mr. Michael Warden,” said Clemency, º her head at the notice of sale, “ lost me my old place.” “And got you your husband,” said Mr. Britain. “Well! So he did,” retorted Clemency, “and many thanks to him.” ,” “Man’s the creature of habit,” said Mr. Britain, sur- veying her, over his saucer. “I had somehow got used to you, Clem; and I found 1 shouldn’t be able to get on without you. So we went and got made man and wife. Ha! haſ We! Who’d have thought it!” “Who, indeed!” cried Clemency. “It was very good of you, Ben.” “No, no, no,” replied Mr. Britain, with an air of self- denial. “Nothing worth mentioning.” “Oh, yes it was, Ben,” said his wife, with great sim- plicity; “I’m sure I think so, and am very much obliged to you. Ah!” looking again at the bill; “when she was known to be gone, and out of reach, dear girl, I couldn’t help telling—for her sake quite as much as theirs—what I knew, could I?” “You told it, anyhow,” observed her husband. “And Doctor Jeddler,” pursued Clemency, putting down her teacup, and looking thoughtfully at the bill, “in his grief and passion, turned me out of house and home! I never have been so glad of anything in all my life as that I didn’t say an angry word to him, and hadn’t an angry feeling towards him, even then; for he repented that truly, afterwards. How often he has sat in this room, and told me over and over again he was Sorry for it!—the last time only yesterday, when you were out. How often he has sat in this room, and talked to me, hour after hour, about one thing and an- Other, in which he made believe to be interested!—but Only for the sake of the days that are gone by, and be- cause he knows she used to like me, Ben!” THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 301 “Why, how did you ever come to catch a glimpse of that, Clem?” asked her husband, astonished that she should have a distinct perception of a truth which had only dimly suggested itself to his inquiring mind. “I don’t know, I’m sure,” said Clemency, blowing her tea to cool it. “Bless me, I couldn’t tell you, if you was to offer me a reward of a hundred pound.” He might have pursued this metaphysical subject but for her catching a glimpse of a substantial fact behind him, in the shape of a gentleman attired in mourning, and cloaked and booted like a rider on horseback, who stood at the bar-door. He seemed attentive to their conversation, and not at all impatient to interrupt it. Clemency hastily rose at this sight. Mr. Britain also rose and saluted the guest. “Will you please to walk up-stairs, sir. There’s a very nice room up-stairs, sir.” “Thank you,” said the stranger, looking earnestly at Mr. Britain’s wife. “May I come in here?” “Oh, surely, if you like, sir,” returned Clemency, ad- mitting him. “What would you please to want, sir?” The bill had caught his eye, and he was reading it. “Excellent property that, sir,” observed Mr. Britain. He made no answer, but turning round, when he had finished reading, looked at Clemency with the same ob- servant curiosity as before. “You were asking me”— he said, still looking at her— “What you would please to take, sir,” answered Clem- ency, stealing a glance at him in return. “If you will let me have a draught of ale,” he said, moving to a table by the window, ‘‘ and will let me have it here, without being any interruption to your meal, I shall be much obliged to you.” He sat down as he spoke without any further parley, and looked out at the prospect. He was an easy, well- knit figure of a man in the prime of life. His face, much browned by the sun, was shaded by a quantity of dark hair; and he wore a moustache. His beer being set before him, he filled out a glass, and drank, good-humouredly, to the house; adding, as he put the tumbler down again: ‘‘It’s a new house, is it not?” - “Not particularly new, sir,” replied Mr. Britain. • “Between five and six years old,” said Clemency, speaking very distinctly. “I think I heard you mention Doctor Jeddler’s name 303 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. as I came in,” inquired the stranger. “That bill reminds me of him; for I happen to know something of that story, by hearsay, and through certain connections of mine. Is the old man living?” - “Yes, he’s living, sir,” said Clemency. “Much changed?” “Since when, sir?” returned Clemency, with remark- able emphasis and expression. “Since his daughter—went away.” “Yes! he’s greatly changed since then,” said Clem- ency. “He’s grey and old, and hasn’t the same way with him at all; but I think he's happy now. He has taken on with his sister since then, and goes to see her very often. That did him good, directly. At first, he was sadly broken down; and it was enough to make one’s heart bleed to see him wandering about, railing at the world; but a great change for the better came over , him after a year or two, and then he began to like to talk about his lost daughter, and to praise her, ay, and the world, too! and was never tired of saying, with the tears in his poor eyes, how beautiful and good she was. He had forgiven her then. That was about the same time as Miss Grace's marriage. Britain, you remember?” Mr. Britain remembered very well. “The sister is married, then,” returned the stranger. He paused for some time before he asked, “To whom?” Clemency narrowly escaped oversetting the tea-board, in her emotion at this question. “Did you never hear?” she said. * “I should like to hear,” he replied, as he filled his glass again, and raised it to his lips. “Ah! It would be a long story, if it was properly told,” said Clemency, resting her chin on the palm of her left hand, and supporting that elbow on her right hand, as she shook her head, and looked back through the intervening years, as if she were looking at a fire. “It would be a long story, I am sure.” “But told as a short one,” suggested the Stranger. “Told as a short one,” repeated Clemency in the same thoughtful tone, and without any apparent reference to him, of consciousness of having auditors, “what would there be to tell? That they grieved together, and remem- bered her together, like a person dead; that they were so tender of her, never would reproach her, called her > * * * à fº tº. Zºº Fºº 2 º º: #3:4::=3 22:37:=:: 2- %=# º }* 22,. ºf Aº Š. º *ś % *= Ž% { źº %2% º Ž tº Tº zz- Ž zzº;2.2%:/// % 2% 2. Ø4% t zºzzº + \: Hºà? - $ºº | f -- “2 ºft||| º THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 303 back to one another as she used to be, and found excuses for her! Every one knows that. I’m sure I do. No one better,” added Clemency, wiping her eyes with her hand. “And so,” suggested the stranger. 8 “And so,” said Clemency, taking him up mechani- cally, and without any change in her attitude or man- ner, “they at last were married. They were married on her birthday—it comes round again to-morrow—very Quiet, very humble like, but very happy. Mr. Alfred said, one night when they were walking in the orchard, ‘ Grace, shall our wedding-day be Marion's birthday? And it was.” * “And they have lived happily together?” said the Stranger. . “Ay,” said Clemency. “No two people ever more so. They have had no sorrow but this.” She raised her head as with a sudden attention to the circumstances under which she was recalling these events, and looked quickly at the stranger. Seeing that his face was turned towards the window, and that he seemed intent upon the prospect, she made some eager signs to her husband, and pointed to the bill, and moved her mouth as if she were repeating with great energy, One word or phrase to him over and over again. As she uttered no sound, and as her dumb motions, like most of her gestures, were of a very extraordinary kind, this un- intelligible conduct reduced Mr. Britain to the confines of despair. He stared at the table, at the stranger, at the Spoons, at his wife—followed her pantomime with looks of deep amazement and perplexity—asked in the same language, was it property in danger, was it he in danger, was it she—answered her signals with other signals expressive of the deepest distress and confusion —followed the motions of her lips—guessed half aloud “milk and water,” “monthly warning,” “mice and wal- nuts”—and couldn’t approach her meaning. Clemency gave it up at last, as a hopeless attempt; and moving her chair by very slow degrees a little nearer to the Stranger, sat with her eyes apparently cast down but glancing sharply at him now and then, waiting until he should ask some other question. She had not to wait long; for he said, presently: “And what is the after history of the young lady who went away? They know it, I suppose?” 304 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. Clemency shook her head. “I’ve heard,” she said, “that Doctor Jeddler is thought to know more of it than he tells. Miss Grace has had letters from her sister, saying that she was well and happy, and made much happier by her being married to Mr. Alfred; and has written letters back. But there’s a mystery about her life and fortunes, altogether, which nothing has cleared up to this hour, and which—” She faltered here, and stopped. “And which *—repeated the stranger. ~ “Which only one other person, I believe, could ex- plain,” said Clemency, drawing her breath quickly. “Who may that be?” asked the stranger! “Mr. Michael Warden!” answered Clemency, almost in a shriek: at Once conveying to her husband what she would have had him understand before, and letting Michael Warden know that he was recognised. “You remember me, sir?” said Clemency, trembling with emotion; “I saw just now you did! You remem- ber me, that night in the garden. I was with her!” “Yes. You were,” he said. “Yes, sir,” returned Clemency. “Yes, to be sure. This is my husband, if you please. Ben, my dear Ben, run to Miss Grace—run to Mr. Alfred—run somewhere, Ben! Bring somebody here, directly!” “Stay!” said Michael Warden, quietly interposing himself between the door and Britain. “What would you do?” - “Let them know that you are here, sir,” answered Clemency, clapping her hands in sheer agitation. “Let them know that they may hear of her, from your own lips; let them know that she is not quite lost to them, but that she will come home again yet, to bless her father and her loving sister—even her old servant, even me,” she struck herself upon the breast with both hands, “with a sight of her sweet face. Run, Ben, run!” And still she pressed him on toward the door, and still Mr. Warden stood before it, with his hand stretched out, not angrily, but sorrowfully. ‘‘ Or, perhaps,” said Clemency, running past her hus- band and catching in her emotion at Mr. Warden’s cloak, “perhaps she’s here now; perhaps she's close by. I think from your manner she is. Let me see her, sir, if you please. I waited on her when she was a little child. THE BATTLE OF LIFE. . . 305 I saw her grow to be the pride of all this place. I knew her when she was Mr. Alfred's promised wife. I tried to warn her when you tempted her away. I know what her old home was when she was like the soul of it, and how it changed when she was gone and lost. Let me speak to her, if you please!” He gazed at her with compassion, not unmixed with wonder; but he made no gesture of assent. “I don’t think she can know,” pursued Clemency, “how truly they forgive her; how they love her; what joy it would be to them to see her once more. She may be timorous of going home. Perhaps if she sees me it may give her new heart. Only tell me, truly, Mr. War- den, is she with you?” “She is not,” he answered, shaking his head. This answer, and his manner, and his black dress, and his coming back so quietly, and his announeed intention of continuing to live abroad, explained it all. Marion was dead. * He didn’t contradict her; yes, she was dead! Cle- ºy sat down, hid her face upon the table, and CTI6O1. At that moment, a grey-headed old gentleman came running in: quite out of breath, and panting so much that his voice was scarcely to be recognised as the voice of Mr. Snitchey. “Good Heaven, Mr. Warden!” said the lawyer, tak- ing him aside, “what wind has blown.—” . He was so blown himself, that he couldn’t get on any further until after a pause, when he added, feebly, “ you here?” “An ill wind, I am afraid,” he answered. “If you could have heard what has just passed—how I have been besought and entreated to perform impossibilities—what confusion and affliction I carry with me!” “I can guess it all. But why did you ever come here, my good sir?” retorted Snitchey. “Come! How should I know who kept the house? When I sent my servant on to you, I strolled in here be- cause the place was new to me; and I had a natural curiosity in everything new and old in these old scenes; and it was outside the town I wanted to communicate with you, first, before appearing there. I wanted to know what people would say to me. I see by your man- ner that you can tell me. If it were not for your con- 21 306 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. founded caution, I should have been possessed of every- thing long ago.” • “Our caution!” returned the lawyer, “speaking for Self and Craggs—deceased,” here Mr. Snitchey, glanc- ing at his hat-band, shook his head, “how can you rea- sonably blame us, Mr. Warden? It was understood between us that the subject was never to be renewed, and that it wasn’t a subject on which grave and sober men like us (I made a note of your observations at the time) could interfere? Our caution too! When Mr. Craggs, sir, went down to his respected grave in the full belief—” ... “I had given a solemn promise of silence until I should return, whenever that might be,” interrupted Mr. Warden; “and I have kept it.” “Well, sir, and I repeat it,” returned Mr. Snitchey, “we were bound to silence too! We were bound to silence in Our duty towards ourselves, and in our duty towards a variety of clients, you among them, who were as close as wax. It was not our place to make inquiries of you on Such a delicate subject. I had my suspicions, sir; but, it is not six months since I have known the truth, and been assured that you lost her.” “By whom?” inquired his client. “By Doctor Jeddler himself, sir, who at last reposed that confidence in me voluntarily. He, and only he, has known the whole truth, years and years.” “And you know it?” said his client. “I do, sir!” replied Snitchey; “and I have also reason to know that it will be broken to her sister to-morrow evening. They have given her that promise. In the meantime, perhaps you’ll give me the honour of your company at my house; being unexpected at your own. But, not to run the chance of any more such difficulties as you have had here, in case you should be recognised —though you’re a good deal changed; I think I might have passed you myself, Mr. Warden—we had better dine here, and walk on in the evening. It’s a very good place to dine at, Mr. Warden; your own property, by- the-bye. Self and Craggs (deceased) took a chop here sometimes, and had it very comfortably served. Mr. Craggs, sir,” said Snitchey, shutting his eyes tight for an instant, and opening them again, “was struck off the r \l of life too soon.’ - THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 30? “Heaven forgive me for not condoling with you,” re- turned Michael Warden, passing his hand across his forehead, “but I’m like a man in a dream at present. I seem to want my wits. Mr. Craggs—yes—I am very sorry we have lost Mr. Craggs.” But he looked at Clemency as he said it, and seemed to sympathise with Ben, consoling her. “Mr. Craggs, sir,” observed Snitchey, “didn’t find life, I regret to say, as easy to have and to hold as his theory made it out, or he would have been among us now. It’s a great loss to me. He was my right arm, my right leg, my right ear, my right eye, was Mr. Craggs. I am paralytic without him. He bequeathed his share of the business to Mrs. Craggs, her executors, administrators, and assigns. His name remains in the Firm to this hour. I try, in a childish sort of way, to make believe, sometimes, that he is alive. You may observe that I speak for Self and Craggs—deceased, sir —deceased,” said the tender-hearted attorney, waving his pocket-handkerchife. Michael Warden, who had still been observant of Clemency, turned to Mr. Snitchey, when he ceased to speak, and whispered in his ear. “Ah, poor thing!” said Snitchey, shaking his head. “Yes. She was always very faithful to Marion. She was always very fond of her. Pretty Marion! Poor Marion | Cheer up, mistress—you are married now, you know, Clemency.” Clemency only sighed, and shook her head. & | ...Well, well! Wait till to-morrow,” said the lawyer, Kindly. “To-morrow can’t bring back the dead to life, mister,” said Clemency, sobbing. “No. It can’t do that, or it would bring back Mr. Craggs, deceased,” returned the lawyer. “But it may bring some soothing circumstances; it may bring some comfort. Wait till to-morrow !” - So Clemency, shaking his proffered hand, said she would; and Britain, who had been terribly cast down at sight of his despondent wife (which was like the busi- ness hanging its head), said that was right; and Mr. Snitchey and Michael Warden went up-stairs; and there they were soon engaged in a conversation so cautiously conducted, that no murmur of it was audible above the 308 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. & clatter of plates and dishes, the hissing of the frying- pan, the bubbling of saucepans, the low, monotonous waltzing of the jack—with a dreadful click every now and then, as if it had met with some mortal accident to its head, in a fit of giddiness—and all the other prepara- tions in the kitchen for their dinner. To-morrow was a bright and peaceful day; and no- where were the autumn tints more beautifully seen, than from the quiet orchard of the Doctor’s house. The snows of many winter nights had melted from that ground, the withered leaves of many summer-times had rustled there, since she had fled. The honey-suckle porch was green again, the trees cast bountiful and changing shadows on the grass, the landscape was as ºquil and serene as it had ever been; but where was sheſ Not there! Not there! She would have been a stranger sight in her old home now, even than that home had been at first, without her. But a lady sat in the familiar place, from whose heart she had never passed away; in whose true memory she lived, unchanging, youthful, radiant with all promise and all hope; in whose affec- tion—and it was a mother's now, there was a cherished little daughter playing by her side—she had no rival, no successor; upon whose gentle lips her name was trem- bling then. - The spirit of the lost girl looked out of those eyes. Those eyes of Grace, her sister, sitting with her hus- band in the orchard, on their wedding-day, and his and Marion’s birthday. He had not become a great man; he had not grown rich; he had not forgotten the scenes and friends of his youth; he had not fulfilled any one of the Doctor's old predictions. But in his useful, patient, unknown visit- ing of poor men’s homes; and in his watching of sick beds; and in his daily knowledge of the gentleness and goodness flowering the by-paths of this world, not to be trodden down beneath the heavy foot of poverty, but springing up, elastic, in its track, and making its way beautiful; he had better learned and proved, in each succeeding year, the truth of his old faith. The manner of his life, though quiet and remote, had shown him how often men still entertained angels, unawares, as in the THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 309 olden time; and how the most unlikely forms—even some that were mean and ugly to the view, and poorly clad—became irradiated by the couch of sorrow, want, and pain, and changed to ministering Spirits with a glory round their heads. He lived to better purpose on the altered battle- ground, perhaps, than if he had contended restlessly in more ambitious lists; and he was happy with his wife, dear Grace. - And Marion. Had he forgotten her? “The time has flown, dear Grace,” he said, “since then;” they had been talking of that night; “and yet it seems a long while ago. We count by changes and events within us. Not by years.” “Yet we have years to count by, too, since Marion was with us,” returned Grace. “Six times, dear hus- band, counting to-night as one, we have sat here on her birthday, and spoken together of that happy return, so eagerly expected and so long deferred. Ah, when will it be! When will it be!” - Her husband attentively observed her, as the tears col- lected in her eyes; and drawing nearer, said: “But Marion told you, in that farewell letter which she left for you upon your table, love, and which you read so often, that years must pass away before it could be. Did she not?” She took a letter from her breast, and kissed it, and said “Yes.” - -- “That through those intervening years, however happy she might be, she would look forward to the time when you would meet again, and all would be made clear; and that she prayed you, trustfully and hopefully, to do the same. The letter runs so, does it not, my dear?” “Yes, Alfred.” “And every other letter she has written since?” “Except the last—some months ago—in which she Spoke of you, and what you then knew, and what I was to learn to-night.” • He looked towards the sun, then fast declining, and said that the appointed time was sunset. “Alfred!” said Grace, laying her hand upon his shoul- der earnestly, “there is something in this letter—this old letter, which you say I read so often—that I have never told you. But, to-night, dear husband, with that 310 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. sunset drawing near, and all our life seeming to soften and become hushed with the departing day, I cannot keep it secret.” - “What is it, love?” - “When Marion went away, she wrote me, here, that you had once left her a sacred trust to me, and that now she left you, Alfred, such a trust in my hands: praying and beseeching me, as I loved her, and as I loved you, not to reject the affection she believed (she knew, she said) you would transfer to me when the new wound was healed, but to encourage and return it.” “—And make me a proud, and happy man again, Grace. Did she say so?” - “She meant, to make myself so blest and honoured in your love,” was his wife’s answer, as he held her in his a,TIO.S. “Hear me, my dear!” he said. “No. Hear me so!”— and as he spoke, he gently laid the head she had raised again upon his shoulder. “I know why I have never heard this passage in the letter, until now. I know why no trace of it ever showed itself in any word or look of yours at that time. I know why Grace, although so true a friend to me, was hard to win to be my wife. And knowing it, my own! I know the priceless value of the heart I gird within my arms, and thank God for the rich possession!” She wept, but not for sorrow, as he pressed her to his heart. After a brief space; he looked down at the child who was sitting at their feet playing with a little basket of flowers, and bade her look how golden and how red the sun was. “Alfred,” said Grace, raising her head quickly at these words. “The sun is going down. You have not forgotten what I am to know before it sets.” “You are to know the truth of Marion’s history, my love,” he answered. - “All the truth,” she said, imploringly. “Nothing veiled from me any more. That was the promise. Was it not?” “It was,” he answered. “Before the sun went down on Marion’s birthday. And you see it Alfred? It is sinking fast.” e • He put his arm about her waist, and looking steadily into her eyes, rejoined: THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 811 “That truth is not reserved so long for me to tell, dear Grace. It is to come from other lips.” “From other lips!” she faintly echoed. “Yes. I know your constant heart, I know how brave you are, I know that to you a word of preparation is enough. You have said, truly, that the time is come. It is. Tell me that you have present fortitude to bear a trial—a surprise—a shock: and the messenger is waiting at the gate.” “What messenger?” she said. “And what intelligence does he bring?” “I am pledged,” he answered her, preserving his steady look, “to say no more. Do you think you under- stand me?” - ‘‘I am afraid to think,” she said. There was that emotion in his face, despite its steady gaze, which frightened her. Again she hid her own face on his shoulder, trembling, and entreated him to pause—a moment. “Courage, my wife! When you have firmness to re- ceive the messenger, the messenger is waiting at the gate. The Sun is setting on Marion’s birthday. Cour- age, courage, Grace!” She raised her head, and, looking at him, told him she was ready. As she stood, and looked upon him going away, her face was so like Marion’s as it had been in her later days at home, that it was wonderful to see. He took the child with him. She called her back—she bore the lost girl's name—and pressed her to her bosom. The little creature, being released again, sped after him, and Grace was left alone. She knew not what she dreaded, or what hoped; but remained there, motionless, looking at the porch by which they had disappeared. - Ah! what was that, emerging from its shadow; stand- ing on its threshold! That figure, with its white gar- ments rustling in the evening air; its head laid down upon her father’s breast, and pressed against it to his loving heart! Oh, God! was it a vision that came burst- ing from the old man’s arms, and, with a cry, and with a waving of its hands, and with a wild precipitation of itself upon her in its boundless love, sank down in her embrace! “Oh, Marion, Marion! Oh, my sister! Oh, my heart's --r 312 ſº THE BATTLE OF LIFE. dear love! Oh, joy and happiness unutterable, so to meet again!” - It was no dream, no phantom conjured up by hope and fear, but Marion, sweet Marion! So beautiful, so happy, so unalloyed by care and trial, so elevated and exalted in her loveliness, that, as the setting sun shone brightly on her upturned face, she might have been a spirit visiting the earth upon a healing mission. - Clinging to her sister, who had dropped upon a seat and bent down over her—and smiling through her tears —and kneeling, close before her, with both arms twin- ing round her, and never turning for an instant from her face—and with the glory of the setting sum upon her brow, and with the soft tranquility of evening gath- ering around them—Marion at length broke silence; her voice, so calm, low, clear, and pleasant, well-tuned to the time. § “When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now again—” . “Stay, my sweet love! A moment! Oh, Marion, to hear you speak again.” She could not bear the voice she loved, so well, at first. “When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now again, I loved him from my soul. I loved him most devotedly. I would have died for him, though I was so young. I never slighted his affection in my secret breast, for one brief instant. It was far beyond all price to me. Although it is so long ago, and past and gone, and everything is wholly changed, I could not bear to think that you, who loved so well, should think I did not truly love him once. I never loved him better, Grace, than when he left this very scene upon this very day. I never loved him better, dear one, than I did that night when I left here.” e Her sister, bending over her, could look into her face, and hold her fast. “But he had gained, unconsciously,” said Marion, with a gentle smile, “another heart, before I knew that I had one to give him. That heart—yours, my sister!— was so yielded up, in all its other tenderness, to me; was so devoted, and so noble; that it plucked its love away, and kept its secret from all eyes but mine—Ah! what other eyes were quickened by such tenderness and grat- itude!—and was content to sacrifice itself to me. But I 35 A THE BATTLE OF LIFE. . 313 knew something of its depths. I knew the struggle it had made. I knew its high inestimable worth to him, and his appreciation of it, let him love me as he would. I knew the debt I owed it. I had its great example every day before me. What you had done for me, I knew that I could do, Grace, if I would, for you. I never laid my head down on my pillow, but I prayed with tears to do it. I never laid my head down on my pillow, but I thought of Alfred's own words, on the day of his departure, and how truly he had said (for I knew that, knowing you) that there were victories gained every day, in struggling hearts, to which these fields of battle were as nothing. Thinking more and more upon the great endurance cheerfully sustained, and never known or cared for, that there must be, every day and hour, in that great strife of which he spoke, my trial seemed to grow light and easy. And he who knows our hearts, my dearest, at this moment, and who knows there is no drop of bitterness or grief——of anything but unmixed happiness—in mine, enabled me to make the resolution that I never would be Alfred's wife. That he should be my brother, and your husband, if the course I took could bring that happy end to pass; but that I never yº (Grace, I then loved him dearly, dearly!) be his Wife!” “Oh, Marion! Oh, Marion!” “I had tried to seem indifferent to him;” and she Fº her sister’s face against her own: “but that was ard, and you were always his true advocate. I had tried to tell you of my resolution, but you would never hear me; you would never understand me. The time was drawing near for his return. I felt that I must act, before the daily intercourse between us was renewed. I knew that one great pang, undergone at that time, would save a lengthened agony to all of us. I knew that if I went away then, that end must follow which has followed, and which has made us both so happy, Grace! I wrote to good Aunt Martha, for a refuge in her house: I did not then tell her all, but something of my story, and she freely promised it. While I was con- testing that step with myself, and with my love of you, and home, Mr. Warden, brought here by an accident, became, for some time, our companion.” “I have sometimes feared of late years, that this 314 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. might have been,” exclaimed her sister; and her counte- nance was ashy-pale. “You never loved him—and you married him in your self-sacrifice to me!” “He was then,” said Marion, drawing her sister closer to her, ‘‘ on the eve of going secretly away for a long time. He wrote to me, after leaving here; told me what his condition and prospects really were; and offered me his hand. He told me he had seen I was not happy in the prospect of Alfred's return. I believe he thought my heart had no part in that contract; perhaps thought I might have loved him once, and did not then; perhaps thought that when I tried to seem indifferent, I tried to hide indifference—I cannot tell. But I wished that you should feel me wholly lost to Alfred—hopeless to him— dead. Do you understand me, love?” Her sister looked into her face, attentively. She seemed in doubt. “I saw, Mr. Warden, and confided in his honour; charged him with my secret, on the eve of his and my departure. He kept it. Do you understand me, dear?” Grace looked confusedly upon her. She scarcely seemed to hear. “My love, my sister!” said Marion, “recall your thoughts a moment; listen to me. Do not look so strangely on me. There are countries, dearest, where those who would abjure a misplaced passion, or would strive against some cherished feeling of their hearts and conquer it, retire into hopeless solitude, and close the world against themselves and worldly loves and hopes forever. When women do so, they assume that name which is so dear to you and me, and call each other Sisters. But, there may be sisters, Grace, who, in the broad world out of doors, and underneath its free sky, and in its crowded places, and among its busy life, and trying to assist and cheer it, and to do some good —learn the same lesson; and who, with hearts still fresh and young, and open to all happiness and means of hap- piness, can say the battle is long past, the victory long . won. And such a one am Il You understand me now P” Still she looked fixedly upon her, and made no reply. “Oh, Grace, dear Grace,” said Marion, clinging yet more tenderly and fondly to that breast from which she had been so long exiled, “if you were not a happy wife THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 315 and mother—if I had no little namesake here—if Alfred, my kind brother, were not your own fond husband— from whence could I derive the ecstasy I feel to-night! But, as I left here, so I have returned. My heart has known no other love, my hand has never been bestowed apart from it. I am still your maiden sister, unmarried, unbetrothed: your own old loving Marion, in whose af- fection you exist alone and have no partner, Grace!” She understood her now. Her face relaxed; sobs came to her relief; and falling on her neck, she wept and wept, and fondled her as if she were a child again. When they were more composed, they found that the Doctor, and his sister, good Aunt Martha, were stand- ing near at hand, with Alfred. “This is a weary day for me,” said good Aunt Martha, smiling through her tears, as she embraced her nieces; for I lose my dear companion in making you all happy; and what can you give me, in return for my Marion?” “A converted brother,” said the Doctor. “That’s something, to be sure,” retorted Aunt Martha, “in such a farce as—" “No, pray don’t,” said the Doctor, penitently. “Well, I won't,” replied Aunt Martha. “But, I con- sider myself ill-used. I don’t know what’s to become of me without my Marion, after we have lived together half-a-dozen years.” “You must come and live here, I suppose,” replied the Doctor. “We shan’t quarrel now, Martha.” “Or you must get married, aunt,” said Alfred. “Indeed,” returned the old lady, “I think it might be a good speculation if I were to set my cap at Michael Warden, who, I hear, is come home much the better for his absence in all respects. But as I knew him when he was a boy, and I was not a very young woman then, perhaps he mightn't respond. . So I'll make up my mind to go and live with Marion, when she marries, and until then (it will not be very long, I dare say) to live alone. What do you say, brother?” - “I’ve a great mind to say it’s a ridiculous world alto- gether, and there is nothing serious in it,” observed the poor old Doctor. “You might take twenty affidavits of it if you chose, Anthony,” said his sister; “but nobody would believe you with such eyes as those.” 316 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. “It’s a world full of hearts,” said the Doctor, hugging his younger daughter, and bending across her to hug Grace—for he couldn’t separate the sisters; “and a se- rious world, with all its folly—even with mine, which was enough to have swamped the whole globe; and it is a world on which the sun never rises, but it looks upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some set-off against the miseries and wickedness of Battle-Fields; and it is a world we need be careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it is a world of sacred mysteries, and its Creator only knows what lies beneath the surface of His lightest image!” You would not be the better pleased with my rude pen, if it dissected and laid open to your view the trans- ports of this family, long severed and now reunited. Therefore, I will, not follow the poor Doctor through his humbled recollection of the sorrow he had had, when Marion was lost to him; nor will I tell how serious he had found that world to be in which some love, deep- anchored, is the portion of all human creatures; nor how such a trifle as the absence of one little unit in the great absurd account, had stricken him to the ground. Nor how, in compassion for his distress, his sister had, long ago, revealed the truth to him by slow degrees, and brought him to the knowledge of the heart of his self-banished daughter, and to that daughter's side. Nor how Alfred Heathfield had been told the truth, too, in the course of that then current year; and Marion had seen him, and had promised him, as her brother, that on her birthday, in the evening, Grace should know it from her lips at last. “I beg your pardon, Doctor,” said Mr. Snitchey, looking into the orchard, “but have I liberty to come in P’’ Without waiting for permission, he came straight to Marion. and kissed her hand, quite joyfully. - “If Mr. Craggs had been alive, my dear Miss Marion,” said Mr. Snitchey, “he would have had great interest in this occasion. It might have suggested to him, Mr. Alfred, that our life is not too easy perhaps; that, taken altogether, it will bear any little smoothing we can give it; but Mr. Craggs was a man who could endure to be convinced, sir. He was always open to convic- THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 31% tion. If he were open to conviction, now, I—this is weakness. Mrs. Snitchey, my dear,”—at his summons, that lady appeared from behind the door, “you are among old friends.” Mrs. Snitchey having delivered her congratulations, took her husband aside. - “One moment, Mr. Snitchey,” said that lady. “It is not in my nature to rake up the ashes of the departed.” “No, my dear,” returned her husband. “Mr. Craggs is—” - “Yes, my dear, he is deceased,” said Mr. Snitchey. “But I ask you if you recollect,” pursued his wife, “ that evening of the ball? I only ask you that. ... If you do; and if your memory has not entirely failed you, Mr. Snitchey; and if you are not absolutely, in your dotage; I ask you to connect this time with that º remember how I begged and prayed you, on my nees—” “Upon your knees, my dear!” said Mr. Snitchey. “Yes,” said Mrs. Snitchey, confidently, “and you know it—to beware of that man--to observe his eye— and now to tell me whether I was right, and whether at º moment he knew secrets which he didn’t choose to tell.” “Mrs. Snitchey,” returned her husband, in her ear; “madam. Did you ever observe anything in my eye?” “No,” said Mrs. Snitchey, sharply. “Don’t flatter yourself.” “Because, ma'am, that night,” he continued, twitch- ing her by the sleeve, “it happens that we both knew secrets which we didn’t choose to tell, and both knew just the same professionally. And so the less you say about such things the better, Mrs. Snitchey; and take this as a warning to have wiser and more charitable eyes another time. Miss Marion, I brought a friend of yours along with me. Here, mistress!” Poor Clemency, with her apron to her eyes, came slowly in, escorted by her husband; the latter doleful with the presentiment, that if she abandoned herself to grief, the Nutmeg Grater was done for. “Now, mistress,” said the lawyer, checking Marion as she ran towards her, and interposing himself between them, “what's the matter with you?” “The matter,” cried poor Clemency.—When, looking 3.18 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. up in wonder, and in indignant remonstrance, and in the added emotion of a great roar from Mr. Britain, and seeing that sweet face so well-remembered close before her, she stared, sobbed, laughed, cried, screamed, em- braced her, held her fast, released her, fell on Mr. Snitchey and embraced him (much to Mrs. Snitchey's indignation), fell on the Doctor and embraced him, fell On Mr. Britain and embraced him, and concluded by embracing herself, throwing her apron over her head, and going into hysterics behind it. A Stranger had come into the orchard, after Mr. Snitchey, and had remained apart, near the gate, with- out being observed by any of the group; for they had little spare attention to bestow, and that had been monopolised by the ecstasies of Clemency. He did not appear to wish to be observed, but stood alone, with downcast eyes; and there was an air of dejection about him (though he was a gentleman of a gallant appear- ance) which the general happiness rendered more re- markable. None but the quick eyes of Aunt Martha, however, re- marked him at all; but almost as soon as she espied him, she was in conversation with him. Presently, go- ing to where Marion stood with Grace and her little namesake, she whispered something in Marion’s ear, at which she started, and appeared surprised; but soon re- covering from her confusion, she timidly approached the stranger, in Aunt Martha's company, and engaged in conversation with him, too. “Mr. Britain,” said the lawyer, putting his hand in his pocket, and bringing out a legal-looking document while this was going on, “I congratulate you. You are now the whole and sole proprietor of that freehold ten- ement, at present occupied and held by yourself as a licensed tavern, or house of public entertainment, and commonly called or known by the sign of the Nutmeg Grater. Your wife lost one house, through my client, Mr. Michael Warden, and now gains another. I shall have the pleasure of canvassing you for the county, One of these fine mornings.” e “Would it make any difference in the vote if the sign was altered, sir?” asked Britain. “Not in the least,” replied the lawyer. “Then,” said Mr. Britain, handing him back the con- THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 319 veyance, “just clap in the words “and Thimble,” will you be so good; and I'll have the two mottoes painted up in the parlour, instead of my wife's, portrait.” “And let me,” said a voice behind them; it was the stranger's—Michael Warden’s; “let me claim the benefit of those inscriptions. Mr. Heathfield and Dr. Jeddler, I might have deeply wronged you both. That I did not, is no virtue of my own. I will not say that I am six years wiser than I was,' or better. But I have known, at any rate, that term of self-reproach. I can urge no reason why you should deal gently with me. I abused the hospitality of this house; and learnt my own de- merits, with a shame I have never forgotten, yet with some profit, too, I would fain hope. from one,” he glanced at Marion, “to whom I made my humble supplication for forgiveness, when I knew her merit and my deep unworthiness. In a few days I shall quit this place forever. I entreat your pardon. Do as you would be done byl Forget and forgive!” Time—from whom I had the latter portion of this story, and with whom I have the pleasure of a personal acquaintance of some five-and-thirty years’ duration— informed me, leaning easily upon his scythe, that Michael Warden never went away again, and never sold his house, but opened it afresh, maintained a golden mean of hospitality, and had a wife, the pride and hon- our of that country-side, whose name was Marion. But, as I have observed that Time confuses facts occasionally, I hardly know what weight to give to his authority. TEIE HAUNTED MAN, AND THE GEIOST’S BARGAIN. * == CHAPTER I. THE GIFT BESTOWED. EVERYBODY said so. Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right. In the general experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has taken in most instances such a weary while to find out how wrong, that authority is proved to be fallible. Everybody may sometimes be right; “but that’s no rule,” as the ghost of Giles Scrog- gins says in the ballad. - The dread word, Ghost, recalls me. Everybody said he looked like a haunted man. The extent of my present claim for everybody is, that they were so far right. He did. Who could have seen his hollow cheek, his sunken brilliant eye, his black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although well-knit and well-proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging, like tangled sea-weed, about his face—as if he had been, through his whole life, a lonely mark for the chafing and beating of the great deep of humanity—but might have said he looked like a haunted man? Who could have observed his manner, taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, shadowed by habitual reserve, re- tiring always and jocund never, with a distraught air of reverting to a bygone place and time, or of listening 22 P321 322 : THE HAUNTED MAN. to some old echoes in his mind, but might have said it was the manner of a haunted man. Who could have heard his voice, slow-speaking, deep, and grave, with a natural fulness and melody in it which he seemed to set himself against and stop, but might have said it was the voice of a haunted man? - Who that had seen him in his inner chamber, part library and part laboratory—for he was, as the world knew, far and wide, a learned man in chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily—who that had seen him there, upon a winter night, alone, surrounded by his drugs and instruments and books; the shadow of his shaded lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by the flickering of the fire upon the quaint objects around him; some of these phantoms (the reflection of glass vessels that held liquids), trembling at heart like things that knew his power to uncombine them, and to give back their com- ponent parts to fire and vapour—who that had seen him then, his work done, and he, pondering in his chair be- fore the rusted grate and red flame, moving his thin mouth as if in speech, but silent as the dead, would not º: said that the man seemed haunted and the cham- er to O. Who might not, by a very easy flight of fancy, have believed that everything about him took this haunted tone, and that he lived on haunted ground? His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like—an old, retired part of all ancient endowment for students, once a brave edifice planted in an open place, but now the obsolete whim of forgotten architects; smoke-age-and- weather-darkened, squeezed on every side by the over- growing of the great City, and choked, like an old well. With stones and bricks; its small quadrangles, lying down in very pits formed by the streets and buildings, which, in course of time, had been constructed above its heavy chimney stacks; its old trees, insuited by the neighbouring smoke, which deigned to droop so low when it was very feeble and the weather very moody; its grass-plots, struggling with the mildewed earth to be grass, or to win any show of compromise; its silent pavement, unaccustomed to the tread of feet, and even to the observation of eyes, except when a stray face THE HAUNTED MAN. 323 looked down from the upper world, wondering what nook it was; its sun-dial in a little bricked-up corner, where no sun had straggled for a hundred years, but where, in compensation for the sun’s neglect, the snow would lie for weeks when it lay newhere else, and the black east wind would spin like a huge humming-top, when in all other places it was silent and still. His dwelling, at its heart and core—within doors—at his fireside—was so lowering and old, so crazy, yet so. strong, with its worm-eaten beams of wood in the ceil- ing and its sturdy floor shelving downward to the great oak chimney-piece; SO environed and hemmed in by the pressure of the town, yet so remote in fashion, age, and custom; so quiet, yet so thundering with echoes when a distant voice was raised or a door was shut—echoes not confined to the many low passages and empty rooms, but rumbling and grumbling till they were stified in the heavy air of the forgotten Crypt where the Norman arches were half buried in the earth. You should have seen him in his dwelling about twilight, in the dead winter time. - When the wind was blowing, shrill and shrewd, with the going down of the blurred sun. When it was just so dark, as that the forms of things were indistinct and big—but not wholly lost. When sitters by the fire began to see wild faces and figures, mountains and abysses, ambuscades and armies, in the coals. When people in the streets bent down their heads and ram before the weather. When those who were obliged to meet it, were stopped at angry corners, stung by wandering snow-flakes alighting on the lashes of their eyes—which fell too sparingly, and were blown away too quickly, to leave a trace upon the frozen ground. When windows of private houses closed up tight and warm. When lighted gas began to burst forth in the busy and the Quiet streets, fast blackening otherwise. When stray pedestrians, shivering along the latter, looked down at the glowing fires in kitchens, and sharpened their sharp appetites by Sniffing up the fragrance of whole miles of dinners. - When travellers by land were bitter cold, and looked wearily on gloomy landscapes, rustling and shuddering in the blast. When mariners at sea, outlying upon icy yards, were tossed and swung above the howling ocean * ..., is * < . . . 324 THE HAUNTED MAN. dreadfully. When light-houses, on rocks and head- lands, showed solitary and watchful; and benighted Sea-birds breasted on against their ponderous lanterns, and fell dead. When little readers of story-books, by the fire-light, trembled to think of Cassim Baba cut into quarters, hanging in the Robbers’ Cave, or had some Small misgivings that the fierce little old woman, with the crutch, who used to start out of the box in the merchant Abudah’s bedroom, might, one of these nights, be found upon the stairs, in the long, cold, dusky journey up to bed. - When, in rustic places, the last glimmering of day- light died away from the ends of avenues; and the trees, arching overhead, were sullen and black. When, in parks and woods, the high wet fern and sodden moss and beds of fallen leaves, and trunks of trees, were lost to view, in masses of impenetrable shade. When mists arose from dyke, and fen, and river. When lights in old halls and in cottage windows were a cheerful sight. When the mill stopped, the wheelwright and the black- Smith shut their workshops, the turnpike-gate closed, the plough and harrow were left lonely in the fields, the labourer and team went home, and the striking of the church clock had a deeper sound than at noon, and the churchyard wicket would be swung no more that night. When twilight everywhere released the shadows, prisoned up all day, that now closed in and gathered Iike mustering swarms of ghosts. When they stood lowering in corners of rooms, and frowned out from behind half-opened doors. When they had full posses- sion of unoccupied apartments. When they danced upon the floors, and walls, and ceilings of inhabited chambers while the fire was low, and withdrew like ebbing waters when it sprung into a blaze. When they fantastically mocked the shapes of household objects, making the nurse an ogress, the rocking-horse a monster, the wondering child, half-scared and half- amused, a stranger to itself—the very tongs upon the hearth a straddling giant with his arms a-kimbo, evi- dently smelling the blood of Englishmen, and wanting to grind people's bones to make his bread. When these shadows brought into the minds of older people other thoughts, and showed them different images. When they stole from their retreats, in the - © * -- THE HAUNTED MAN. 325 likenesses of forms and faces from the past, from the grave, from the deep, deep gulf, where the things that might have been, and never were, are always wandering. When he sat, as already mentioned, gazing at the fire. When, as it rose and fell, the shadows went and came. When he took no heed of them, with his bodily eyes; but, let them come or let them go, looked fixedly at the fire. You should have seen him, then. When the sounds that had arisen with the shadows and come out of their lurking-places at the twilight summons, seemed to make a deeper stillness all about him. When the wind was rumbling in the chimney, and sometimes crooning, sometimes howling, in the house. When the old trees outward were so shaken and beaten, that one querulous old rook, unable to sleep, protested now and then, in a feeble, dozy, high-up “Caw!” When, at intervals, the window trembled, the rusty vane upon the turret-top complained, the clock beneath it recorded that another quarter of an hour was gone, or the fire collapsed and fell in with a rattle. —When a knock came at his door, in short, as he was sitting so, and roused him. - “Who’s that?” said he, “come in!” Surely there had been no figure leaning on the back of his chair; no face looking over it. It is certain that no gliding footstep touched the floor, as he lifted up his head with a start and spoke. And yet there was no mirror in the room on whose surface his own form Could have cast its shadow for a moment: and Some- thing had passed darkly and gone. “I’m humbly fearful, sir,” said a fresh-coloured, busy man, holding the door open with his foot for the admis- sion of himself and a wooden tray he carried, and let- ting it go again by very gentle and careful degrees, When he and the tray had got in, lest it should close noisily, ‘‘ that it's a good bit past the time to-night. But Mrs. William has been taken off her legs so often—” “By the wind? ... Ay! I have heard it rising.” “-By the wind, sir—that it's a mercy she got home at all. Oh, dear, yes. Yes. It was by the wind, Mr. Redlaw. By the wind.” He had, by this time, put down the tray for dinner, and was employed in lighting the lamp, and spreading a cloth on the table. From this employment he desisted 326 THE HAUNTED MAN. in a hurry, to stir and feed the fire, and then resumed it; the lamp he had lighted, and the blaze that rose under his hand, so quickly changing the appearance of the room, that it seemed as if the mere coming in of his fresh red face and active manner had made the pleasant alteration. - ‘‘Mrs. William is of course subject at any time, sir, to be taken off her balance by the elements. She is not formed superior to that.” “No,” returned Mr. Redlaw good-naturedly, though abruptly. º “No, sir. Mrs. William may be taken off her balance by Earth; as, for example, last Sunday week, when sloppy and greasy, and she going out to tea with her newest sister-in-law, and having a pride in herself, and wishing to appear perfectly spotless though pedestrian. Mrs. William may be taken off her balance by Air; as being Once over-persuaded by a friend to try a swing at Peckham Fair, which acted on her constitution in- stantly like a steamboat. Mrs. William may be taken off her balance by Fire; as on a false alarm of engines at her mother's, when she went two miles in her night- cap. Mrs. William may be taken off her balance by Water; as at Battersea, when rowed into the piers by her nephew, Charley Swidger, junior, aged twelve, which had no idea of boats whatever. But these are elements. Mrs. William must be taken out of elements for the strength of her character to come into play.” As he stopped for a reply, the reply was “Yes,” in the same tone as before. g “Yes, sir. Oh, dear, yes!” said Mr. Swidger, still pro- ceeding with his preparations, and checking them off as he made them, “That’s where it is, sir. That's what I always say myself, sir. Such a many of us Swidgers!—Pepper. Why there’s my father, sir, super- annuated keeper and custodian of this Institution, eighty-seven years old. He’s a Swidger!—Spoon.” “True, William,” was the patient and abstracted answer, when he stopped again. “Yes, sir,” said Mr. Swidger. “That’s what I always say, sir. You may call him the trunk of the tree!— Bread. Then you come to his successor, my unworthy self—Salt—and Mrs. William, Swidgers both. –Knife and fork. Then you come to all my brothers and their THE HAUNTED MAN. 327 families, Swidgers, man and woman, boy and girl. Why, what with cousins, uncles, aunts, and relation- ships of this, that and t'other degree, and what-not de- gree, and marriages, and lyings-in, the Swidgers— Tumbler—might take hold of hands, and make a ring round England!” - Receiving no reply at all here, from the thoughtful man whom he addressed, Mr. William approached him nearer, and made a feint of accidentally knocking the table with a decanter to rouse him. The moment he succeeded, he went on, as if in great alacrity of acqui- €SCé1] C6, “Yes, sir! That's just what I say myself, sir. Mrs. William and me have often said so. ‘There’s Swidgers enough,’ we say, “without our voluntary contributions— Butter. In fact, sir, my father is a family in himself— Castors—to take care of; and it happens all for the best that we have no child of our own, though it's made Mrs. William rather quiet-like, too. Quite ready for the fowl and mashed potatoes, sir? Mrs. William said she'd dish in ten minutes when I left the Lodge.” “I am quite ready,” said the other, waking as from a dream, and walking slowly to and fro. “Mrs. William has been at it again, sir!” said the keeper, as he stood warming a plate at the fire, and pleasantly shading his face with it. Mr. Redlaw stopped in . walking, and an expression of interest appeared I ſl (11 Iſl. “What I always say myself, sir. She will do it! There’s a motherly feeling in Mrs. William's breast that must and will have went.” “What has she done?” - “Why, sir, not satisfied with being a sort of mother to all the young gentlemen that come up from a wariety of parts, to attend your courses of lectures at this ancient foundation—it’s surprising how stone-chaney catches the heat, this frosty weather, to be sure!” Here he turned the plates, and cooled his fingers. ‘‘Well?” said Mr. Redlaw. “That’s just - what I say myself, sir,” returned Mr. William, speaking over his shoulder, as if in ready and delighted assent. “That’s exactly where it is, sir! There ain’t one of our students but appears to regard Mirs. William in that light. Every day, right through 9 328 THE HAUNTED MAN. the course, they put their heads into the Lodge, one after another, and have all got something to tell her, or something to ask her. “Swidge’ is the appellation by which they speak of Mrs. William in general, among themselves, I’m told; but that’s what I say, sir. Better be called ever so far out of your name, if it’s done in real liking, than have it made ever so much of, and not cared about! What’s a name for? To know a person by. If Mrs. William is known by something better than her name—I allude to Mrs. William's qualities and disposition—never mind her name, though it is Swidger, by rights. Let 'em call her Swidge, Widge, Bridge—Lord! London Bridge, Blackfriars, Chelsea, Putney, Waterloo, or Hammersmith Suspension—if they like!” The close of this triumphant oration brought him and the plate to the table, upon which he half laid and half dropped it, with a lively sense of its being thoroughly heated, just as the subject of his praises entered the room, bearing another tray and a lantern, and follgwed by a venerable old man with long grey hair. - Mrs. William, like Mr. William, was a simple, inno- cent-looking person, in whose smooth cheeks the cheer- ful red of her husband’s official waistcoat was very pleasantly repeated. But whereas Mr. William's light hair stood on end all over his head, and seemed to draw his eyes up with it in an excess of bustling readiness for anything, the dark brown hair of Mrs. William was carefully smoothed down, and waved away, under a trim tidy cap, in the most exact and quiet manner imag- inable. Whereas Mr. William's very trousers hitched themselves up at the ankles, as if it were not in their iron-grey nature to rest without looking about them, Mrs. William’s neatly-flowered skirts—red and white, like her own pretty face—were as composed and Orderly as if the very wind that blew so hard out of doors could not disturb one of their folds. Whereas his coat had something of a fly-away and half-off appearance about the collar and breast, her little bodice was so placid and neat, that there should have been protection for her, in it, had she needed any, with the roughest people. Who could have had the heart to make so calm a bosom Swell with grief, or throb with fear, or flutter with a thought of shame! To whom would its repose and peace have THE HAUNTED MAN. 329 not appealed against disturbance, like the innocent slumber of a child! ‘‘Punctual, of course, Milly,” said her husband, re- lieving her of the tray, “ or it wouldn’t be you. Here's Mrs. William, sir!—He looks lonelier than ever to-night,” whispering to his wife, as he was taking the tray, “and ghostlier altogether.” Without any show of hurry or noise, or any show of herself even, she was so calm and quiet, Milly set the dishes she had brought upon the table—Mr. William, after much clattering and running about, having only gained possession of a butter-boat of gravy, which he stood ready to serve. “What is that the old man has in his arms?” asked Mr. Redlaw, as he sat down to his solitary meal. “Holly, sir,” replied the quiet voice of Milly. “That’s what I say myself, sir,” interposed Mr. Will- iam, striking in with the butter-boat. “Berries is so seasonable to the time of year!—Brown gravy!” “Another Christmas come, another year gone!” mur- mured the Chemist, with a gloomy sigh. “More figures in the lengthening sum of recollection that we work and work at to our torment, till death idly jumbles altogether, and rubs all out. So, Philip!” breaking off, and raising his voice as he addressed the old man stand- ing apart, with his glistening burden in his arms, from which the quiet Mrs. William took small branches, which she noiselessly trimmed with her scissors, and decorated the room with, while her aged father-in-law looked on much interested in the ceremony. - “My duty to you, sir,” returned the old man. “Should have spoke before, sir, but know your ways, Mr. Red- law—proud to say—and wait till spoke to! Merry Christmas, sir, and happy New Year, and many of 'em. Have had a pretty many of 'em myself—ha, ha! —and may take the liberty of wishing 'em. I’m eighty- Sevenſ' - “Have you had so many that were merry and happy?” asked the other. - “Ay, sir, ever so many,” returned the old man. “Is his memory impaired with age? It is to be ex- pected now,” said Mr. Redlaw, turning to the son, and speaking lower, e “Not a morsel of it, sir,” replied Mr.William. “That's 330 THE HAUNTED MAN. exactly what I say myself, sir. There never was such a memory as my father's. He's the most wonderful man in the world. He don’t know what forgetting means. It’s the very observation I’m always making to Mrs. William, sir, if you’ll believe me!” Mr. Swidger, in his polite desire to seem to acquiesce at all events, delivered this as if there were no iota of contradiction in it, and it were all said in unbounded and unqualified assent. - The Chemist pushed his plate away, and, rising from the table, walked across the room to where the old man stood looking at a little sprig of holly in his hand. “It recalls the time when many of those years were old and new, then?” he said, observing him attentively, and touching him on the shoulder. “Does it?” “Oh, many, many l’” said Philip, half-awaking from his reverie. “I’m eighty-sevenſ” - “Merry and happy, was it?” asked the Chemist, in a low voice. “Merry and happy, old man?” ‘‘ May be as high as that, no higher,” said the old man, holding out his hand a little way above the level of his knee, and looking retrospectively at his ques- tioner, “when I first remember 'em! Cold, sunshiny day it was, out a-walking, when some one—it was my mother as sure as you stand there, though I don’t know what her blessed face was like, for she took ill and died that Christmas-time—told me they were food for birds. The pretty little fellow thought—that’s me, you understand—that bird’s eyes were so bright, per- haps, because the berries that they lived on in the winter were so bright. I recollect that. And I’m eighty-seven!” & e * Merry and happy!” mused the other, bending his dark eyes upon the stooping figure, with a smile of compassion. “ Merry and happy — and remember well ?” “Ay, ay, ay!” resumed the old man, catching the last words. “I remember 'em well in my school-time, year after year, and all the merry-making that used to come-along with them... I was a strong chap then, Mr. Redlaw; and, if you’ll believe me, hadn’t my match at foot-ball within ten mile. Where’s my son Will- iam? Hadn't my match at foot-ball, William, within ten mile!” - THE HAUNTED MAN. 331 “That's what I always say, father!” returned the Son promptly, and with great respect. “You are a Swidger, if ever there was one of the family!” “Dear!” said the old man, shaking his head as he again looked at the holly. “His mother—my son Will- iam’s my youngest son—and I, have set among 'em all, boys and girls, little children and babies, many a year, when the berries like these were not Shining half so bright all round us, as their bright faces. Many of 'em are gone; she’s gone; and my son George §. eldest, who was her pride more than all the rest!) is fallen very low: but I can see them, when I look here, alive and healthy, as they used to be in those days; and I can see him, thank God, in his innocence. It’s a blessed thing to me, at eighty-seven.” The keen look that had been fixed upon him with so much earnestness, had gradually sought the ground. “When my circumstances got to be not so good as formerly, through not being honestly dealt by, and I first come here to be custodian,” said the old man, “– which was upwards of fifty years ago—where's my son William? More than half a century ago, William!” “That’s what I say, father,” replied the son, as promptly and dutifully as before, “that's exactly where it is. Two times ought’s an ought, and twice five ten, and there’s a hundred of ‘em.” “It was quite a pleasure to know that one of our founders—or more correctly speaking,” said the old man. with a great glory in his subject and his knowledge of it, “one of the learned gentlemen that helped endow us in Queen Elizabeth’s time, for we were founded afore her day—left in his will, among the other bequests he made us, so much to buy holly, for garnishing the walls. and windows, come Christmas. There was something homely and friendly in it. Being but strange here, then, and coming at Christmas time, we took a liking for his very picter that hangs in what used to be, anciently, afore our ten poor gentlemen commuted for an annual stipend in money, our great Dinner Hall. A sedate gentleman in a peaked beard, with a ruff round his neck, and a scroll below him, in old English letters, ‘Lord! keep my memory green!’ You know all about him, Mr. Redlaw P’’ “I know the portrait hangs there, Philip.” 332 THE HAUNTED MAN. “Yes, sure, it’s the second on the right, above the panelling. I was going to say—he has helped to keep any memory green, I thank him; for, going round the building every year, as I’m a doing now, and freshening up the bare rooms with these branches and berries, freshens up my bare old brain. One year brings back another, and that year another, and those others num- bers! At last, it seems to me as if the birth-time of our Lord was the birth-time of all I have ever had affection for, or mourned for, or delighted in—and they’re a pretty many, for I’m eighty-seven!” “Merry and happy,” murmured Redlaw to himself. The room began to darken strangely. “So you see, sir,” pursued old Philip, whose hale, wintry cheek had warmed into a ruddier glow, and whose blue eyes had brightened while he spoke, “I have plenty to keep, when I keep this present season. Now, where's my quiet Mouse? Chattering's the sin of my time of life, and there's half the building to do yet, if the cold don’t freeze us first, or the wind don’t blow us away, or the darkness don’t swallow us up.” The quiet Mouse had brought her calm face to his side, and silently taken his arm, before he finished speaking. “Come away, my dear,” said the old man. “Mr. Red- law won’t settle to his dinner, otherwise, till it’s cold as the winter. I hope you’ll excuse me rambling on, sir, and I wish you good-night, and, Once again, a merry—” “Stay” said Mr. Redlaw, resuming his place at the table, more, it would have seemed from his manner, to reassure the old keeper, than in any remembrance of his own appetite. “Spare me another moment, Philip. William, you were going to tell me something to your excellent wife's honour. It will not be disagreeable to her to hear you praise her. What was it?” “Why, that’s where it is, you see, sir,” returned Mr. William Swidger, looking towards his wife in consider- able embarrassment. “Mrs. William's got her eye upon me.” - “But you’re not afraid of Mrs. William's eye?” . “Why, no, sir,” returned Mr. Swidger, “that’s what I say myself. It wasn’t made to be afraid of. It wouldn’t have been made so mild, if that was the intention. But I wouldn’t like to—Milly!—him, you know. Down in the Buildings.” THE HAUNTED MAN. 333 Mr. William, standing behind the table, and rummag- ing disconcertedly among the objects upon it, directed persuasive glances at Mrs. William, and Secret jerks of his head and thumb at Mr. Redlaw, as alluring her towards him. “Him, you know, my love,” said Mr.William. “Down in the Buildings. Tell, my dear! You’re the works of Shakspeare in comparison with myself. Down in the Buildings, you know, my love. Student.” “Student!” repeated Mr. Redlaw, raising his head. “That’s what I say, sir!” cried Mr. William, in the utmost animation of assent. “If it wasn’t the poor student down in the Buildings, why should you wish to hear it from Mrs. William’s lips? Mrs. William, my dear —Buildings.” “I didn’t know,” said Milly, with a great frankness, free from any haste or confusion, “that William had said anything about it, or I wouldn’t have come. I asked him not to. It’s a sick young gentleman, sir— and very poor, I am afraid—who is too ill to go home this holiday-time, and lives, unknown to any one, in but a common kind of lodging for a gentleman, down in Jerusalem Buildings. That’s all, sir.” “Why have I never heard of him?” said the Chemist, rising hurriedly. “Why has he not made his situation known to me? Sick!—give me my hat and cloak. Poor! —what house?—what number?” “Oh, you mustn't go there, sir,” said Milly, leaving : her father-in-law, and calmly confronting him with her collected little face and folded hands. “Not go there?” “Oh, dear, no!” said Milly, shaking her head as at a most manifest and self-evident impossibility. “It couldn’t be thought of!” “What do you mean? Why not?” - “Why, you see, sir,” said Mr. William Swidger, per- suasively and confidentially, “that’s what I say. De- pend upon it, the young gentleman would never have made his situation known to one of his own sex. Mrs. William has got into his confidence, but that’s quite different. They all confide in Mrs. William; they all trust her. A man, sir, couldn’t have got a whisper out of him; but woman, sir, and Mrs. William combined—!” “There is good sense and delicacy in what you say, 334 THE HAUNTED MAN. William,” returned Mr. Redlaw, observant of the gentle and composed face at his shoulder. And laying his finger on his lip, he secretly put his purse into her hand. “Oh, dear no, sir!” cried Milly, giving it back again. “Worse and worse! Couldn’t be dreamed Off” - . Such a staid matter-of-fact housewife she was, and so |unruffled by the momentary haste of this rejection, that |an instant afterwards, she was tidily picking up a few leaves which had strayed from behind her scissors and her apron, when she had arranged the holly. Finding, when she rose from her stooping posture, that Mr. Radlaw was still regarding her with doubt and astonishment, she quietly repeated—looking about, the while, for any other fragments that might have escaped her observation: - “Oh, dear no, sir! He said that of all the world he would not be known to you, or receive help from you— though he is a student in your class. I have made no terms of secresy with you, but I trust to your honour completely.” “Why did he say so?” “Indeed I can’t tell, sir,” said Milly, after thinking a little, “because I am not at all clever, you know; and I Wanted to be useful to him in making things neat and comfortable about him, and employed myself that way. But I know he is poor, and lonely, and I think he is somehow neglected too.—How dark it is!” - The room had darkened more and more. There was a very heavy gloom and shadow gathering behind the Chemist’s chair. “What more about him?” he asked. i “He is engaged to be married when he can afford it,” said Milly, ‘‘ and is studying, I think, to qualify himself to earn a living. I have seen, a long time, that he has studied hard and denied himself much.-How very dark it is ſ” “It’s turned colder, too,” said the old man, rubbing his hands. “There’s a chill and dismal feeling in the room. Where's my son William? William, my boy, turn the lamp, and rouse the fire!” Mºs voice resumed, like quiet music very Softly played: “He muttered in his broken sleep yesterday afternoon, after talking to me” (this was to herself) “about some THE HAUNTED M.A.N. 335 one dead, and some great wrong done that could never be forgotten; but whether to him or to another person, I don’t know. Not by him, I am sure.” “And, in short, Mrs. William, you see—which she wouldn’t say herself, Mr. Redlaw, if she was to stop here till the new year after this next one—” said Mr. William coming up to him to speak in his ear, “ has done him worlds of good! Bless you, worlds of good! All at home just the same as ever—my father made as snug and comfortable—not a crumb of litter to be found in the house, if you were to offer fifty pound ready money for it—Mrs. William apparently never out of the way—yet Mrs. William backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, up and down, up and down, a mother to him!” The room turned darker and colder, and the gloom and shadow gathering behind the chair was heavier. “Not content with this, sir, Mrs. William goes and finds, this very night, when she was coming home (why it’s not above a couple of hours ago), a creature more like a young wild beast than a young child, shivering upon a door-step. What does Mrs. William do, but brings it home to dry it, and feed it, and keep it till our old Bounty of food and flannel is given away on Christ- mas morning! If it ever felt a fire before, it’s as much as it ever did; for it’s sitting in the old Lodge chimney, staring at ours as if its ravenous eyes would never shut again. It's sitting there, at least,” said Mr. William, correcting himself, on reflection, “unless it's bolted!” “Heaven keep her happy!” said the Chemist aloud, “ and you too, Philip! and you, William! I must con- sider what to do in this. I may desire to see this student, I’ll not detain you longer now. Good-night!” ‘‘I thankee, sir, I thankee!” said the old man. “ for Mouse, and for my son William, and for myself. Where’s my son William? William, you take the lantern and go On first, through them long dark passages, as you did last year and the year afore. Ha, ha! I remember— though I’m eighty-seven! ‘Lord keep my memory green!” It’s a very good prayer, Mr. Redlaw, that of the learned gentleman in the peaked beard, with a ruff round his neck—hangs up, second on the right above the panelling, in what used to be, afore our ten poor gentle- men computed, our great Dinner Hall. “Lord keep my 336 THE HAUNTED MAN. memory green!” It’s very good and pious, sir. Amen! Amen!” As they passed out and shut the heavy door, which, however carefully withheld, fired a long train of thun- dering reverberations when it shut at last, the room turned darker. As he fell a-musing in his chair alone, the healthy holly withered on the wall, and dropped—dead branches. As the gloom and shadow thickened behind him, in that place where it had been gathering so darkly, it took, by slow degrees—or Out of it there came, by some unreal, unsubstantial process—not to be traced by any human sense, an awful likeness of himself. Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and hands, but with his features, and his bright eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his dress, it came into its terrible appearance of exist- ence, motionless, without a sound. As he leaned his arm upon the elbow of his chair, ruminating before the fire, it leaned upon the chair-back, close above him, with its appalling copy of his face looking where his face looked, and bearing the expression his face bore. This, then, was the Something that had passed and gone already. This was the dread companion of the haunted man! It took, for some moments, no more apparent heed of him than he of it. The Christmas Waits were playing somewhere in the distance, and, through his thoughtful- ness, he seemed to listen to the music. It seemed to listen too. f At length he spoke; without moving or lifting up his 3,062, “Here again!” he said. “Here again!” replied the Phantom. “I see you in the fire,” said the haunted man; “I hear you in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night.” The Phantom moved his head, assenting. “Why do you come, to haunt me thus?” “I come as I am called,” replied the Ghost. “No. Unbidden,” exclaimed the Chemist. “ Unbidden be it,” said the Spectre. “It is enough. I am here.” - Hitherto the light of the fire had shone on the two THE HAUNTED MAN. . , 337 faces—if the dread lineaments behind the chair might be called a face—both addressed towards it, as at first, and neither looking at the other. But, now, the haunted man turned, suddenly, and stared upon the Ghost. The Ghost, as sudden in its motion, passed to before the chair, and stared on him. . The living man, and the animated image of himself dead, might so have looked, the one upon the other. An awful survey, in a lonely and remote part of an empty old pile of building, on a winter night, with the loud wind going by upon its journey of mystery—whence, or whither, no man knowing since the world began—and the stars, in unimaginable millions, glittering through it, from eternal space, where the world’s bulk is as a grain, and its hoary age is infancy. “Look upon me!” said the Spectre. “I am he, neg- lected in my youth, and miserably poor, who strove and suffered, and still strove and suffered, until. I hewed out knowledge from the mine where it was buried, and made rugged steps thereof, for my worn feet to rest and rise on.” “I am that man,” returned the Chemist. “No mother’s self-denying love,” pursued the Phan- tom, “no father’s counsel, aided me. A stranger came into my father’s place when I was but a child, and I was easily an alien from my mother's heart. My parents, at the best, were of that sort whose care soon ends, and whose duty is soon done; who cast their offspring loose, early, as birds do theirs; and if they do well, claim the merit; and if ill, the pity.” It paused, and seemed to tempt and goad him with its look, and with the manner of its speech, and with its smile. “I am he,” pursued the Phantom, who, in this strug- gle upward, found a friend. I made him—won him— bound him to me! We worked together, side by side. All the love and confidence that in my earlier youth had #. no outlet, and found no expression, I bestowed on im.” “Not all,” said Redlaw, hoarsely. “No, not all,” returned the Phantom. “I had a sister.” e - The haunted man, with his head resting on his hands, replied, “I had!” The Phantom, with an evil smile, 23 338 S. THE HAUNTED MAN. drew closer to the chair, and resting its chin upon its folded hands, its folded hands upon the back, and look- down into his face with searching eyes, that seemed in- stinct with fire, went on: “Such glimpses of the light of home as I had ever. known had streamed from her. How young she was, how fair, how loving ! I took her to the first poor roof that I was master of, and made it rich. She came into the darkness of my life, and made it bright.—She is be- fore me!” “I saw her, in the fire, but now. I hear her in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night,” returned the haunted man. sº “Did he love her?” said the Phantom, echoing his contemplative tone. “I think he did once. I am sure he did. Better had she loved him less—less secretly, ; dearly, from the shallower depths of a more divided eart ſ” - “Let me forget it,” said the Chemist, with an angry motion of his hand. “Let me blot it from my memory.” The Spectre, without stirring, and with its unwinking, cruel eyes still fixed upon his face, went on: “A dream, like hers, stole upon my own life.” “It did,” said Redlaw. “A love, as like hers,” pursued the Phantom, “as my inferior nature might cherish, arose in my own heart. I was too poor to bind its object to my fortune then, by any thread of promise or entreaty. I loved her far too well to seek to do it. But, more than ever I had striven in my life, I strove to climb! Only an inch gained, brought me something nearer to the height. I toiled up! In the late pauses of my labour at that time -—my sister (sweet companion!) still sharing with me the expiring embers and the cooling hearth—when day was breaking, what pictures of the future did I See ” - “I saw them in the fire, but now,” he murmured. “They come back to me in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the revolving years.” “—Pictures of my own “domestic life, in after-time, with her who was the inspiration of my toil. Pictures of my sister, made the wife of my dear friend, on equal terms—for he had some inheritance, we none—pictures of our sobered age and mellowed happiness, and of the THE HAUNTED MAN. tº 339 golden links, extending back so far, that should bind us, and our children, in a radiant garland,” said the Phantom. “Pictures,” said the haunted man, “that were delu- sions. Why is it my doom to remember them too well!” “Delusions,” echoed the Phantom in its changeless voice, and glaring on him with its changeless eyes. “For my friend (in whose breast my confidence was locked as in my own), passing between me and the centre of the system of my hopes and struggles, won her to himself, and shattered my frail universe. My sister, doubly dear, doubly devoted, doubly cheerful in my home, lived on to see me famous, and my old ambi- i. so rewarded when its spring was broken, and then—” sº “Then died,” he interposed. “Died, gentle as ever, happy, and with no concern but for her brother. Peace!” The Phantom watched him silently. - “Remembered l’” said the haunted man, after a pause. “Yes. So well remembered, that even now, when years have passed, and nothing is more idle or more visionary to me than the boyish love so long outlived, I think of it with sympathy, as if it were a younger brother’s or a son’s. Sometimes I even wonder when her heart first inclined to him, and how it had been affected towards me. Not lightly, once, I think. But that is nothing. Early unhappiness, a wound from a hand I loved and trusted, and a loss that nothing can replace, outlive such fancies.” - “Thus,” said the Phantom, “I bear within me a sor- row and a wrong. Thus I prey upon myself. Thus, memory is my curse; and, if I could forget my sorrow and my wrong, I would!” “ Mocker!” said the Chemist, leaping up, and making, with a wrathful hand, at the throat of his other self. “Why have I always that taunt in my ears?” “Forbear!” exclaimed the Spectre in an awful voice. “Lay a hand on me, and die!” He stopped midway, as if its words had paralysed him, and stood looking on it. It had glided from him; it had its arm raised high in warning; and a smile passed over his unearthly features, as it reared its dark figure in triumph. “If I could forget my sorrow and wrong, I would,” 346) THE HAUNTED MAN. the Ghost repeated. “If I could forget my sorrow and my wrong, I would!” “Evil spirit of myself,” returned the haunted man, in a low, trembling tone, “my life is darkened by that in- cessant whisper.” - - ‘‘It is an echo,” said the Phantom. “If it be an echo of my thoughts—as now, indeed, I know it is,” rejoined the haunted man, “why should I, therefore, be tormented? It is not a selfish thought. I suffer it to range beyond myself. All men and women have their sorrows—most of them their wrongs; in- gratitude, and sordid jealousy, and interest, besetting all degrees of life. Who would not forget their sorrows and their wrongs?” “Who would not, truly, and be the happier and bet- ter for it?” said the Phantom. “These revolutions of years, which we commemo- rate,” proceeded Redlaw, “what do they recall! Are there any minds in which they do not reawaken some sorrow, or some trouble? What is the remembrance of the old man who was here to-night? A tissue of Sorrow and trouble.” - - “But common natures,” said the Phantom, with its evil smile upon its glassy face, “unenlightened minds and ordinary spirits, do not feel or reason on these things like men of higher cultivation and profounder thought.” - “Tempter,” answered Redlaw, “whose hollow look and voice I dread more than words can express, and from whom some dim foreshadowing of greater fear is stealing over me while I speak, I hear again an echo of my own mind.” “Receive it as a proof that I am powerful,” returned the Ghost. “Hear what I offer! Forget the sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have known!” “Forget them!” he repeated. “I have the power to cancel their remembrance—to leave but very faint, confused traces of them, that will die out soon,” returned the Spectre. “Say ! Is it done!” “Stay!” cried the haunted man, arresting by a terri- fied gesture the uplifted hand. “I tremble with distrust and doubt of you;-and the dim fear you cast upon me deepens into a nameless horror I can hardly bear. I THE HAUNTED MAN. 341 would not deprive myself of any kindly recollection, or any sympathy that is good for me, or others. ...What shall I lose, if I assent to this? What else will pass from my remembrance?” “No knowledge; no result of study; nothing but the intertwisted chain of feelings and associations, each in its turn dependent on, and nourished by, the banished recollections. Those will go.” - “Are they so many?” said the haunted man, reflect- ing in alarm. - “They have been wont to show themselves in the fire, in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the revolving years,” returned the Phantom scornfully. * “In nothing else?” The Phantom held its peace. - But, having stood before him, silent, for a little while, it moved towards the fire; then stopped. “Decide!” it said, “before the opportunity is lost!” “A moment 1 I call Heaven to witness,” said the agitated man, “that I have never been a hater of my kind—never morose, indifferent, or hard, to anything around me. If, living here alone, I have made too much of all that was and might have been, and too little of what is, the evil, I believe, has fallen on me, and not on others. But, if there were poison in my body, should I not, possessed of antidotes and knowledge how to use them, use them? If there be poison in my mind, and through this fearful shadow I can cast it out, shall I not cast it Out?” “Say,” said the Spectre, “is it done?” - “A moment longer!” he answered hurriedly. “I would forget it if I could / Have I thought that, alone, or has it been the thought of thousands upon thousands, gen- eration after generation? All human memory is fraught with sorrow and trouble. My memory is as the mem- ory of other men, but other men have not this choice. Yes, I close the bargain. Yes! I will forget my sorrow, wrong, and trouble!” • “Say,” said the Spectre, “is it done?” “It is!” “It is. And take this with you, man whom I here renounce! The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you will. Without recovering your- 342 - THE HAUNTED MAN. self the power that you have yielded up, you shall henceforth destroy its like in all whom you approach. Your wisdom has discovered that the memory of sor- row, Wrong, and trouble is the lot of all mankind, and that mankind would be the happier, in its other mem- ories, without it. Go! Be its benefactor! Freed from such remembrance, from this hour, carry involuntarily the blessing of such freedom with you. Its diffusion is inseparable and inalienable from you. Go! Be happy in the good you have won, and the good you do!” The Phantom, which had held its bloodless hand above him while it spoke, as if in some unholy invocation, or some ban; and which had gradually advanced its eyes so close to his, that he could see how they did not par- ticipate in the terrible Smile upon its face, but were a fixed, unalterable, steady horror; melted from before him and was gone. As he stood rooted to the spot, possessed by fear and wonder, and imagining he heard repeated in melancholy echoes, dying away fainter and fainter, the words, “ De- stroy its like in all whom you approach!” a shrill cry reached his ears. It came, not from the passages be- yond the door, but from another part of the old building, and sounded like the cry of some one in the dark who had lost the way. He looked confusedly upon his hands and limbs, as if to be assured of his identity, and then shouted in reply, loudly and wildly; for there was a strangeness and ter- ror upon him, as if he, too, were lost. The cry responding, and being nearer, he caught up the lamp, and raised a heavy curtain in the wall, by which he was accustomed to pass into and Out of the theatre where he lectured—which adjoined his room. Associated with youth and animation, and a high amphitheatre of faces which his entrance charmed to in- terest in a moment, it was a ghostly place when all this life was faded out of it, and stared upon him like an em- blem of Death. “Halloa” he cried. “Halloa! This way! Come to the light!” When, as he held the curtain with one hand, and with the other raised the lamp and tried to pierce the gloom that filled the place, something rushed past him into the room like a wild-cat, and couched down in 8, COI’lleI’. THE HAUNTED MAN. 343 “What is it?” he said, hastily. He might have asked “What is it?” even had he seen it well, as presently he did when he stood looking at it gathered up in its corner. A bundle of tatters, held together by a hand, in size and form almost an infant’s, but, in its greedy, desperate little clutch, a bad old man's. A face rounded and smoothed by some half-dozen years, but pinched and twisted by the experiences of a life. Bright eyes, but not youthful. Naked feet, beautiful in their childish delicacy—ugly in the blood and dirt that cracked upon them. A baby savage, a young monster, a child who had never been a child, a creature who might live to take the outward form of man, but who, within, would live and perish a mere beast. Used, already, to be worried and hunted like a beast, the boy crouched down as he was looked at, and looked back again, and interposed his arm to ward off the ex- pected blow. “I’ll bite,” he said, “if you hit me!” The time had been, and not many minutes since, when such a sight as this would have wrung the Chemist's heart. He looked upon it now, coldly; but, with a heavy effort to remember something—he did not know what— he asked the boy what he did there, and whence he Cà,100 €. “Where's the woman?” he replied. “I want to find the woman.” - “Who?” - - - * “The woman. Her that brought me here, and set me by the large fire. She was so long gone, that I went to look for her, and lost myself. I don’t want you. I want the woman.” He made a spring, so suddenly, to get away, that the dull sound of his naked feet upon the floor was near the curtain, when Redlaw caught him by his rags. “Come! you let me go!” muttered the boy, struggling, and clenching his teeth. “I’ve done nothing to you. Let me go, will you, to the woman!” “That is not the way. There is a nearer one,” said Redlaw, detaining him, in the same blank effort to re- member some association that ought of right, to bear upon this monstrous object. “What is your name?” “Got none.” - 344 . THE HAUNTED MAN. “Where do you live?” - “Live! What’s that ?” 4 - The boy shook his hair from his eyes toº look at him for a moment, and then, twisting round his legs and wrestling with him, broke again into his repetition of . “You let me go, will you? I want to find the woman.” The Chemist led him to the door. “This way,” he said, looking at him still confusedly, but with repug- nance and avoidance, growing out of his coldness. “Ill take you to her.” - • The sharp eyes in the child’s head, wandering round the room, lighted on the table where the remnants of the dinner were. “Give me some of that!” he said covetously. “Has she not fed you?” “I shall be hungry again to-morrow, shan’t I? Ain’t I hungry every day?” * Finding himself released, he bounded at the table like some small animal of prey, and hugging to his breast bread and meat, and his own rags, all together, said: “There! Now take me to the woman!” - As the Chemist, with a new-born dislike to touch him, sternly motioned him to follow, and he was going out of the door, he trembled and stopped. - “The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you will!” The Phantom's words were blowing in the wind, and the wind blew chill upon him. “I’ll not go there, to-night” he murmured faintly. “I’ll go nowhere to-night. Boy! straight down this long-arched passage, and past the great dark door into the yard—you will see the fire shining on a window there.” - - “The woman’s fire?” inquired the boy. - He nodded, and the naked feet had sprung away. He came back with his lamp, locked his door hastily, and sat down in his chair, covering his face like one who was frightened at himself. For now he was, indeed, alone. Alone, alone. THE HAUNTED MAN. 345 CHAPTER II. THE GIFT DIFFUSED. A SMALL man sat in a small parlour, partitioned off from a shop by a small screen, pasted all over with small scraps of newspapers. In company with the small man, was almost any amount of small children you may please to name—at least, it seemed so; they made, in that very limited sphere of action, such an im- posing effect, in point of numbers. Of these small fry, two had, by some strong machin- ery, been got into bed in a corner, where they might have reposed snugly enough in the sleep of innocence, but for a constitutional propensity to keep awake, and also to scuffle in and out of bed. The immediate occa- sion of these predatory dashes at the waking world, was the construction of an oyster-shell wall in a corner, by two other youths of tender age; on which fortification the two in bed made harassing descents (like those accursed Picts and Scots who beleaguer the early histori- cal studies of most young Britons), and then withdrew to their own territory. In addition to the stir attendant on these inroads, and the retorts of the invaded, who pursued hotly and made lunges at the bed-clothes, under which the marauders took refuge, another little boy, in another little bed, con- tributed his mite of confusion to the family stock, by casting his boots upon the waters; in other words, by launching these and several small objects, inoffensive in themselves, though of a hard substance considered as missiles, at the disturbers of his repose—who were not slow to return these compliments. Besides which, another little boy—the biggest there, but still little—was tottering to and fro, bent on one side, and considerably affected in his knees by the weight of a large baby, which he was supposed, by a fiction that obtains sometimes in sanguine families, to be hushing to sleep. But oh! the inexhaustible regions Of contemplation and watchfulness into which this 346 THE HAUNTED MAN. baby’s eyes were then only beginning to compose them- selves to stare over his unconscious shoulder! * It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose insatiate altar the whole existence of this particular young brother was offered up a daily sacrifice. Its personality may be said to have consisted in its never being quiet, in any one place, for five consecutive minutes, and never going to sleep when required. “Tetterby’s baby” was as well known in the neighbourhood as the postman or the pot-boy. It roved from door-step to door-step, in the arms of little Johnny Tetterby, and lagged heavily at the rear of troops of juveniles who followed the Tum- blers or the Monkey, and came up, all on one side, a little too late for everything that was attractive, from Mon- day morning until Saturday night. Wherever child- hood congregated to play, there was little Moloch making Johnny fag and toil. Wherever Johnny desired to stay, little Moloch became fractious, and would not remain. Whenever Johnny wanted to go out, Moloch was asleep and must be watched. Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at home, Moloch was awake, and must be taken out. Yet Johnny was verily persuaded that it was a faultless baby, without its peer in the realm of England; and was quite content to catch meek glimpses of things in general from behind its skirts, or over its limp flapping bonnet, and to go staggering about with it like a very little porter with a very large parcel, which was not directed to anybody, and could never be delivered anywhere. . The small man who sat in the small parlour, making fruitless attempts to read his newspaper peaceably in the midst of this disturbance, was the father of the family, and the chief of the firm described in the inscription over the little shop front, by the name and title of A. Tetterby and Co., Newsmen. Indeed, strictly speaking, he was the only personage answering to that designa- tion; as Co. was a mere poetical abstraction, altogether baseless and impersonal. - Tetterby’s was the corner shop in Jerusalem Build- ings. There was a good show of literature in the win- dow, chiefly consisting of picture-newspapers out of date, and serial pirates, and footpads. Walking-sticks, likewise, and marbles, were included in the stock in trade. It had once extended into the light confectionery THE HAUNTED MAN. 34? line; but it would seem that those elegancies of life were not in demand about Jerusalem Buildings, for nothing connected with that branch of commerce remained in the window, except a sort of Small glass lantern con- taining a languishing mass of bull's-eyes, which had melted in the summer and congealed in the winter until all hope of ever getting them out, or of eating them without eating the lantern too, was gone forever. Tet- terby’s had tried its hand at several things. It had once made a feeble little dart at the toy business; for, in an- other lantern, there was a heap of minute wax dolls, all sticking together upside down, in the direst confusion, with their feet on one another’s heads, and a precipitate of broken arms and legs at the bottom. It had made a move in the millinery direction, which a few dry, wiry bonnet-shapes remained in the corner of the window to attest. It had fancied that a living might lie hidden in the tobacco trade, and had stuck up a representation of a native of each of the three integral portions of the British empire, in the act of consuming that fragrant weed; with a poetic legend attached, importing that united in one cause they sat and joked, one chewed to- bacco, one took snuff, one smoked: but nothing seemed to have come of it—except flies. Time had been when it had put a forlorn frust in imitative jewellery, for in one pane of glass there was a card of cheap seals, and another of pencil-cases, and a mysterious black amulet of inscruta- ble intention labelled ninepence. But, to that hour, Jerusalem Buildings had bought none of them. In short, Tetterby's had tried so hard to get a livelihood out of Jerusalem Buildings in one way or other, and appeared to have done so indifferently in all, that the best posi- tion in the firm was too evidently Co.'s; Co., as a bodi- less creation, being untroubled with the vulgar incon- veninces of hunger and thirst, being chargeable neither to the poor-rates nor the assessed taxes, and having no young family to provide for. Tetterby himself, however, in his little parlour, as al- ready mentioned, having the presence of a young family impressed upon his mind in a manner too clamourous to be disregarded, or to cornport with the quiet perusal of a newspaper, laid down his paper, wheeled in his dis- traction, a few times round the parlour, like an undecided carrier-pigeon, made an ineffectual rush at one or two 348 THE HAUNTED MAN. flying little figures in bed-gowns that skimmed past him, and then, bearing suddenly down upon the only un- Offending member of the family, boxed the ears of little Moloch's nurse. “You bad boy!” said Mr. Tetterby, “haven’t you any feeling for your poor father after the fatigues and anxi- eties of a hard winter’s day, since five o’clock in the morning, but must you wither his rest, and corrode his latest intelligence, with your wicious tricks? Isn’t it enough, sir, that your brother 'Dolphus is toiling and moiling in the fog and cold, and you rolling in the lap of luxury with a-with a baby, and everythink you can wish for,” said Mr. Tetterby, heaping this up as a great climax of blessings, “but must you make a wilderness of home, and maniacs of your parents? Must you, Johnny? Hey?” At each interrogation, Mr. Tetterby made a feint of boxing his ears again, but thought bet- ter of it, and held his hand. “Oh, father!” whimpered Johnny, “when I wasn’t doing anything, I’m sure, but taking such care of Sally, and getting her to sleep. Oh, father!” “I wish my little woman would come home!” said Mr. Tetterby, relenting and repenting, “I only wish my little woman would come home! I ain’t fit to deal with 'em. They make my head go round, and get the better of me! Oh, Johnny! Isn’t it enough that your dear mother has provided you with that sweet sister?” indicating Moloch; “isn’t it enough that you were seven boys before, with- out a ray of gal, and that your dear mother went through what she did go through, on purpose that you might all of you have a little sister, but must you so be- have yourself as to make my head swim?” Softening more and more, as his own tender feelings and those of his injured son were worked on, Mr. Tet- terby concluded by embracing him, and immediately breaking away to catch one of the real delinquents. A reasonably good start occurring, he succeeded, after a short but smart run, and some rather severe cross- country work under and Over the bedsteads, and in and out among the intricacies of the chairs, in capturing this infant, whom he condignly punished, and bore to bed. This example had a powerful, and apparently, mesmeric influence on him of the boots, who instantly fell into a deep sleep, though he had been, but a moment fºre, THE HAUNTED MAN. 349 before, broad awake, and in the highest possible feather. Nor was it lost upon the two young architects, who re- tired to bed, in an adjoining closet, with great privacy and speed. The comrade of the Intercepted One also shrinking into his nest with similar discretion, Mr. Tet- terby, when he paused for breath, found himself unex- pectedly in a scene of peace. & “My little woman herself,” said Mr. Tetterby, wiping his flushed face, “could hardly have done it better! I only wish my little woman had had it to do, I do indeed!” Mr. Tetterby sought upon his screen for a passage ap- propriate to be impressed upon his children’s minds on the occasion, and read the following. - “‘It is an undoubted fact that all remarkable men have had remarkable mothers, and have respected them in after life as their best friends.’ Think of your own remarkable mother, my boys,” said Mr. Tetterby, “and know her value while she is still among you!” - He sat down again in his chair by the fire, and Com- posed himself, cross-legged, over his newspaper. “Let anybody, I don’t care who it is, get out of bed again,” said Tetterby, as a general proclamation, deliv- ered in a very soft-hearted manner, “ and astonishment will be the portion of that respected contemporary !”— which expression Mr. Tetterby selected from his screen. “Johnny, my child, take care of your only sister, Sally; for she's the brightest gem that ever sparkled on your early brow.” Johnny sat down on a little stool, and devotedly crushed himself beneath the weight of Moloch. “Ah, what a gift that baby is to you, Johnny!” said his father, “ and hoyw thankful you ought to be! “It is not generally known,’ Johnny,” he was now referring to the screen again, ‘‘‘ but it is a fact ascertained by ac- curate calculations, that the following immense per- centage of babies never attain to two years old; that is to say ’”— “Oh, don’t, father, please!” cried Johnny. “I can’t bear it, when I think of Sally.” Mr. Tetterby desisting, Johnny, with a profounder sense of his trust, wiped his eyes, and hushed his sister. “Your brother 'Dolphus,” said his father, poking the fire, “is late to-night, Johnny, and will come home like a lump of ice. What’s got your precious mother?” tº- 350 THE HAUNTED MAN. “Here’s mother, and 'Dolphus too, father!” exclaimed Johnny, “I think.” * * . “You’re right!” returned his father, listening. “Yes, that’s the footstep of my little woman.” The process of induction, by which Mr. Tetterby had come to the conclusion that his wife was a little woman, was his own secret. ... She would have made two editions of himself, very easily. Considered as an individual, she was rather remarkable for being robust and portly; but considered with reference to her husband, her dimen- sions became magnificent. Nor did they assume a less imposing proportion, when studied with reference to the size of her seven sons, who were but diminutive. In the case of Sally, however, Mrs. Tetterby had as- serted herself at last; as nobody knew better than the victim Johnny, who weighed and measured that exact- ing idol every hour in the day. . Mrs. Tetterby, who had been marketing, and carried a basket, threw back her bonnet and shawl, and sitting down, fatigued, commanded Johnny to bring his sweet charge to her straightway, for a kiss. Johnny having complied, and gone back to his stool, and again crushed himself, Master Adolphus Tetterby, who had by this time unwound his Torso out of a prismatic comforter, apparently interminable, requested the same favour. Johnny having again complied, and again gone back to his stool, and again crushed himself, Mr. Tetterby, struck by a sudden thought, preferred the same claim on his own parental part. The satisfaction of this third desire completely exhausted the sacrifice, who had hardly breath enough left to get back to his stool, crush himself again, and pant at his relations. “Whatever you do, Johnny,” said Mrs. Tetterby, shaking her head, “take care of her, or never look your mother in the face again.” “Nor your brother,” said Adolphus. “Nor your father, Johnny,” said Mr.Tetterby. Johnny, much affected by this conditional renuncia- tion of him, looked down at Moloch's eyes to see that they were all right, so far, and skilfully patted her back (which was uppermost), and rocked her with his foot. “Are you wet, 'Dolphus, my boy,” said his father. “Come and take my chair, and dry yourself.” “No, father thankee,” said Adolphus, Smoothing him- bºx- e ‘’ THE HAUNTED MAN. 351 self down with his hands. “I an’t very wet, I don’t think. Does my face shine much, father?” . Well, it does look waxy, my boy,” returned Mr. Tet- terby. “It’s the weather, father,” said Adolphus, polishing his cheeks on the worn sleeve of his jacket. “What with rain, and sleet, and wind, and snow, and fog, my face gets quite brought out into a rash, sometimes. And shines, it does—oh, don’t it, though!” Master Adolphus was also in the newspaper line of life, being employed, by a more thriving firm than his father and Co., to vend newspapers at a railway station, where his chubby, little person, like a shabbily disguised Cupid, and his shrill little voice (he was not much more than ten years old), were as well known as the hoarse panting of the locomotives, running in and out. His juvenility might have been at some loss for a harmless Outlet, in this early application to traffic, but for a for- tunate discovery he made of a means of entertaining himself, and of dividing the long day into stages of interest, without neglecting business. This ingenious invention, remarkable, like many great discoveries, for its simplicity, consisted in varying the first vowel in the word “paper,” and substituting in its stead, at different periods of the day, all the other vowels in grammatical succession. Thus, before daylight in the winter-time, he went to and fro, in his little oilskin cap and cape, and his big comforter, piercing the heavy air with his cry of “Morn-ing Pa-per!” which, about an hour before noon, changed to “Morn-ing Pep-per!” which, at about two, changed to “Morn-ing Pip-per!” which, in a couple of hours, changed to “Morn-ing Pop-per!” and so de- clined with the sun into “Eve-ning Pup-per!” to the great relief and comfort of this young gentleman’s Spirits. - P. Tetterby, his lady-mother, who had been sitting with her bonnet and shawl thrown back, as aforesaid, thoughtfully turning her wedding-ring round and round upon her finger, now rose, and divesting herself of her Out-of-door attire, began to lay the cloth for supper. “Ah, dear me, dear me,"dear me!” said Mrs. Tetterby. “That’s the way the world goes!” “Which is the way the world goes, my dear?” asked Mr. Tetterby, looking round. 352 THE HAUNTED MAN. “Oh, nothing,” said Mrs. Tetterby. - Mr. Tetterby elevated his eyebrows, folded his news- paper afresh, and carried his eyes up it, and down it, and across it, but was wandering in his attention, and not reading it. Mrs. Tetterby, at the same time, laid the cloth, but rather as if she were punishing the table than preparing the family supper; hitting it unnecessarily hard with the knives and forks, slapping it with the plates, dinting it with the salt cellar, and coming heavily down upon it with the loaf. “Ah, dear me, dear me, dear me!” said Mrs. Tetterby. “That’s the way the world goes!” - “My duck,” returned her husband, looking round again, you said that before. Which is the way the world goes?” * “Oh, nothing,” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Sophia!” remonstrated her husband, “you said that before, too.” “Well, I’ll say it again if you like,” returned Mrs. Tetterby. “Oh, nothing—there! And again if you like, oh, nothing—there! And again if you like, oh, nothing—now then!” Mr. Tetterby brought his eye to bear upon the partner of his bosom, and said, in mild astonishment: & “My little woman, what has put you out?” ‘‘I’m sure I don’t know,” she retorted. “Don’t ask me. Who said I was put out at all? I never did.” “Mr. Tetterby gave up the perusal of his newspaper as a bad job, and taking a slow walk across the room, with his hands behind him, and his shoulders raised— his gait according perfectly with the resignation of his manner—addressed himself to his two eldest offspring. “Your supper will be ready in a minute, 'Dolphus,” said Mr. Tetterby. “Your mother has been out in the wet, to the cook's shop, to buy it. It was very good of your mother so to do. You shall get some Supper, too, very soon, Johnny. Your mother's pleased with you, my man, for being so attentive to your precious sister.” Mrs. Tetterby, without any’remark, but with a de- cided subsidence of her animosity towards the table, finished her preparations, and took, from her ample basket, a substantial slab of hot pease pudding wrapped THE HAUNTED MAN. - 353. in paper, and a basin covered with a saucer, which, on being uncovered, sent forth an odour so agreeable, that the three pair of eyes in the two beds opened wide and fixed themselves upon the banquet. Mr. Tetterby, without regarding this tacit invitation to be seated, stood repeating slowly, “Yes, yes, your supper will be ready in a minute, 'Dolphus—your mother went out in the wet, to the cook's shop, to buy it. It was very good of your mother so to do”—until Mrs. Tetterby, who had been exhibiting sundry tokens of contrition behind him, caught him round the neck, and wept. “Oh, 'Dolphus!” said Mrs. Tetterby, “how could I go and behave so!” - This reconciliation affected Adolphus the younger and Johnny to that degree, that they both, as with one ac- cord, raised a dismal cry, which had the effect of imme- diately shutting up the round eyes in the beds, and utterly routing the two remaining little Tetterbys, just then stealing in from the adjoining closet to see what was going on in the eating way. “I am sure, 'Dolphus,” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, “coming home, I had no more idea than a child unborn—” Mr.Tetterby seemed to dislike this figure of speech, and observed, “Say than the baby, my dear.” “—Had no more idea than the baby,” said Mrs. Tet- terby. “Johnny, don’t look at me, but look at her, or she’ll fall out of your lap and be killed, and then you’ll die in agonies of a broken heart, and serve you right.— No more idea. I hadn’t than that darling, of being cross when I came home; but somehow, 'Dolphus—” Mrs. Tetterby paused, and again turned her wedding-ring round and round upon her finger. “I see!” said Mr. Tetterby. “I understand! My little woman was put out. Hard times and hard weather, and hard work, make it trying now and then. I see, bless your soul! No wonder! 'Dolf, my man,” continued Mr. Tetterby, exploring the basin with a fork, “here's your mother been and bought, at the cook’s shop, besides pease pudding, a whole knuckle of a lovely roast leg of pork, with lots of crackling left upon it, and with Seasoning gravy and mustard quite unlimited. Hand in your plate, my boy, and begin while it’s simmering.” Master Adolphus, needing no second summons, re- ceived his portion with eyes rendered moist by appetite, 24 354 THE HAUNTED MAN. and withdrawing to his particular stool, fell upon his Supper tooth and nail. Johnny was not forgotten, but received his rations on bread, lest he should, in a flush of gravy, trickle any on the baby. He was required, for Similar reasons, to keep his pudding, when not on active Service, in his pocket. - - There might have been more pork on the knucklebone —which knucklebone the carver at the cook’s shop had assuredly not forgotten in carving for previous cus- tomers—but there was no stint of seasoning, and that is an accessory dreamily suggesting pork, and pleasantly cheating the sense of taste. The pease pudding, too, the gravy and mustard, like the Eastern rose in respect of the nightingale, if they were not absolutely pork, had lived near it; so, upon the whole, there was the flavour of a middle-sized pig. It was irresistible to the Tetter- bys in bed, who, though professing to slumber peace- fully, crawled out when unseen by their parents, and silently appealed to their brothers for any gastronomic token of fraternal affection. They, not hard of heart, presenting scraps in return, it resulted that a party of light skirmishers in night-gowns were careering about the parlour all through supper, which harrassed Mr. Tetterby exceedingly, and once or twice imposed upon him the necessity of a charge, before which these guerilla troops retired in all directions and in great confusion. Mrs. Tetterby did not enjoy her supper. There seemed to be something on Mrs. Tetterby's mind. At one time she laughed without reason, and at another time she cried without reason, and at last she laughed and cried together in a manner SO very unreasonable that her hus- band was confounded. - - “My little woman,” said Mr. Tetterby, “if the world goes that way, it appears to go the wrong way, and to choke you.” “Give me a drop of water,” said Mrs. Tetterby, strug- gling with herself, “and don’t speak to me, for the present, or take any notice of me. Don't do it!”. Mr. Tetterby, having administered the water, turned suddenly on the unlucky Johnny (who was full of sym- pathy), and demanded why he was wallowing there, in gluttony and idleness, instead of coming forward with the baby, that the sight of her might revive his mother, THE HAUNTED MAN. 355 Johnny immediately approached, borne down by its weight; but Mrs. Tetterby, holding out her hand to sig- nify that she was not in a condition to bear that trying appeal to her feelings, he was interdicted from advanc- ing another iuch, on pain of perpetual hatred from all his dearest connections; and accordingly he retired to his stool again, and crushed himself as before. - After a pause, Mrs. Tetterby said she was better now, and began to laugh. & “My little woman,” said her husband, dubiously, “are you quite sure you’re better? Or are you, Sophia, about to break out in a fresh direction?” “No, 'Dolphus, no,” replied his wife. “I’m quite my- self.” With that, settling her hair, and pressing the palms of her hands upon her eyes, she laughed again. “What a wicked fool I was, to think so for a mo- ment!” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Come nearer, 'Dolphus, and let me ease my mind, and tell you what I mean. Let me tell you all about it.” Mr. Tetterby, bringing his chair closer, Mrs. Tetter- by laughed again, gave him a hug, and wiped her eyes. “You know, 'Dolphus, my dear,” said Mrs. Tetterby, “that when I was single, I might have given myself away in several directions. At one time, four after me at Once; two of them were sons of Mars.” -> “We’re all sons of ma’s, my dear,” said Mr. Tetterby, “jointly with pa’s.” ‘‘I don’t mean that,” replied his wife; “I mean sol- diers—serjeants.” “Oh!” said Mr. Tetterby. “Well, 'Dolphus, I’m sure I never think of such things now, to regret them; and I’m sure I’ve got as good a hus- band, and would do as much to prove that I was fond of him, as—" “As any little woman in the world,” said Mr. Tet- terby. “Very good. Very good.” If Mr. Tetterby had been ten feet high, he could not have expressed a gentler consideration for Mrs. Tetter- by's fairy-like stature; and if Mrs. Tetterby had been two feet high, she could not have felt it more appropri- ately her due. “But you see, 'Dolphus,” said Mrs. Tetterby, “this being Christmas-time, when all people who can, make holiday, and when all people who have got money, like 356 THE HAUNTED MAN. to spend some, I did, somehow, get a little out of sorts when I was in the streets just now. There were so many things to be sold—such delicious things to eat, such fine things to look at, such delightful things to have—and there was so much calculating and calculating neces- sary, before I durst lay out a sixpence for the commonest thing; and the basket was so large, and wanted so much in it; and my stock of money was so small, and would go such a little way;-you hate me, don’t you, 'Dol- phus?” “Not quite,” said Mr. Tetterby, “as yet.” “Well! I'll tell you the whole truth,” pursued his wife, penitently, ‘‘ and then perhaps you will. I felt all this, so much, when I was trudging about in the cold, and when I saw a lot of other calculating faces and large baskets trudging about, too, that I began to think whether I mightn't have done better, and been happier, if-I—hadn't—” the wedding ring went round again, and Mrs. Tetterby shook her downcast head as she turned it. “I see,” said her husband quietly; “if you hadn’t married at all, or if you had married somebody else?” “Yes,” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby. “That's really what I thought. Do you hate me now, 'Dolphus?” “Why no,” said Mr. Tetterby, “I don’t find that I do as vet.” s Mrs. Tetterby gave him a thankful kiss, and went on. “I begin to hope you won't, now, 'Dolphus, though I am afraid I haven’t told you the worst. I can’t think what came over me. I don’t know whether I was ill, or mad, or what I was, but I couldn’t call up anything that seemed to bind us to each other, or to reconcile me to my fortune. All the pleasures and enjoyments we had ever had—they seemed so poor and insignificant, I hated them. I could have trodden on them. And I could think of nothing else except our being poor, and the number of mouths there were at home.” $ “Well, well, my dear,” said Mr. Tetterby, shaking her hand encouragingly, “that’s truth, after all. We are poor, and there are a number of mouths at home here.” “Ah! but, Dolf, Dolf,” cried his wife, laying her hands upon his neck, “my good, kind, patient fellow, when I had been at home a very little while—how dif- THE HAUNTED MAN. 357 * ferent! Oh, Dolf, dear, how different it was! I felt as if there was a rush of recollection on me, all at once, that softened my hard heart, and filled it up till it was bursting. All our struggles for a livelihood, all our cares and wants since we have been married, all the times of sickness, all the hours of watching, we have ever had, by one another, or by the children, seemed to speak to me, and say that they had made us one, and that I never might have been, or could have been, or would have been, any other than the wife and mother I am. Then, the cheap enjoyments that I could have trodden on so cruelly, got to be so precious. to me—oh, so priceless, and dear!—that I couldn’t bear to think how much I had wronged them; and I said, and say again a hundred times, how could I ever behave so, ’Dolphus, how could I ever have the heart to do it!” The good woman, quite carried away by her honest tenderness and remorse, was weeping with all her heart, when she started up with a scream, and ran behind her husband. Her cry was so terrified, that the children started from their sleep and from their beds, and clung about her. Nor did her gaze belie her voice, as she pointed to a pale man in a black cloak who had come into the room. “Look at that man! Look there! What does he Want?” - “My dear,” returned her husband, “I’ll ask him if you’ll let me go. What's the matter? How you shake!” “I saw him in the street when I was out just now. He looked at me, and stood near me. I am afraid of him.” “Afraid of him! Why?” “I don’t know why—I—stop! husband!” for he was going towards the stranger. - - She had one hand pressed upon her forehead, and one upon her breast; and there was a peculiar fluttering all over her, and a hurried, unsteady motion of her eyes, as if she had lost something. “Are you ill, my dear?” “What is it that is going from me again?” she muttered, in a low voice. “What is this that is going away?” Then she abruptly answered: “Ill? No, I am quite well,” and stood looking vacantly at the floor. ºr 358 THE HAUNTED MAN. * Her husband, who had not been altogether free from the infection of her fear at first, and whom the present strangeness of her manner did not tend to reassure, addressed himself to the pale visitor in the black cloak, who stood still, and whose eyes were bent upon the ground. - - . What may be your pleasure, sir,” he asked, “with US?” “I fear that my coming in unperceived,” returned the visitor, “ has alarmed you; but you were talking and did not hear me.” “My little woman says—perhaps you heard her say it,” returned Mr. Tetterby, “ that it's not the first time you have alarmed her to-night.” “I am sorry for it. I remember to have observed her, for a few moments only, in the street. I had no inten- tion of frightening her.” - As he raised his eyes in speaking, she raised hers. . It was extraordinary to see what dread she had of him, and with what dread he observed it—and yet how narrowly and closely. “My name,” he said, “is Redlaw. I come from the old college hard by. A young gentleman who is a stu- dent there, lodges in your house, does he not?” - “Mr. Denham?” said Tetterby. & 4 YeS.” - - It was a natural action, and so slight as to be hardly noticeable; but the little man, before speaking again, passed his hand across his forehead, and looked quickly round the room, as though he were sensible of some change in its atmosphere. The Chemist, instantly transferring to him the look of dread he had directed. ºds the wife, stepped back, and his face turned paler. “The gentleman's room,” said Tetterby, “is up- stairs, sir. There’s a more convenient private entrance; but as you have come in here, it will save your going out into the cold, if you’ll take this little staircase,” showing one communicating directly with the parlor, “ and go up to him that way, if you wish to see him.” “Yes, I wish to see him,” said the Chemist. “Can you spare a light?” The watchfulness of his haggard look, and the inex- plicable distrust that darkened it, seemed to trouble Mr. THE HAUNTED MAN. 359 Tetterby. He paused; and looking fixedly at him in re- turn, stood for a minute or So, like a man stupefied, or fascinated. At length he said, “I’ll light you, sir, if you’ll follow me.” “No,” replied the Chemist, “I don’t wish to be at- tended, or announced to him. He does not expect me. I would rather go alone. Please to give me the light, if you can spare it, and I’ll find the way.” In the quickness of his expression of this desire, and in taking the candle from the newsman, he touched him on the breast. Withdrawing his hand hastily, almost as though he had wounded him by accident (for he did not know in what part of himself his new power resided, or how it was communicated, or how the manner of its reception varied in different persons), he turned and ascended the stair. But when he reached the top, he stopped and looked down. The wife was standing in the same place, twist- ing her ring round and round upon her finger. The hus- band, with his head bent forward on his breast, was musing heavily and sullenly. The children, still cluster- ing about the mother, gazed timidly after the visitor, and nestled together when they saw him looking down. “Come!” said the father, roughly. “There's enough Of this. Get to bed here!” “The place is inconvenient and small enough,” the mother added, “without you. Get to bed!” The whole brood, scared and sad, crept away; little Johnny and the baby lagging last. The mother, glanc- ing contemptuously round the sordid room, and tossing from her the fragments of their meal, stopped on the threshold of her task of clearing the table, and sat down, pondering idly and dejectedly. The father betook him- self to the chimney-corner, and impatiently raking the Small fire together, bent over it as if he would monopo- lise it all. They did not interchange a word. The Chemist, paler than before, stole upward like a thief; looking back upon the change below, and dread- ing equally to go on or return. “What have I done!” he said, confusedly. “What am I going to do!” “To be the benefactor of mankind,” he thought he heard a voice reply. - 360 THE HAUNTED MAN. He looked round, but there was nothing there; and a passage now shutting out the little parlor from his view, he went on, directing his eyes before him at the way he Went. - “It is only since last night,” he muttered gloomily, “that I have remained shut up, and yet all things are Strange to me. I am strange to myself. I am here, as in a dream. What interest have I in this place, or in any place that I can bring to my remembrance? My mind is going blind!” There was a door before him, and he knocked at it. Being invited, by a voice within, to enter, he complied. “Is that my kind nurse?” said the voice. “But I need not ask her. There is no one else to come here.” It spoke cheerfully, though in a languid tone, and at- tracted his attention to a young man lying on a couch, drawn before the chimney-piece, with the back towards the door. A meagre, scanty stove, pinched and hollowed like a sick man’s cheeks, and bricked into the centre of a hearth that it could scarcely warm, contained the fire, to which his face was turned. Being so near the windy house-top, it wasted quickly, and with a busy Sound, and the burning ashes dropped down fast. “They chink when they shoot out here,” said the student, smiling, “ so, according to the gossips, they are not coffins, but purses. I shall be well and rich yet, some day, if it please God, and shall live perhaps to love a daughter Milly, in remembrance of the kindest na- ture and the gentlest heart in the world.” He put up his hand as if expecting her to take it, but, being weakened, he lay still, with his face resting on his other hand, and did not turn round. The Chemist glanced about the room;-at the Student’s books and papers, piled upon a table in a corner, where they, and his extinguished reading-lamp, now prohib- ited and put away, told of the attentive hours that had gone before this illness, and perhaps caused it; –at such signs of his old health and freedom, as the out-of-door attire that hung idle on the wall;-at those remem- brances of other and less solitary scenes, the little min- iatures upon the chimney-piece, and the drawing of home;—at that token of his emulation, perhaps, in some sort, of his personal attachment too, the framed engray- ing of himself, the looker-on. The time had been, only THE HAUNTED MAN. 361. a- yesterday, when not one of these objects, in its remotest, association of interest with the living figure before him, would have been lost on Redlaw. Now, they were but objects; or, if any gleam of such connection shot upon him, it perplexed, and not enlightened him, as he stood looking round with a dull wonder. The student, recalling the thin hand which had re- mained so long untouched, raised himself on the couch, and turned his head. - - “Mr. Redlaw'” he exclaimed, and started up. Redlaw put out his arm. “Don’t come near to me. I will sit here. Remain you, where you are!” He sat down on a chair near the door, and having glanced at the young man standing leaning with his hand upon the couch, spoke with his eyes averted to- wards the ground. “I heard, by an accident, by what accident is no mat- tier, that one of my class was ill and solitary. I received no other description of him, than that he lived in this Street. Beginning my inquiries at the first house in it, I have found him.” - “I have been ill, sir,” returned the student, not merely with a modest hesitation, but with a kind of awe of him, “but am greatly better. An attack of fever—of the brain, I believe—has weakened me, but I am much bet- ter. I cannot say I have been solitary in my illness, or I should forget the ministering hand that has been near me.” “You are speaking of the keeper's wife,” said Redlaw. “Yes.” The student bent his head, as if he rendered her some silent homage. The Chemist, in whom there was a cold, monotonous apathy, which rendered him more like a marble image On the tomb of the man who had started from his dinner yesterday at the first mention of the student's case, than the breathing man himself, glanced again at the Student leaning with his hand upon the couch, and looked upon the ground, and in the air, as if for light for his blinded mind. “I remembered your name,” he said, “when it was mentioned to me down-stairs, just now; and I recollect your face. We have held but very little personal com- munication together?” 362 THE HAUNTED MAN. “Very little.” “You have retired and withdrawn from me, more than any of the rest, I think?” The student signified assent. - “And why?” said the Chemist; not with the least expression of interest, but with a moody, wayward kind of curiosity. “Why? ... How comes it that you have sought to keep especially from me, the knowledge of your remaining here, at this season, when all the rest have dispersed, and of your being ill? I want to know why this is?” The young man, who had heard him with increasing agitation, raised his downcast eyes to his face, and clasping his hands together, cried with sudden earnest- ness, and with trembling lips: “Mr. Redlaw! You have discovered me. You know my secret!” . “Secret?” said the Chemist, harshly. “I know. k “Yes! Your manner, so different from the interest and sympathy which endear you to so many hearts, your altered voice, the constraint there is in everything you say, and in your looks,” replied the student, “warn me that you know me. That you would conceal it, even now, is but a proof to me (God knows I need none!) of your natural kindness, and of the bar there is be- tween us.” A vacant and contemptuous laugh, was all his 2.IlSW €I’. “But, Mr. Redlaw,” said the student, “as a just man, and a good man, think how innocent I am, except in name and descent, of participation in any wrong inflicted on you, or in any sorrow you have borne.” “Sorrow!” said Redlaw, laughing. “Wrong! What are those to me?” “For Heaven’s sake,” entreated the shrinking student, “do not let the mere interchange of a few words with me change you like this, sir! Let me pass again from your knowledge and notice. Let me occupy my old reserved and distant place among those whom you in- struct. Know me only by the name I have assumed, and not by that of Longford—” - “Longford!” exclaimed the other. He clasped his head with both his hands, and for a moment turned upon the young man his own intelligent THE HAUNTED MAN. 363 and thoughtful face. But the light passed from it, like the sunbeam of an instant, and it clouded as before. - “The name my mother bears, sir,” faltered the young man, “the name she took, when she might, perhaps, have taken one more honoured. Mr. Redlaw,” hesitat- ing, “I believe I know that history. Where my infor- mation halts, my guesses at what is wanting may supply something not remote from the truth. I am the child of a marriage that has not proved itself a well assorted or a happy one. From infancy, I have heard you spoken of with honour and respect—with something that was almost reverence. I have heard of such devo- tion, of such fortitude and tenderness, of such rising up against the obstacles which press men down, that my fancy, since I learnt my little lesson from my mother, has shed a lustre on your name. At last, a poor student myself, from whom could I learn but you?” Redlaw, unmoved, unchanged, and looking at him with a staring frown, answered by no word or sign. “I cannot say,” pursued the other, “I should try in vain to say, how much it has impressed me, and affected me, to find the gracious traces of the past, in that certain power of winning gratitude and confidence which is associated among us students (among the humblest of us, most) with Mr. Redlaw’s generous name. Our ages and positions are so different, sir, and I am so accustomed to regard you from a distance, that I wonder at my own presumption when I touch, how- ever lightly, on that theme. But to one who—I may say, who felt no common interest in my mother once— it may be something to hear, now that is all past, with what indescribable feelings of affection I have, in my obscurity, regarded him; with what pain and reluctance I have kept aloof from his encouragement, when a word of it would have made me rich; yet how I have felt it fit that I should hold my course, content to know him, and to be unknown. Mr. Redlaw,” said the student, faintly, “what I would have said, I have said ill, for my strength is strange to me as yet; but for anything unworthy in this fraud of mine, forgive me, and for all the rest for- get me!” - The staring frown remained on Redlaw’s face, and yielded to no other expression until the student, with 364 THE HAUNTED MAN. these words, advanced towards him, as if to touch his hand, when he drew back and cried to him: “Don’t come nearer to me!” The young man stopped, shocked by the eagerness of his recoil, and by the sternmess of his repulsion; and he passed his hand, thoughtfully, across his forehead. “The past is past,” said the Chemist. “It dies like the brutes. Who talks to me of its traces in my life? He raves or lies! What have I to do with your dis- tempered dreams? If you want money, here it is. I came to offer it; and that is all I came for. There can be nothing else that brings me here,” he muttered, hold- ing his head again, with both his hands. “There can be nothing else, and yet—" He had tossed his purse upon the table. As he fell into this dim cogitation with himself, the student took it up, and held it out to him. “Take it back, sir,” he said proudly, though not angrily. “I wish you could take from me, with it, the remembrance of your words and offer.” “You do?” he retorted, with a wild light in his eye. ** YOUI do?” * & 4 I do ’’ . The Chemist went close to him, for the first time, and took the purse, and turned him by the arm, and looked him in the face. - - “There is sorrow and trouble in sickness, is there not?” he demanded, with a laugh. The wondering student answered, “Yes.” “In its unrest, in its anxiety, in its suspense, in all its train of physical and mental miseries?” said the Chemist, with a wild, unearthly exultation. “All best forgotten, are they not?” - ** : The student did not answer, but again passed his hand, confusedly, across his forehead. Redlaw still held him by the sleeve, when Milly’s voice was heard outside. “I can see very well now,” she said, “thank you, Dolf. Don’t cry, dear. Father and mother will be comfortable again, to-morrow, and home will be comfortable too. A gentleman with him, is there!” Redlaw released his hold, as he listened. “I have feared, from the first moment,” he murmured to himself, “to meet her. There is a steady quality of goodness in her, that I dread to influence. may be THE HAUNTED MAN. 365 the murderer of what is tenderest and best within her bosom.” She was knocking at the door. “Shall I dismiss it as an idle foreboding, or still avoid her?” he muttered, looking uneasily around. She was knocking at the door again. - “Of all the visitors who could come here,” he said, in a hoarse, alarmed voice, turning to his companion, “this is the one I should desire most to avoid. Hide me!”. The student opened a frail door in the wall, communi- cating, where the garret-roof began to slope towards the floor, with a small inner room. Redlaw passed in hastily, and shut it after him. The student then resumed his place upon the couch, and called to her to enter. “Dear Mr. Edmund,” said Milly, looking round, “they told me there was a gentleman here.” “There is no one here but I.” “There has been some one?” “Yes, yes, there has been some one.” She put her little basket on the table, and went up to the back of the couch, as if to take the extended hand— but it was not there. A little surprised, in her quiet way, she leaned over to look at his face, and gently touched him on the brow. - “Are you quite as well to-night? Your head is not so cool as in the afternoon.” “Tut!” said the student, petulantly, “very little ails me.’ º A little more surprise, but no reproach, was expressed in her face, as she withdrew to the other side of the table and took a small packet of needlework from her basket. But she laid it down again, on second thoughts, and going noiselessly about the room, set everything exactly in its place, and in the neatest order; even to the cush- ions on the couch, which she touched with so light a hand, that he hardly seemed to know it, as he lay look- ing at the fire. When all this was done. and she had swept the hearth, she sat down, in her modest little bon- net, to her work, and was quietly busy on it directly. “It’s the new muslin curtain for the window, Mr. Edmund,” said Milly, stitching away as she talked. “If will look very clean and mice, though it cost very little, and will save your eyes, too, from the light. Mr. Will- 366 THE HAUNTED MAN. iam says the room should not be too light just now, when you are recovering so well, or the glare might make you giddy.” He said nothing; but there was something so fretful. and impatient in his change of position, that her quick fingers stopped, and she looked at him anxiously. “The pillows are not comfortable,” she said, laying down her work and rising. “I will soon put them right.” “They are very well,” he answered. “Leave them alone, pray. You make so much of everything.” He raised his head to say this, and looked at her so thanklessly, that, after he had thrown himself down again, she stood timidly pausing. However, she re- sumed her seat, and her needle, without having directed even a murmuring look towards him, and was soon as busy as before. “I have been thinking, Mr. Edmund, that you have been often thinking of late, when I have been sitting by, how true the saying is, that adversity is a good teacher. Health will be more precious to you, after this illness, than it has ever been. And years hence, when this time of year comes round, and you remember the days when you lay here sick, alone, that the knowledge of your illness might not afflict those who are dearest to you, your home will be doubly dear and doubly blest. Now, isn’t that a good, true thing?” She was too intent upon her work, and too earnest in what she said, and too composed and quiet altogether, to be on the watch for any look he might direct towards her in reply; so the shaft of his ungrateful glance fell harmless, and did not wound her. . “Ah!” said Milly, with her pretty head inclining thoughtfully on one side, as she looked down, following her busy fingers with her eyes. “Even on me—and I am very different from you, Mr. Edmund, for I have no learning, and don’t know how to think properly—this view of such things has made a great impression, since you have been lying ill. When I have seen you so touched by the kindness and attention of the poor people down-stairs. I have felt that you thought even that ex- perience some repayment for the loss of health, and I have read in your face, as plain as if it was a book, that but for some trouble and sorrow, we should never know half the good there is about us.” THE HAUNTED MAN. 367 His getting up from the couch interrupted her, or she was going on to say more. “We needn’t magnify the merit, Mrs. William,” he rejoined slightingly. “The people down-stairs will be paid in good time, I dare say, for any little extra service they may have rendered me; and perhaps they anticipate no less. I am much obliged to you, too.” Her fingers stopped, and she looked at him. “I can’t be made to feel the more obliged by your ex- aggerating the case,” he said. “I am sensible that you have been interested in me, and I say I am much obliged to you. What more would you have?” Her work fell on her lap, as she still looked at him walking to and fro with an intolerant air, and stopping now and then. - - “I say again, I am much obliged to you. Why weaken my sense of what is your due in obligation, by preferring enormous claims upon me? Trouble, Sorrow, affliction, adversity! One might suppose I had been dying a score of deaths here!” - . “Do you believe, Mr. Edmund,” she asked, rising and going nearer to him, “that I spoke of the poor people of the house, with any reference to myself? To me?” laying her hand upon her bosom with a simple and in- nocent smile of astonishment. “Oh! I think nothing about it, my good creature,” he returned. “I have had an indisposition, which your solicitude—observe! I say solicitude—makes a great deal more of than it merits; and it’s over, and we can’t perpetuate it.” - He coldly took a book, and sat down at the table. She watched him for a little while, until her smile was quite gone, and then, returning to where her basket was, said gently: “Mr. Edmund, would you rather be alone?” “There is no reason why I should detain you here,” he replied. “Except— work. • “Oh! the curtain,” he answered, with a supercilious laugh. “That's not worth staying for.” She made up the little packet again, and put it in her basket. Then, standing before him with such an air of 5 said Milly, hesitating, and showing her 368 THE HAUNTED MAN. patient entreaty that he could not choose but look at her, she said: - “If you should want me, I will come back willingly. When you did want me, I was quite happy to come; there was no merit in it. I think you must be afraid, that, now you are getting well, I may be troublesome to you; but I should not have been, indeed. I should have come no longer than your weakness and confine- ment lasted. You owe me nothing; but it is right that you should deal as justly by me as if I was a lady— even the very lady that you love; and if you suspect me of meanly making much of the little I have tried to do to comfort your sick room, you do yourself more wrong than ever you can do me. That is why I am sorry. That is why I am very sorry.” If she had been as passionate as she was quiet, as in- dignant as she was calm, as angry in her look as she was gentle, as loud in her tone as she was low and clear, she might have left no sense of her departure in the room, compared with that which fell upon the lonely student when she went away. He was gazing drearily upon the place where she had been, when Redlaw came out of his concealment, and came to the door. - “When sickness lays its hand on you again,” he said, looking fiercely back at him, “ —may it be soon!—Die here! Rot here!” - . “What have you done?” returned the other, catching at his cloak. “What change have you wrought in me? What curse have you brought upon me? Give me back myself!” - “Give me back myself!” exclaimed Redlaw, like a madman. “I am infected I am infectious ! I am charged with poison for my own mind, and the minds of all mankind. Where I felt interest, compassion, sympathy, I am turning into stone. Selfishness and ingratitude spring up in my blighting footsteps. I am only so much less base than the wretches whom I make so, that in the moment of their transformation I can hate them.” * As he spoke—the young man still holding to his cloak —he cast him off, and struck him: then, wildly hurried out into the night air where the wind was blowing, the snow falling, the cloud-drift Sweeping on, the moon THE HAUNTED MAN. 369 dimly shining; and where, blowing in the wind, falling with the snow, drifting with the clouds, shining in the moonlight, and heavily looming in the darkness, were the Phantom's words, “The gift that I have given, you shall give again, go where you will!” Whither he went, he neither knew nor cared, so that he avoided company. The change he felt within him made the busy Streets a desert, and himself a desert, and the multitude around him, in their manifold endur- ances and ways of life, a mighty waste of sand, which the winds tossed into unintelligible heaps and made a ruinous confusion of. Those traces in his breast which the Phantom had told him would “die out soon,” were not, as yet, so far upon their way to death, but that he understood enough of what he was, and what he made of others, to desire to be alone. This put it in his mind—he suddenly bethought him- self, as he was going along, of the boy who had rushed into his room. And then he recollected, that of those with whom he had communicated since the Phantom’s disappearance, that boy alone had shown no sign of being changed. Monstrous and odious as the wild thing was to him, he determined to seek it out, and prove if this were really so; and also to seek it with another intention, which came into his thoughts at the same time. So, resolving with some difficulty where he was, he directed his steps back to the old college, and to that part of it where the general porch was, and where, alone, the pavement was worn by the tread of the stu- dents’ feet. The keeper's house stood just within the iron gates, forming a part of the chief quadrangle. There was a little cloister outside, and from that sheltered place he knew he could look in at the window of their ordinary room, and see who was within. The iron gates were shut, but his hand was familiar with the fastening, and drawing it back by thrusting in his wrist between the bars, he passed through softly, shut it again, and crept up to the window, crumbling the thin crust of snow with his feet. The fire, to which he had directed the boy last night, shining brightly through the glass, made an illuminated place upon the ground. Instinctively avoiding this, and 25. 370 THE HAUNTED MAN. going round it, he looked in at the window. At first, he thought that there was no one there, and that the blaze was reddening only the old beams in the ceiling and the dark walls; but, peering in more narrowly, he saw the object of his search coiled asleep before it on the floor. . He passed quickly to the door, opened it, and Went in. The creature lay in such a fiery heat, that, as the Chemist stooped to rouse him, it scorched his head. So Soon as he was touched, the boy, not half awake, clutched his rags together with the instinct of flight upon him, half rolled and half ran into a distant corner of the room, where, heaped upon the ground, he struck his foot out to defend himself. “Get up!” said the Chemist. “You have not forgot- ten me?” • “You let me alone!” returned the boy. “This is the woman’s house—not yours.” The Chemist’s steady eye controlled him somewhat, or inspired him with enough submission to be raised upon his feet, and looked at. “Who washed them, and E. those bandages where they were bruised and cracked?” asked the Chemist, pointing to their altered state. “The woman did.” - “And is it she who has made you cleaner in the face, too?” “Yes, the woman.” Redlaw asked these questions to attract his eyes towards himself, and with the same intent now held him by the chin, and threw his wild hair back, though he loathed to touch him. The boy watched his eyes keenly, as if he thought it needful to his own defence, not knowing what he might do next; and Redlaw could see well, that no change came over him. “Where are they?” he inquired. “The woman’s Out.” “I know she is. Where is the old man with the white hair and his son?” b “The woman’s husband, d’ye mean?” inquired th Oy. - “Aye. Where are those two?” “Out. Something's the matter, somewhere. . They were fetched out in a hurry, and told me to stop here,” % % #º : 2 %%:º ºš %2, % % % ºº::s %%; º Ø %à % - % %% % %% % Ž% º %%%% º %% Ç #2 & % § % º 2Z º %3 ºšº's *: º gº % 27, 2 × 2 ſº * 2% ſº - ** ºº f % º 2.%º Z : : zºº. Ż º 3. 22%%: - % % % Øغ º fº %% . º & gº? % % % %.º £4% º &ºp2 º %% • *ºr %% % º % % º º a &A Zº % % a 2/. Fº %% Ż º º º º % % % 2 2, 22.2/ZZZZZZZZ º ~ %% 2Z % *. % É% % %% zz 3 Z32% º w % % 2% ºt: ºr sº 22 %. i |{ § s i t s THE HAUNTED MAN. 371 “Come with me,” said the Chemist, “and I’ll give you money.” * “Come where? and how much will you give me?” “I’ll give you more shillings than you ever saw, and bring you back soon. Do you know your way to where you came from?” * “You let me go,” returned the boy, suddenly twisting out of his grasp. “I’m not a going to take you there. Let me be; or I’ll heave some fire at you!” He was down before it, and ready, with his savage little hand, to pluck the burning coals out. What the Chemist had felt, in observing the effect of his charmed influence stealing over those with whom he came in contact, was not nearly equal to the cold, vague terror with which he saw this baby-monster put it at defiance. It chilled his blood to look on the immovable, impenetrable thing, in the likeness of a child, with its sharp, malignant face turned up to his, and its almost infant hand, ready at the bars. “Listen, boy!” he said. “You shall take me where you please, so that you take me where the people are very miserable or very wicked. I want to do them good, and not to harm them. You shall have money, as I have told you, and I will bring you back. Get up! Come quickly!” He made a hasty step towards the door, afraid of her returning. “Will you let me walk by myself, and never hold me, nor yet touch me?” said the boy, slowly withdraw- ing the hand with which he threatened, and beginning to get up. - • “I will!” 4 & ſº me go before, behind, or anyways I like?” “I will!” “Give me some money first then, and I’ll go.” The Chemist laid a few shillings, one by one, in his extended hand. To count them was beyond the boy’s knowledge, but he said “one,” every time, and avari- ciously looked at each as it was given, and at the donor. He had nowhere to put them, out of his hand, but in his mouth; and he put them there. Redlaw then wrote with his pencil on a leaf of his pocket-book, that the boy was with him; and laying it on the table, signed him to follow. Keeping his rags together, as usual, the boy complied, and went out 372 THE HAUNTED MAN. Mºhis bare head and his naked feet into the winter night. \ . Preferring not to depart by the iron gate by which he had entered, where they were in danger of meeting her whom he so anxiously avoided, the Chemist led the Way, through some of those passages among which the boy had lost himself, and by that portion of the building where he lived, to a small door of which he had the key. . When they got into the street, he stopped"to ask his guide—who instantly retreated from him—if he knew where they were. - The Savage thing looked here and there; and at length, nodding his head, pointed in the direction he designed to take. Redlaw going on at once, he followed, some- what hess suspiciously; shifting his money from his mouth into his hand, and back again into his mouth, and stealthily rubbing it bright upon his shreds of dress, as he went along. Three times in their progress, they were side by side. Three times they stopped, being side by side. Three times the Chemist glanced down at his face and shud- dered as it forced upon him one reflection. The first occasion was when they were crossing an old churchyard, and Redlaw stopped among the graves, utterly at a loss how to connect them with any tender, softening, or consolatory thought. The second was, when the breaking forth of the moon induced him to look up at the heavens, where he saw her in her glory, surrounded by a host of stars he still knew by the names and histories which human science has appended to them; but where he saw nothing else . he had been wont to see, felt nothing he had been wont : to feel, in looking up there, on a bright night. The third was when he stopped to listen to a plaintive strain of music, but could only hear a tune made mani- fest to him by the dry mechanism of the instruments and his own ears, with no address to any mystery within him, without a whisper in it of the past, or of the future, powerless upon him as the sound of last year's running water, or the rushing of last year's wind. At each of these three times, he saw with horror that in spite of the vast intellectual distance between them, and their being unlike each other in all physical re- THE HAUNTED MAN. 373 spects, the expression on the boy’s face was the expres- sion on his own. g They journeyed on for some time—now through such crowded places, that he often looked over his shoulder, thinking he had lost his guide, but generally finding him within his shadow on his other side; now by ways so quiet, that he could have counted his short, quick, naked footsteps coming on behind—until they arrived at a ruinous collection of houses, and the boy touched him and stopped. “In there!” he said, pointing out one house where there were scattered lights in the windows, and a dim lantern in the doorway, with “Lodgings for Travellers” painted on it. Redlaw looked about him; from the houses, to the waste piece of ground on which the houses stood, or rather did not altogether tumble down, unfenced, undrained, un- lighted, and bordered by a sluggish ditch; from that, to the sloping line of arches, part of some neighbouring viaduct or "bridge with which it was surrounded, and which lessened gradually, towards them, until the last but one was a mere kennel for a dog, the last a plun- dered little heap of bricks; from that, to the child, close to him, cowering and trembling with the cold, and limping on one little foot, while he coiled the other round his leg to warm it, yet staring at all these things with that frightful likeness of expression so apparent in his face, that Redlaw started from him. - “In there!” said the boy, pointing out the house again. “I’ll wait.” “Will they let me in?” asked Redlaw. “Say you’re a doctor,” he answered with a nod. “There's plenty ill here.” Looking back on his way to the house-door, Redlaw saw him trail himself upon the dust and crawl within the shelter of the smallest arch, as if he were a rat. He had no pity for the thing, but he was afraid of it; and when it looked out of its den at him, he hurried to the house as a retreat. Q “Sorrow, wrong, and trouble,” said the Chemist, with a painful effort at some more distinct remem- brance, “at least haunt this place, darkly. He can i. no harm who brings forgetfulness of such things here!” 374 THE HAUNTED MAN. With these words, he pushed the yielding door and went in. There was a woman sitting on the stairs, either asleep or forlorn, whose head was bent down on her hands and knees. As it was not easy to pass without treading on her, and as she was perfectly regardless of his near approach, he stopped and touched her on the shoulder. Ilooking up, she showed him quite a young face, but one whose bloom and promise were all swept away as if the haggard winter should unnaturally kill the Spring. º With little or no show of concern on his account, she moved nearer to the wall to leave him a wider passage. “What are you?” said Redlaw, pausing, with his hand upon the broken stair-rail. “What do you think I am?” she answered, showing him her face again. & He looked upon the ruined temple of God, so lately made, so soon disfigured, and something, "which was not compassion—for the springs in which a true com- passion for such miseries has its risé were dried up in his breast—but which was nearer to it, for the mo- ment, than any feeling that had lately struggled into the darkening but not yet wholly darkened night of his mind—mingled a touch of softness with his next words. “I am come here to give relief, if I can,” he said. “Are you thinking of any wrong?” She frowned at him, and then laughed, and then her laugh prolonged itself into a shivering sigh, as she dropped her head again, and hid her fingers in her hair. “Are you thinking of a wrong P” he asked, once II].OT’é. “I am thinking of my life,” she said, with a moment- ary look at him. FIe had a perception that she was one of many, and that he saw the type of thousands when he saw her drooping at his feet. “What are your parents?” he demanded. “I had a good home once. My father was a gardener, far away, in the country.” “Is he dead?” “He’s dead to me. All such things are dead to me. THE HAUNTED MAN. 375 You, a gentleman, and not know that!” She raised her eyes again, and laughed at him. “Girl!” said Redlaw, sternly, “before this death, of all such things, was brought about, was there no wrong done to you? In spite of all that you can do, does no remembrance of wrong cleave to you? Are there not times upon times when it is misery to you?” So little of what was womanly was left in her appear- ance, that now, when she burst into tears, he stood amazed. But he was more amazed, and much disquieted, to note that in her awakened recollection of this wrong, the first trace of her old humanity and frozen tender- ness appeared to show itself. * He drew a little off, and in doing so, observed that her arms were black, her face cut, and her bosom bruised. - “What brutal hand has hurt you so?” he asked. “My own. I did it myself!” she answered quickly. “It is impossible.” “I’ll swear I did! He didn’t touch me. I did it to myself in a passion, and threw myself down here. . He wasn’t near me. He never laid a hand upon me!” In the white determination of her face, confronting him with this untruth, he saw enough of the last per- version and distortion of good surviving in that miser- able breast, to be stricken with remorse that he had ever come near her. “Sorrow, wrong, and trouble!” he muttered, turning his fearful gaze away. “All that connects her with the State from which she has fallen, has those roots!” In the name of God, let me go by l’’ - Afraid to look at her again, afraid to touch her, afraid to think of having sundered the last thread by which she held upon the mercy of Heaven, he gathered his cloak about him, and glided swiftly up the stairs. Opposite to him, on the landing, was a door, which stood partly open, and which, as he ascended, a man with a candle in his hand came forward from within to shut. But this man, on seeing him, drew back, with much emotion in his manner, and, as if by a sudden im- pulse, mentioned his name aloud. In the surprise of such a recognition there, he stopped, endeavouring to recollect the wan and startled face. He had no time to consider it, for, to his yet greater 376 THE HAUNTED MAN. amazement, old Philip came out of the room, and took him by the hand. “Mr. Redlaw,” said the old man, “this is like you, this is like you, sir! you have heard of it, and have come after us to render any help you can. Ah, too late, too late!” Redlaw, with a bewildered look, submitted to be led into the room. A man lay there, on a truckle-bed, and William Swidger stood at the bedside. “Too late!” murmured the old man, looking wist- fully into the Chemist's face; and the tears stole down his cheeks. “That’s what I say, father,” interposed his son in a low voice. “That’s where it is, exactly. To keep as quiet as ever we can while he’s a dozing, is the only thing to do. You’re right, father!” Redlaw paused at the bedside, and looked down on the figure that was stretched upon the mattress. It was that of a man who should have been in the vigour of his life, but on whom it was not likely that the sun would ever shine again. The vices of his forty or fifty years' career had so branded him, that, in comparison with their effects upon his face, the heavy hand of time upon the old man’s face who watched him had been merciful and beautifying. - “Who is this?” asked the Chemist, looking round. “My son George, Mr. Redlaw,” said the old man, wringing his hands. “My eldest son, George, who was more his mother's pride than all the rest!” -- Redlaw’s eyes wandered from the old man’s grey head as he laid it down upon the bed, to the person who had recognised him, and who had kept aloof, in the remotest corner of the room. He seemed to be about his own age; and although he knew no such hopeless decay and broken man as he appeared to be, there was something in the turn of his figure, as he stood with his back towards him, and now went out at the door, that made him pass his hand uneasily across his brow. “William,” he said in a gloomy whisper, “who is that man?” “Why, you see, sir,” returned Mr. William, “that’s what I say myself. Why should a man ever go and gamble, and the like of that, and let himself down inch by inch till he can’t let himself down any lower!” THE HAUNTED MAN. 377 “Has he done so?” asked Redlaw, glancing after him with the same uneasy action as before. “Just exactly that, sir,” returned William Swidger, “as I’m told. He knows a little about medicine, sir, it seems, and having been wayfaring towards London with my unhappy brother that you see here,” Mr. Wil- liam passed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, “and being lodging up-stairs for the night—what I say, you see, is that strange companions come together here sometimes —he looked in to attend upon him, and came for us at his request. What a mournful spectacle, sir! But that’s where it is. It's enough to kill my father!” Redlaw looked up, at these words, and recalling where he was and with whom, and the spell he carried with him—which his surprise had obscured—retired a little, hurriedly, debating with himself whether to shun the house that moment or remain. Yielding to a certain sullen doggedness, which it seemed to be part of his condition to struggle with, he argued for remaining. “Was it only yesterday,” he said, “when I observed the memory of this old man to be a tissue of sorrow and trouble, and shall I be afraid to-night to shake it? Are such remembrances as I can drive away so precious to i. dying man that I need fear for him? No, I’ll stay ere.” But he stayed in fear and trembling none the less for these words; and, shrouded in his black cloak with his face turned from them, stood away from the bedside, listening to what they said, as if he felt himself a demon in the place. “Father!” murmured the sick man, rallying a little from his stupor. - “My boy! My son George!” said old Philip. “You spoke, just now, of my being mother's favourite, long ago. It’s a dreadful thing to think now, of long ago!” ‘‘No, no, no,” returned the old man. “Think of it. Don't Say it’s dreadful. It’s not dreadful to me, my * Son.” “It cuts you to the heart, father.” For the old man’s tears were falling on him, “Yes, yes,” said Philip, “so it does; but it does me good. It’s a heavy sorrow to think of that time, but it 378. THE HAUNTED MAN. does me good, George. Oh, think of it, too, think of it, too, and your heart will be softened more and more! Where's my son William? William, my boy, your mother loved him dearly to the last, and with her latest breath said, ‘Tell him I forgave him, blessed him, and prayed for him.’ Those were her words to me. I have never forgotten them, and I’m eighty-seven l’’ “Father!” said the man upon the bed, ‘ I am dying, I know. I am so far gone that I can hardly speak, even of what my mind most runs on. Is there any hope for me beyond this bed?” - “There is hope,” returned the old man, “for all who are softened and penitent. There is hope for all such. Oh!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands and looking up, ‘‘I was thankful, only yesterday, that I could remember this unhappy son when he was an innocent child. But what a comfort is it, now, to think that even God him- Self has that remembrance of him!” Redlaw spread his hands upon his face and shrunk like a murderer. - “Ah!” feebly moaned the man upon the bed. “The Waste since then, the waste of life, since then!” “But he was a child once,” said the old man. “He played with children. Before he lay down on his bed at night, and fell into his guiltless rest, he said his prayers at his poor mother’s knee. I have seen him do it, many a time; and seen her lay his head upon her breast, and kiss him. Sorrowful as it was to her, and to me, to think of this, when he went so wrong, and when our hopes and plans for him were all broken, this gave him still a hold upon us, that nothing else could have given. Oh, Father, so much better than the fathers upon earth! . Oh, Father, so much more afflicted by the errors of Thy children! take this wanderer back! Not as he is, but as he was then, let him cry to Thee, as he has so often seemed to cry to us!” * As the old man lifted up his trembling hands, the son, for whom he made the supplication, laid his sinking head against him for support and comfort, as if he were indeed the child of whom he spoke. When did man ever tremble, as Redlaw trembled, in the silence that ensued! He knew it must come upon them, knew that it was coming fast. . “My time is very short, my breath is shorter,” said THE HAUNTED MAN. . 379 the sick man, supporting himself on one arm, and with the other groping in the air, “and I remember there is something on my mind, concerning the man who was here just now. Father and William—wait!—-is there really anything in black, out there?” “Yes, yes, it is real,” said his aged father. “Is it a man?” “What I say myself, George,” interposed his brother, bending kindly over him. “It’s Mr. Redlaw.” } “I thought I had dreamed of him. Ask him to come here.” The Chemist, whiter than the dying man, appeared before him. Obedient to the motion of his hand, he sat upon the bed. - gº “It has been so ripped up to-night, sir,” said the sick man, laying his hand upon his heart, with a look in which the mute, imploring agony of his condition was concentrated, “by º; of my poor old father, and the thought of all theºfouble I have been the cause of, and all the wrong and sorrow lying at my door, that—” Was it the extremity to which he had come, or was it the dawning of another change, that made him stop? “—that what I can do right, with my mind running on So much, so fast, I’ll try to do. There was another man here. Did you see him?” - Redlaw could not reply by any word; for when he saw that fatal sign he knew so well now, of the wan- dering hand upon the forehead, his voice died at his lips. But he made some indication of assent. : “He is penniless, hungry, and destitute. He is com- pletely beaten down, and has no resource at all. Look after him! Lose no time! I know he has it in his mind to kill himself.” It was working. It was on his face. His face was changing, hardening, deepening in all its shades, and losing all its sorrow. . “Don’t you remember! Don’t you know him?” he pursued. - He shut his face out for a moment, with the hand that again wandered over his forehead, and then it lowered on Redlaw, reckless, ruffianly and callous. “Why, d-n you!” he said, scowling round, “what have you been doing to me here! I have lived bold, and I mean to die bold. To the devil with you!” 38() THE HAUNTED MAN. And so lay down upon his bed, and put his arms up, over his head and ears, as resolute from that time to keep out all access, and to die in his indifference. If Redlaw had been struck by lightning, it could not have struck him from the bedside with a more tremen- dous shock. But the old man, who had left the bed while his son was speaking to him, now returning, avoided it quickly likewise, and with abhorrence. < * “Where's my boy William?” said the old man, hur- i. “William, come away from here. We’ll go Ome.” - “Home, father!” returned William. “Are you going to leave your own son?” “Where's my own son?” replied the old man. “Where? why, there!” “That's no son of mine,” said Philip, trembling with resentment. “No such wretch as that has any claim on me. My children are pleasant to look at, and they wait upon me, and get my metºand drink ready, and are useful to me. I’ve a right to it! I’m eighty-seven!” “You’re old enough to be no older,” muttered William, looking at him grudgingly, with his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know what good you are, myself. We could have a deal more pleasure without you.” “My son, Mr. Redlaw!” said the old man. My son, too!' The boy talking to me of my son! Why, what has he ever done to give me any pleasure, I should like to know?” “I don’t know what you have ever done to give me any pleasure,” said William, sulkily. g ‘‘Let me think,” said the old man. “For how many Christmas times running, have I sat in my warm place,’ and never had to come out in the cold night air; and have made good cheer, without being disturbed by any such uncomfortable, wretched sight as him there? Is it twenty, William?” “Nigher forty, it seems,” he muttered. “Why, when I look at my father, sir, and come to think of it,” ad- dressing Redlaw, with an impatience and irritation that were quive new, “I’m whipped if I can see anything in him but a calendar of ever so many years of eating, and drinking, and making himself comfortable, Over and over again.” “I—I’m eighty-seven,” said the old man, rambling on, THE HAUNTED MAN. - 381 childishly, and weakly, “ and I don’t know as I ever was much put out by anything. I’m not a going to begin now, because of what he calls my son. He's not my son. I’ve had a power of pleasant times. I recol- lect once—no, I don’t—no, it’s broken off. It was some- thing about a game of cricket and a friend of mine, but it’s somehow broken off. I wonder who he was—I suppose I liked him? And I wonder what became of him—I suppose he died? But I don’t know. And I don’t care, neither; I don’t care a bit.” In his drowsy chuckling, and the shaking of his head, he put his hands into his waistcoat pockets. In one of them he found a bit of holly (left there, probably last night), which he now took out, and looked at. “Berries, eh?” said the old man. “Ah! It’s a pity they are not good to eat. I recollect when I was a little chap, about as high as that, and out a walking with— let me see—who was I out a walking with ?—no, I don’t remember how that was. I don’t remember as I ever walked with any one particular, or cared for any one, or any one for me. Berries, eh? There's good cheer when there's berries. Well; I ought to have my share of it, and to be waited on, and kept warm and . comfortable; for I’m eighty-seven, and a poor old man. I’m eigh-ty-seven. Eigh-ty-seven!” • The drivelling, pitiable manner in which, as he re- peated this, he nibbled at the leaves, and spat the mor- ‘sels out; the cold, uninterested eye with which his youngest son (so changed) regarded him; the determined apathy with which his eldest son lay hardened in his sin;–impressed themselves no more on Redlaw’s ob- servation; for he broke his way from the spot to which #. feet seemed to have been fixed, and ran out of the lOUIS62. His guide came crawling forth from his place of refuge, and was ready for him before he reached the arches. - “Back to the woman's?” he inquired. “Back, quickly!” answered Redlaw. “Stop nowhere on the way !” For a short distance the boy went on before; but their return was more like a flight than a walk, and it was as much as his bare feet could do, to keep pace with the Chemist's rapid strides. Shrinking from all who passed, 382 THE HAUNTED MAN. shrouded in his cloak, and keeping it drawn closely about him, as though there were mortal contagion in any fluttering touch of his garments, he made no pause until they reached the door by which they had come out. He unlocked it with his key, went in, accompanied by the boy, and hastened through the dark passages to his own chamber. - - The boy watched him as he made the door fast, and withdrew behind the table when he looked round. *. “Come!” he said. “Don’t you touch me! You’ve not brought me here to take my money away.” Redlaw threw some more upon the ground. He flung his body on it immediately, as if to hide it from him, lest the sight of it should tempt him to reclaim it; and • not until he saw him seated by his lamp, with his face hidden in his hands, began furtively to pick it up. When he had done so, he crept near the fire, and sitting down in a great chair before it, took from his breast some broken scraps of food, and fell to munch- ing, and to staring at the blaze, and now and then to glancing at his shillings, which he kept clenched up in a bunch, in one hand. “And this,” said Redlaw, gazing on him with in- creasing repugnance and fear, “is the only one com- panion I have left on earth!” How long it was before he was aroused from his com- templation of this creature whom he dreaded so— whether half an hour, or half the night—he knew not. But the stillness of the room was broken by the boy (whom he had seen listening) starting up, and running towards the door. “Here's the woman coming!” he exclaimed. The Chemist stopped him on his way, at the moment when she knocked. “Let me go to her, will you?” said the boy. “Not now,” returned the Chemist. “Stay here. No- body must pass in or out of the room now. Who's that?” “It’s I, sir,” cried Milly. “Pray, sir, let me in.” “NO! not for the world!” he said. “Mr. Redlaw, Mr. Redlaw, pray, sir, let me in.” “What is the matter?” he said, holding the boy. “The miserable man you saw, is worse, and nothing I can say will wake him from his terrible infatuation. William's father has turned childish in a moment. Will- THE HAUNTED MAN. 383 iam himself is changed. The shock has been too sudden for him; I cannot understand him; he is not like him- self. Oh, Mr. Redlaw, pray advise me, help me!” “NO! NO! NO!” he answered. *. “Mr. Redlaw! Dear sir! George has been muttering in his doze, about the man you saw there, who, he fears, will kill himself.” “Better he should do it, than come near me!” - “He says, in his wandering, that you know him; that he was your friend once, long ago; that he is the ruined father of a student here—my mind misgives me, of the young gentleman who has been ill. What is to be done? How is he to be followed? How is he to be saved? Mr. Redlaw, pray, oh, pray, advise me! . Help me!” All this time he held the boy, who was half-mad to pass him, and let her in. “Phantoms! Punishers of impious thoughts!” cried Redlaw, gazing round in anguish, “Look upon me! From the darkness of my mind, let the glimmering of contrition that I know is there, shine up, and show my misery ! In the material world, as I have long taught, nothing can be spared; no step or atom in the wondrous structure could be lost, without a blank being made in the great universe. I know, now, that it is the same with good and evil, happiness and sorrow, in the memo- ries of men. Pity me! Relieve me!” - There was no response, but her “Help me, help me, let me in l’ and the boy struggling to get to her. “Shadow of myself! Spirit of my darker hours!” cried Redlaw, in distraction, “ come back, and haunt me day and night, but take this gift away! Or, if it must still rest with me, deprive me of the dreadful power of giving it to others. Undo what I have done. Leave me benighted, but restore the day to those whom I have cursed. As I have spared this woman from the first, and as I never will go forth again, but will die here, with no hand to tend me, save this creature's who is proof against me—hear me!” The only reply still was, the boy struggling to get to her, while he held him back; and the cry increasing in its energy, “Help! let me in. He was your friend once, how shall he be followed, how shall he be saved? They are all changed, there is no one else to help me, pray, pray, let me in!” - 384 THE HAUNTED MAN. CHAPTER III. THE GIFT REVERSED. NIGHT was still heavy in the sky. On open plains, from hill-tops and from the decks of solitary ships at sea, a distant low-lying line, that promised by-and-by to change to light, was visible in the dim horizon; but its promise was remote and doubtful, and the moon was striving with the night-clouds busily. The shadows upon Redlaw’s mind succeeded thick and fast to one another, and obscured its light as the night-clouds hovered between the moon and earth, and kept the latter veiled in darkness. Fitful and uncertain as the shadows which the night-clouds cast, were their concealments from him, and imperfect revelations to him; and, like the night-clouds still, if the clear light broke forth for a moment, it was only that they might sweep over it, and make the darkness deeper than before. Without there was a profound and solemn hush upon the ancient pile of building, and its buttresses and angles made dark shapes of mystery upon the ground, which now seemed to retire into the smooth white snow and now seemed to come out of it, as the moon’s path was more or less beset. Within, the Chemist's room was indistinct and murky, by the light of the expiring lamp; a ghostly silence had succeeded to the knocking' and the voice outside; nothing was audible, but, now and then, a low sound among the whitened ashes of the fire, as of its yielding up its last breath. Before it on the ground the boy lay fast asleep. In his chair, the Chemist sat, as he had sat there since the calling at his door had ceased—like a man turned to stone. At such a time, the Christmas music he had heard before, began to play. He listened to it at first, as he had listened in the churchyard; but presently—it play- ing still, and being borne towards him on the night-air, in a low, sweet, melancholy strain—he rose, and stood stretching his hands about him, as if there were some THE HAUNTED MAN. 385 friend approaching within his reach, on whom his deso- late touch might rest, yet do no harm. As lie did this, his face became less fixed and wondering; a gentle trembling came upon him; and at last his eyes filled with tears, and he put his hands before them, and bowed down his head. - His memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble, had not come back to him; he knew that it was not restored; he had no passing belief or hope that it was. But some dumb stir within him made him capable, again, of being moved by what was hidden, afar off, in the music. If it were only that it told him sorrowfully the value of what he had lost, he thanked Heaven for it with a fervent gratitude. - As the last chord died upon his ear, he raised his head to listen to its lingering vibration. Beyond the boy, so that his sleeping figure lay at his feet, the Phantom stood, immovable and silent, with its eyes upon him. Ghastly it was, as it had ever been, but not so cruel and relentless in its aspect—or he thought or hoped so, as he looked upon it, trembling. It was not alone, but in its shadowy hand it held another hand. And whose was that? Was the form that stood beside it indeed Milly’s, or but her shade and picture! The Quiet head was bent a little, as her manner was, and her eyes were looking down, as if in pity. on the sleeping child. A radiant light fell on her face, but did not touch the Phantom; for, though close beside her, it was dark and colourless as ever. - “Spectreſ” said the Chemist, newly troubled as he looked, “I have not been stubborn or presumptuous in º of her. Oh, do not bring her here. Spare me that!’ - “This is but a shadow,” said the Phantom; “when the morning shines, seek out the reality whose image I present before you.” “Is it my inexorable doom to do so?” cried the Chemist. . “It is,” replied the Phantom. “To destroy her peace, her goodness; to make her what I am myself, and what 1 have made of others!” ‘‘I have said “Seek her out,’” returned the Phantom. “I have said no more.” “Oh, tell me,” exclaimed Redlaw, catching at the 26 386 THE HAUNTEE) MAN. hope which he fancied might lie hidden in the words. “Can I undo what I have done?” “No,” returned the Phantom. - “I do not ask for restoration to myself,” said Redlaw. “What I abandoned, I abandoned of my own will, and have justly lost. But for those to whom I have trans- ferred the fatal gift; who never sought it; who un- knowingly received a curse of which they had no warning, and which they had no power to shun; can I do nothing?” “Nothing,” said the Phantom. “If I cannot, can any one?” The Phantom, standing like a statue, kept its gaze upon him for a while; then turned its head suddenly, and looked upon the shadow at its side. | º Can she?” cried Redlaw, still looking upon the SIl 3,C1G. The Phantom released the hand it had retained till now, and softly raised its own with a gesture of dis- missal. Upon that, her shadow, Still preserving the same attitude, began to move or melt away. “Stay,” cried Redlaw, with an earnestness to which he could not give enough expression. “ For a moment! As an act of mercy! I know that some change fell upon me, when those sounds were in the air just now. Tell me, have I lost the power of harming her? May I go near her without dread? Oh, let her give me any sign of hope!” The Phantom looked upon the shade as he did—not at him—and gave no answer. “At least, say this—has she, henceforth, the con- sciousness of any power to set right what I have done?” “She has not,” the Phantom answered. “Has she the power bestowed on her without the con- sciousness?” - The Phantom answered: “Seek her out.” And her shadow slowly vanished. They were face to face again, and looking On each other as intently and awfully as at the time of the be- stowal of the gift, across the boy who still lay on th ground between them, at the Phantom's feet. - “Terrible instructor,” said the Chemist, sinking on his knee before it in an attitude of supplication, “by whom I was renounced, but by whom I am revisited (in THE HAUNTED MAN. 3s; which, and in whose milder aspect, I would fain believe I have a gleam of hope), I will obey without inquiry, praying that the cry I have sent up in the anguish of my soul has been, or will be heard, in behalf of those whom I have injured beyond human reparation. But there is one thing—” . . “You speak to me of what is lying here,” the Phantom interposed, and pointed with its finger to the boy. “I do,” returned the Chemist. “You know what I would ask. Why has this child alone been proof against my influence, and why, why, have I detected in its thoughts a terrible companionship with mine?” “This,” said the Phantom, pointing to the boy, “is the last, completest illustration of a human creature, utterly bereft of such remembrances as you have yielded up. No softening memory of sorrow, wrong, or trouble enters here, because this wretched mortal from his birth. has been abandoned to a worse condition than the beasts, and has, within his knowledge, no one contrast, no humanising touch, to rnake a grain of such a memory spring up in his hardened breast. All within this desolate creature is barren wilderness. All within the man be- reft of what you have resigned, is the same barren wilderness. Woe to such a man! Woe, tenfold, to the nation that shall count its monsters such as this, lying here by hundreds and by thousands!” . - Redlaw shrunk, appalled, from what he heard. “There is not,” said the Phantom, ‘‘ one of these—not one—but sows a harvest that mankind must reap. From every seed of evil in this boy, a field of ruin is grown that shall be gathered in, and garnered up, and sown again in many places in the world, until regions are overspread with wickedriess enough to raise the waters of another Deluge. Open and unpunished murder in a city’s streets would be less guilty in its daily toleration than one such spectacle as this.” It seemed to look down at the boy in his sleep. Red- law, too, looked down upon him with a new emotion. “There is not a father,” said the Phantom, ‘‘ by whose side in his daily or his mightly walk, these crea- tures pass; there is not a mother among all the ranks of loving mothers in this land; there is no one risen from the state of childhood, but shall be responsible in his or her degree for this enormity. There is not a coun- $$$ - THE HAUNTED MAN. try throughout the earth on which it would not bring a Curse. There is no religion upon earth that it would not deny; there is no people upon earth it would not put to shame.” K. The Chemist clasped his hands, and looked, with trembling fear and pity, from the sleeping boy to the Phantom, standing above him, with its finger pointing down. © ‘‘Behold, I say,” pursued the Spectre, ‘‘the perfect type of what it was your choice to be. Your influence is powerless here, because from this child’s bosom you can banish nothing. His thoughts have been in “terri- ble companionship ’ with yours, because you have gone down to his unnatural level. He is the growth of man’s indifference; you are the growth of man’s presumption. The beneficent design of Heaven is, in each case, over- thrown, and from the two poles of the immaterial world you come together.” - The Chemist stooped upon the ground beside the boy, and with the same kind of compassion for him that he now felt for himself, covered him as he slept, and no longer shrunk from him with abhorrence or indiffer- €}l Cé. Soon, now, the distant line on the horizon brightened, the darkness faded, the sun rose red and glorious, and the chimney stacks and gables of the arrcient building gleamed in the clear air, which turned the smoke and vapour of the city into a cloud of gold. The very sun- dial in his shady corner, where the wind was used to spin with such unwindy constancy, shook off the finer particles of snow that had accumulated on his dull old face in the night, and looked out at the little white wreaths, eddying round and round him. Doubtless some blind groping of the morning made its way down into the forgotten crypt so cold and earthy, where the Nor- Inan arches were half buried in the ground, and stirred the dull sap in the lazy vegetation hanging to the walls and quickened the slow principle of life within the little world of wonderful and delicate creation which existed there, with some faint knowledge that the sun was up. The Tetterbys were up and doing. Mr. Tetterby took down the shutters of the shop, and strip by strip revealed the treasures of the window to the eyes, so proof against their seductions, of Jerusalem Buildings. Adolphus had THE HAUNTED MAN. 389 been out so long already, that he was halfway on to Morn- ing Pepper. Five small Tetterbys, whose ten round eyes were much inflamed by soap and friction, were in the tor- tures of a cool wash in the back kitchen; Mrs. Tetterby presiding. Johnny, who was pushed and hustled through his toilet with great rapidity when Moloch chanced to be in an exacting frame of mind (which was always the case), staggered up and down with his charge before the shop door under greater difficulties than usual; the weight of Moloch being much increased by a complication of defences against the cold, composed of knitted worsted- work, and forming a complete suit of chain-armour, with a head-piece and blue gaiters. It was a peculiarity of this baby to be always cutting teeth. Whether they never came, or whether they came and went away again, is not in evidence; but it had certainly cut enough, on the showing of Mrs. Tet- terby, to make a handsome dental provision for the sign of the Bull and Mouth. All sorts of objects were im- pressed for the rubbing of its gums, notwithstanding that it always carried, dangling at its waist' (which was immediately under its chin), a bone riug, large enough to have represented the rosary of a young nun. Knife- handles, umbrella-tops, the heads of walking-sticks se- lected from the stock, the fingers of the family in gen- eral, but especially of Johnny, nutmeg-graters, crusts, the handles of doors, and the cool knobs on the tops of pokers, were among the commonest instruments indis- criminately applied for this baby’s relief. The amount of electricity that must have been rubbed out of it in a week, is not to be calculated. Still Mrs. Tetterby always said “It was coming through, and then the child would be herself;” and still it never did come through, and the child continued to be sonnebody else. The tempers of the little Tetterbys had sadiy changed with a few hours. Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby themselves were not more altered than their offspring. Usually they were an unselfish, good-natured, yielding little race, sharing short-commons when it happened (which was pretty often) contentedly and even generously, and taking a great deal of enjoyment out of a very little meat. But they were fighting now, not only for the soap and water, but even for the breakfast which was yet in perspective. The hand of every little Tetterby 390 THE HAUNTED MAN. was against the other little Tetterbys; and even Johnny's hand—the patient, much-enduring, and devoted Johnny —rose against the baby! Yes. Mrs. Tetterby, going to the door by a mere accident, saw him viciously pick out a weak place in the suit of armour, where a slap would tell, and slap that blessed child. - - Mrs. Tetterby had him into the parlor, by the collar, in that same flash of time, and repaid him the assault with usury thereto. “You brute, you murdering little boy!” said Mrs. Tet- terby. “Had you the heart to do it?” “Why don’t her teeth come through, then,” retorted Johnny, in a loud, rebellious voice, “instead of bother- ing me? How would you like it yourself?” “Like it, sir!” said Mrs. Tetterby, relieving him of his dishonoured load. C “Yes, like it,” said Johnny. “How would you? Not at all. If you was me, you'd go for a soldier. I will, too. There an’t no babies in the army.” tº Mr. Tetterby, who had arrived upon the scene of ac- tion, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, instead of correcting the rebel, and seemed rather struck by this view of a military life. - “I wish I was in the army myself, if the child’s in the . right,” said Mrs. Tetterby, looking at her husband, “ for I have no peace of my life here. I’m a slave—a Vir- ginia slave;” some indistinct association with their weak descent on the tobacco trade perhaps suggested this ag- gravated expression to Mrs. Tetterby. “I never have a holiday, or any pleasure at all, from year's end to year’s end! Why, Lord bless and save the child,” said Mrs. Tetterby, shaking the baby with an irritability hardly suited to so pious an aspiration, “What's the matter with her, now?” \ Not being able to discover, and not rendering the sub- ject much clearer by shaking it, Mrs. Tetterby put the baby away in a cradle, and, folding her arms, sat rock- ing it angrily with her foot. & “How you stand there, 'Dolphus!” said Mrs. Tetterby to her husband. “Why don’t you do something?” “Because i don’t care about doing anything,” Mr. Tetterby replied. - - “I’m sure I don’t,” said Mrs. Tetterby. “I’ll take my oath I don’t,” said Mr. Tetterby. B THE HAUNTED MAN. 391 O . • A diversion arose here among Johnny and his five younger brothers, who, in preparing the family break- fast table, had fallen to skirmishing for the temporary possession of the loaf, and were buffeting one another with great heartiness; the smallest boy of all, with pre- cocious discretion, hovering outside the knot of com- batants, and harassing their legs. Into the midst of this fray, Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby both precipitated them- selves with great ardour, as if such ground were the only ground on which they could now agree; and hav- ing, with no visible remains of their late soft-hearted- ness, laid about them without any lenity, and done much execution, resumed their former relative positions. “You had better read your paper than do nothing at all,” said Mrs. Tetterby. ! “What's there to read in a paper?” returned Mr. Tetterby, with excessive discontent. “What?” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Police.” “It’s nothing to me,” said Tetterby. “What do I care what people do, or are done to.” “Suicides,” suggested Mrs. Tetterby. “No business of mine,” replied her husband. “Births, deaths, and marriages, are those nothing to you?” said Mrs. Tetterby. - * If the births were all over for good, and all to-day; and the deaths were all to begin to come off to-morrow; I don’t see why it should interest me, till I thought it was a -coming to my turn,” grumbled Tetterby. “As to marriages, I’ve done it myself. I know quite enough about them.” . To judge from the dissatisfied expression of her face and manner, Mrs. Tetterby appeared to entertain the same opinions as her husband; but she opposed him, nºrtheless, for the gratification of quarrelling with 1YYl. “Oh, you’re a consistent man,” said Mrs. Tetterby, ‘‘ an’t you? You, with the screen of your own making there, made of nothing else but bits of newspapers, which you sit and read to the children by the half-hour together l’” - “Say used to, if you please,” returned her husband. “You won't find me doing so any more. I’m wiser now.” “Bah.! wiser indeed P’ said Mrs. Tetterby. “Are you better P’’ 392 THE HAUNTED M.A.N. Ö The question sounded some discordant note in Mr. Tetterby's breast. He ruminated dejectedly, and passed his hand across and across his forehead. - “Better l’ murmure, l Mr. Tetterby. I don’t know as any of us are better, or happier either. Better, is it?” He turned to the screen, and traced about it with his finger, until he found a certain paragraph of which he was in quest. “This used to be one of the family favourites, I re- collect,” said Tetterby, in a forlorn and stupid way, “ and used to draw tears from the children, and make 'em good, if there was any little bickering or discontent among 'em, next to the story of the robin redbreasts in the wood. Melancholy case of destitution. Yesterday a small man, with a baby in his arms, and surrounded by half-a-dozen ragged little ones, of various ages be- tween ten and two. the whole of whom were evidently in a famishing Condition, appeared before the worthy magistrate, and made the following recital:’—Ha! I don't understand it, I’m sure,” said Tetterby; “I don’t see what it has got to do with us.” – “How old and shabby he looks.” said Mrs. Tetterby, watching him. “ I never saw such a change in a man. Ah! dear me, dear me, deal me, it was a sacrifice!” “What was a sacrifice?” her husband sourly inquired. Mrs. Tetterby shook her head; and without replying in words, raised a complete sea-storm about the baby, by her violent agitation of the cradle. “If you mean your marriage was a sacrifice, my good woman—” said her husband. ‘‘ I do mean it,” said his wife. “Why, then I mean to say.” pursued Mr. Tetterby, as sulkily and surlily as she, “that there are two sides to that affair; and that I was the sacrifice; and that I wish the sacrifice hadn’t been accepted.” “I wish it hadn’t, Tetterby, with all my heart and soul, I do assure you.” said his wife. “You can’t wish it more than I do, Tetterby.” “I don't know what I saw in her,” muttered the news- man, “I’m sure;——certainly, if I saw anything, it's not there now. I was thinking so, last night, after Supper, by the fire. She's fat, she's ageing, she won’t bear com- parison with most other women.” “He’s common-looking, he has no air with him, he's THE HAUNTED MAN. small, he's beginning to stoop, and he's getting bald,” muttered Mrs. Tetterby. . . “I must have been half out of my mind when I did it,” muttered Mr. Tetterby. . . . “My senses must have forsook me. That's the only way in which I can explain it to myself,” said Mrs. Tetterby, with elaboration. - - In this mood they sat down to breakfast. The little Tetterbys were not habituated to regard that meal in the light of a sendentary occupation, but discussed it as a dance or trot; rather resembling a savage ceremony, in the occasional shrill whoops, and brandishings of bread and butter, with which it was accompanied, as well as in the intricate filings off into the Street and back again, and the hoppings up and down the door- steps, which were incidental to the performance. In the present instance, the contentions between these Tetterby children for the milk-and-water jug, common to all, which stood upon the table, presented so lamentable an instance of angry passions risen very high indeed, that it was an outrage on the memory of Dr. Watts. It was not until Mr. Tetterby had driven the whole herd out of the front door, that a moment's peace was secured; and even that was broken by the discovery that Johnny had surreptitiously come back, and was at that instant choking in the jug like a ventriloquist, in his indecent and rapacious haste. - “These children will be the death of me at last!” said Mrs. Tetterby, after banishing the culprit. “And the sooner the better, I think.” “Poor people,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ought not to have children at all. They give us no pleasure.” |He was at that moment taking up the cup which Mrs. Tetterby had rudely pushed towards him, and Mrs. Tet- terby was lifting her own cup to her lips, when they both stopped, as if they were transfixed. “Here! Mother! Father!” cried Johnny, running into the room. “Here’s Mrs. William coming down the street l’’ - - And if ever, since the world began, a young boy took a baby from the cradle with the care of an old nurse, and hushed and soothed it tenderly, and trotted away with it cheerfully, Johnny was that boy, and Moloch was that baby, as they went out together, | - Mr. Tetterby put down his cup; Mrs. Tetterby put down her cup. Mr. Tetterby rubbed his forehead; Mrs. Tetterby rubbed hers. Mr. Tetterby’s face began to Smooth and brighten; Mrs. Tetterby’s began to smooth and brighten. What has been the matter here!” “Why, Lord forgive me,” said Mr. Tetterby to him- self, “what evil tempers have I been giving way to? “How could I ever treat him ill again, after all I said and felt last night!” Sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, with her apron to her eyes. “Am I a brute,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ or is there any good in me at all? Sophia! My little woman!” - - ‘‘’Dolphus dear,” returned his wife. s “I—I’ve been in a state of mind,” said Mr. Tetterby, “that I can’t abear to think of, Sophy.” “Oh! It’s nothing to what I’ve been in, Dolf,” cried his wife in a great burst of grief. - “My Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “don’t take on. I never shall forgive myself. I must have nearly broke your heart, I know.” “No, Dolf, no. It was me! Me!” cried Mrs. Tetterby. “My little woman,” said her husband, “don’t. You make me reproach myself dreadful, when you show such a noble spirit. Sophia, my dear, you don’t know what I thought. I showed it bad enough, no doubt; but what I thought, my little woman!”— “Oh, dear Dolf, don't! Don't!” cried his wife. , “Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “I must reveal it. I couldn’t rest in my conscience unless I mentioned it. My little woman——” “Mrs. William's very nearly here!” screamed Johnny at the door. - } “My little woman, I wondered how,” gasped Mr. Tet- terby, supporting himself by his chair, “I wondered how I had ever admired you—I forgot the precious chil- dren you have brought about me, and thought you didn’t look as slim as I could wish. I—I never gave a recol- lection,” said Mr. Tetterby, with severe self-accusation, “to the cares you’ve had as my wife, and along of me and mine, when you might have had hardly any with another man, who got on, better and was luckier than me (anybody might have found such a man easily,I am sure); and I quarrelled with you for having aged a little THE HAUNTED MAN. 395 in the rough years you’ve lightened for me. Can you believe it, my little woman? I hardly can myself.” Mrs. Tetterby, in a whirlwind of laughing and crying, caught his face within her hands, and held it there. “Oh, Dolf!” she cried. “I am so happy that you thought so; I am so grateful that you thought so! For I thought that you were common-looking, Dolf; and so you are, my dear, and you may be the commonest of all sights in my eyes till you close them with your own good' hands. I thought that you were small; and so you are, and I’ll make much of you because you are, and more of you because I love my husband. I thought that you began to stoop; and so you do, and you shall lean on me, and I’ll do all I can to keep you up. I thought there was no air about you; but there is, and it’s the air of home, and that's the purest and the best there is, and God bless home once more, and all belonging to it, Dolf!” “ Hurrah! Here’s Mrs. William!” cried Johnny. So she was, and all the children with her; and as she came in, they kissed her, and kissed one another, and kissed the baby, and kissed their father and mother, and then ran back and flocked and danced about her, troop- ing on with her in triumph. Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby were not a bit behind-hand in the warmth of their reception. They were as much at- tracted to her as the children were; they ran towards her, kissed her hands, pressed round her, could not re- ceive her ardently or enthusiastically enough. She came among them like the spirit of all goodness, affection, gentle consideration, love, and domesticity. “What! are you all so glad to see me, too, this bright Christmas morning?” said Milly, clasping her º in a pleasant wonder. “Oh, dear, how delightful this is!” More shouting from the children, more kissing, more trooping round her, more happiness, more love, more joy, more honour, on all sides, than she could bear. “Oh, dear!” said Milly, “what delicious tears you make me shed. How can I ever have deserved this! What have I done to be so loved'’ “Who can help it!” cried Mr. Tetterby. “Who can help it!” cried Mrs. Tetterby. “Who can help it!” echoed the children, in a joyful chorus, And they danced and trooped about her again, 396 THE HAUNTED MAN. and clung to her, and laid their rosy faces against her dress, and kissed and fondled it, and could not fondle it, or her, enough. “I never was so moved,” said Milly, drying her eyes, “ as I have been this morning. I must tell you, as Soon as I can speak. Mr. Redlaw came to me at sun- rise, and with a tenderness in his manner, more as if I had been his darling daughter than myself, implored me to go with him to where William's brother George is lying ill. . We went together, and all the way along he was so kind, and so subdued, and seemed to put such trust and hope in me, that I could not help crying with pleasure. When we got to the house we met a woman at the door (somebody had bruised and hurt her, I am afraid), who caught me by the hand, and blessed me as I passed.” “She was right,” said Mr. Tetterby. Mrs. Tetterby º She was right. All the children cried out she was right. “Ah, but there's more than that,” said Milly. “When We got up-stairs, into the room, the sick man, who had lain for hours in a state from which no effort could rouse him, rose up in his bed, and, bursting into tears, stretched out his arms to me, and said that he had led a misspent life, but that he was truly repentant now, in his sorrow for the past, which was all as plain to him as a great prospect from which a dense black cloud had cleared away, and that he entreated me to ask his poor old father for his pardon and his blessing, and to say a prayer beside his bed. And when I did so, Mr. Redlaw joined in it so fervently, and then so thanked and thanked me, and thanked Heaven, that my heart quite Overflowed, and I could have done nothing but sob and Cry, if the sick man had not begged me to sit down by him—which made me quiet, of course. As I sat there, he held my hand in his until he sunk in a doze; and even then, when I withdrew my hand to leave him to come here (which Mu. Redlaw was very earnest indeed in wishing me to do), his hand felt for mine, so that Some One else was obliged to take my place and make believe to give him my hand back. Oh, dear, oh, dear, said Milly, sobbing. “How thankful and how happy I should feel, and do feel, for all this!” While she was speaking, Redlaw had come in, and, after pausing for a moment to observe the group of which she was the centre, had silently ascended the stairs. Upon those stairs he now appeared again; re- came running down. maining there, while the young student passed him, and “Kind nurse, gentlest, best of creatures,” he said, falling on his knee to her, and catching at her hand, “forgive my cruel ingratitude!” . . . . . . . “Oh, dear, oh, dear!” cried Milly innocently, “here's another of them! Oh, dear, here’s somebody else who likes me. What shalf I ever do!” g The guileless, simple way in which she said it, and in which she put her hands before her eyes and wept for very happiness, was as touching as it was delightful. -- - . - * “I was not myself,” he said. “I don’t know what it was—it was some consequence of my disorder, perhaps —I was mad. But I am so, no longer. Almost as I speak, I am restored. I heard the children crying Out your name, and the shade passed from me at the very sound of it. Oh, don’t weep! Dear Milly, if you could read my heart, and only know with what affection and what grateful homage it is glowing, you would not let me see you weep. It is such deep reproach.” . “No, no,” said Milly, “it’s not that. It’s not indeed. It's joy. It’s wonder that you should think it necessary to ask me to forgive so little, and yet it’s pleasure that you do.” - - “And will you come again? and will you finish the little curtain?” . - . . . “No,” said Milly, drying her eyes, and shaking her head. “You won’t care for my needlework now.” “Is it forgiving me, to say that?” - She beckoned him aside, and whispered in his ear. “There is news from your home, Mr. Edmund.” “News? How?” - “Either your not writing when you were very ill, or the change in your handwriting when you began to be better, created some suspicion of the truth; however, that is—but you’re sure you’ll not be the worse for any news, if it's not bad news?” - “Sure.” “Then there’s some one come!” said Milly. “My mother?” asked the student, glancing round in- Java... v . sos THE HAUNTED MAN. voluntarily towards Redlaw, who had come down from the stairs. “Hush! No,” said Milly. “It can be no one else.” “Indeed?” said Milly, “are you sure?” - “It is not—” Before he could say more, she put her hand upon his mouth. - “Yes, it is!”, said Milly. “The young lady (she is very like the miniature, Mr. Edmund, but she is prettier) was too unhappy to rest without satisfying her doubts, and came up, last night, with a little servant-maid. As you always dated your letters from the college, she came there; and before I saw Mr. Redlaw this morning, I saw her. She likes me, too!” said Milly. “Oh, dear, that's another!” “This morning! Where is she now?” “Why, she is now,” said Milly, advancing her lips to his ear, “in my little parlour in the Lodge, and waiting to see you.” He pressed her hand, and was darting off, but she detained him. º “Mr. Redlaw is much altered, and has told me this morning that his memory is impaired. Be very con- º to him, Mr. Edmund; he needs that from us all.” The young man assured her, by a look, that her cau- tion was not ill-bestowed; and as he passed the Chemist on his way out, bent respectfully and with an obvious interest before him. Redlaw returned the salutation courteously and even humbly, and looked after him as he passed on. He drooped his head upon his hand too, as trying to re- awaken something he had lost. But it was gone. The abiding change that had come upon him since the influence of the music, and the Phantom's reappearance, was, that now he truly felt how much he had lost, and could compassionate his own condition, and contrast it, clearly, with the natural state of those who were around him. In this, an interest in those who were around him was revived, and a meek, submissive sense of his calam- ity was bred, resembling that which sometimes obtains in age, when its mental powers are weakened, without insensibility or sullenness being added to the list of its 2 infirmities. * A. He was conscious that, as he redeemed, through Milly, more and more of the evil he had done, and as he was more and more with her, this change ripened itself within him. Therefore, and because of the attachment she in- spired him with (but without other hope), he felt that he was quite dependent on her, and that she was his staff in his affliction. - • , So, when she asked him whether they should go home now, to where the old man and her husband were, and he readily replied “yes”—being anxious in that regard —he put his arm through hers, and walked beside her; not as if he were the wise and learned man to whom the wonders of nature were an open book, and hers were the uninstructed mind, but as if their two positions were reversed, and he knew nothing, and she all. He saw the children throng about her, and caress her, as he and she went away together thus, Out of the house; he heard the ringing of their laughter, and their merry voices; he saw their bright faces, clustering round him like flowers; he witnessed the renewed contentment and affection of their parents; he breathed the simple air of their poor home, restored to its tranquility; he thought of the unwholesome blight he had shed upon it, and might, but for her, have been diffusing then; and per- haps it is no wonder that he walked submissively beside her, and drew her gentle bosom nearer to his own. When they arrived at the Lodge, the old man was sitting in his chair in the chimneyacorner, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and his son was leaning against the opposite side of the fireplace, looking at him. As she came in at the door, both started and turned round ºrds her, and a radiant change came upon their ia,C&S. • “Oh, dear, dear, dear, they are pleased to see me like the rest!” cried Milly, clapping her hands in an ecstacy, and stopping short. “Here are two more!” - Pleased to see her! Pleasure was no word for it. She ran into her husband’s arms, thrown wide open to receive her, and he would have been glad to have her there, with her head lying on his shoulder, through the short winter’s day. But the old man couldn’t spare her. He had arms for her too, and he locked her in them. “Why, where has my quiet Mouse been all this time?” said the old man. “She has been a long while away. 400 THE HAUNTED MAN. I find that it's impossible for me to return without Mouse. I–where's my son William —fancy I have been dreaming, William.” “That's what I say myself, father,” returned his son. “I have been in an ugly sort of dream, I think. How are you, father? Are you pretty well?” “Strong and brave, my boy,” returned the old man. It was quite a sight to see Mr. William shaking hands with his father, and patting him on his back, and rub- bing him gently down with his hand, as if he could not possibly do enough to show an interest in him. “What a wonderful man you are, father!—How are you, father? Are you really pretty hearty, though?” said William, shaking hands with him again, and pat- ting him again, and rubbing him gently down again. “I never was fresher or stouter in my life, my boy.” “What a wonderful man you are, father! But that's exactly where it is,” said Mr. William, with enthusiasm. “When I thrink of all that my father's gone through, and all the chances and changes, and sorrows and troubles, that have happened to him in the course of his long life, and under which his head has grown grey, and years upon years have gathered on it, I feel as if we couldn’t do enough to honour the old gentleman, and make his old age easy. How are you, father? Are you really pretty well, the ugh ** & Mr. William might never have left off repeating this inquiry and shaking hands with him again, and patting him again, and rubbiſhg him down again, if the old man had not espied the Chemist, whom until now he had not See]]. “I ask your pardon, Mr. Redlaw,” said Philip, “but didn’t know you were here, sir, or should have made less free. It reminds me, Mr. Redlaw, seeing you here on a Christmas morning, of the time when you was a student yourself, and worked so hard that you was backwards and forwards in our library even at Christ- mas time. Ha! haſ I’m old enough to remember that; and I remember it right well, I do, though I am eighty- seven. It was after you left here that my poor wife died. You remember my poor wife, Mr. Redlaw?” The Chemist answered yes. “Yes,” said the old man. “She was a dear creetur. I recollect you come here one Christmas morning with a young lady—I ask your pardon, Mr. Redlaw, but I think it was a sister you was very much attached to?” ... The Chemist looked at him, and shook his head. “I had a sister,” he said, vacantly. He knew no more. - “One Christmas morning,” pursued the old man, “that you come here with her—and it began to snow, and my wife invited the young lady to walk in, and sit by the fire that is always a burning on Christmas day in what used to be, before our ten poor gentlemen com- muted, our great Dinner Hall. I was there; and I recollect, as I was stirring up the blaze for the young lady to warm her pretty feet by, she read the scroll out loud, that is underneath that picter. “Lord keep my memory green!' She and my poor wife fell a talking about it; and it’s a strange thing to think of, now, that they both said (both being so unlike to die) that it was a good prayer, and that it was one they would put up very earnestly, if they were called away young, with reference to those who were dearest to them. “My brother,’ says the young lady—‘My husband,’ says my poor wife. “Lord, keep his memory of me green, and do not let me, be forgotten l’” - - Tears more painful, and more bitter than he had ever shed in all his life, coursed down Redlaw’s face. Philip, fully occupied in recalling his story, had not observed him until now, nor Milly’s anxiety that he should not proceed. . - “Philip!” said Redlaw, laying his hand upon his arm, *: I am a stricken man, on whom the hand of Providence has fallen heavily, although deservedly. You speak to me, my friend, of what I cannot follow; my memory is On e. . - “Merciful Power!” cried the old man. . “I have lost my memory of sorrow, wrong, and trou- ble,” said the Chemist: ‘‘ and with that I have lost all man would remember!” s To see old Philip's pity for him, to see him wheel his own great chair for him to rest in, and look down upon him with a solemn sense of his bereavement, was to know in some degree how precious to old age such recol- lections are. - - - The boy came running in, and ran to Milly. - “Here's the marſ,” he said, “in the other room. I don’t want him.” . . . . . . • . . 27 402 THE HAUNTED MAN. “What man does he mean?” asked Mr. William. “Hush!” said Milly. - - Obedient to a sign from her, he and his old father Softly withdrew. As they went out, unnoticed, Redlaw beckoned to the boy to come to him. . ki I like the woman best,” he answered, holding to her skirts. “You are right,” said Redlaw, with a faint smile, “But you needn’t fear to come to me. I am gentler than I was. Of all the world, to you, poor child!” The boy still held back at first; but yielding little by little to her urging, he consented to approach, and even to sit down at his feet. As Redlaw laid his hand upon the shoulder of the child, looking on him with compas- sion and a fellow-feeling, he put out his other hand to Milly. She stooped down on that side of him, so that she could look into his face; and after'silence, said: “Mr. Redlaw, may I speak to you?” “Yes,” he answered, fixing his eyes upon her. “Your voice and music are the same to me.” - “May I ask you something?” “What you will.” t “Do you remember what I said, when I knocked at your door last night? About one who was your friend once, and who stood on the verge of destruction?” “Yes. I remember,” he said with some hesitation. “Do you understand it?” He smoothed the boy’s hair—looking at her fixedly the while, and shook his head. . “This person,” said Milly, in her clear, soft voice, which her mild eyes, looking at him, made clearer and softer, “I found soon afterwards. I went back to the house, and, with Heaven’s help, traced him. I was not too soon. A very little, and I should have been too late.” He took his hand from the boy, and laying it on the back of that hand of hers, whose timid and yet earnest touch addressed him no less appealingly than her voice and eyes, looked more intently on her. “He is the fatherof Mr. Edmund, the young gentleman we saw just now. His real name is Longford. You recollect the name?” “I recollect the name.” “And the man?” Qe “No, not the man. Did he ever wrong me?” * . . . * THE HAUNTED MAN. 403 & 4 Yes!” * . - - “Ah! Then it’s hopeless—hopeless.” - He shook his head, and softly beat upon the hand he held, as though mutely asking her commiseration. “I did not go to Mr. Edmund last night,” said Milly.— “You will listem to me just the same as if you did re- member all?” ... “To every syllable you say.” “Both, because I did not know, then, that this really was his father, and because I was fearful of the effect of such intelligence upon him, after his illness, if it should be. Since I have known who this person is, I have not gone either; but that is for another reason. He has long been separated from his wife and son—has been a stranger to his home almost from his son's in: fancy, Ilearn from him—and has abandoned and deserted what he should have held most dear. In all that time, he has been falling from the state of a gentleman, more and more, until—” she rose up, hastily, and going out for a moment, returned, accompanied by the wreck that Redlaw had beheld last night. “Do you know me?” asked the Chemist. “I should be glad,” returned the other, “and that is an unwonted word for me to use, if I could answer no.” The Chemist, looked at the man, standing in self-abase- ment and degradation before him, and would have looked longer, in an effectual struggle for enlighten- ment, but that Milly resumed her late position by his ; and attracted his attentive gaze to her Own 8, C62. “See how low he is sunk, how lost he is!” she whispered, stretching out her arm towards him, with- out looking from the Chemist's face. “If you could remember all that is connected with him, do you not think it would move your pity to reflect that one you ever loved (do not let us mind how long ago, or in what belief that he has forfeited), should come to this?” “I hope it would,” he answered. “I believe it would.” His eyes wandered to the figure standing near the door, but came back speedily to her, on whom he gazed intently, as if he strove to learn some lesson from every tone of her voice, and every beam of her eyes. “I have no learning, and you have much,” said Milly; “I am not used to think, and you are always thinking. 404 THE HAUNTED MAN. May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us?” & 6 YeS.” “That we may forgive it.” - • . “Pardon me, great Heaven!” said Redlaw, lifting up his eyes, “for having thrown away thine own high at- tribute!” - “And if,” said Milly, “if your memory should one day be restored, as we will hope and pray it may be, would it not be a blessing to you to recall at once a wrong and its forgiveness?” He looked at the figure by the door, and fastened his attentive eyes on her again; a ray of clearer light ap- peared to him to shine into his mind, from her bright face. “He cannot go to his abandoned home. He does not seek to go there. He knows that he could only carry shame and trouble to those he has so cruelly neglected; and that the best reparation he can make them now, is to avoid them. A very little money carefully bestowed, would remove him to some distant place, where he might live and do no wrong, and make such atonement as is left within his power for the wrong he has done. To the unfortunate lady who is his wife, and to his son, this would be the best and kindest boon that their best friend could give them—one, too, that they need never know of, and to him, shattered in reputation, mind, and body, it might be salvation.” He took her head between his hands, and kissed it, and said: “It shall be done. I trust to you to do it for me, now and secretly; and to tell him that I would for- give him, if I were so happy as to know for what.” As she rose, and turned her beaming face towards the fallen man, implying that her mediation had been suc- cessful, he advanced a step, and, without raising his eyes, addressed himself to Redlaw. “You are so generous,” he said, “–you ever were— that you will try to banish your rising sense of retribu- tion in the spectacle that is before you. I do not try to banish it from myself, Redlaw. If you can, believe me.” The Chemist entreated Milly, by a gesture, to come nearer to him; and, as he listened, looked in her face, as if to find in it the clue to what he heard. “I am too decayed a wretch to make professions; I THE HAUNTED MAN. 405 recollect my own career too well to array any such before you. But from the day on which I made my first step downward, in dealing falsely by you, I have gone down with a certain, steady, doomed progression. That, I Redlaw, keeping her close at his side, turned his face towards the speaker, and there was sorrow in it. Some- thing like mournful recognition too. . . . . . . - + “I might have been another man, my life might have been another life, if I had avoided that first fatal step. I don’t know that it would have been. I claim nothing for the possibility. Your sister is at rest, and better than she could have been with me, if I had continued even what you thought me: even what I once supposed myself to be.” Redlaw made a hasty motion with his hand, as if he would have put that subject on One side. - “I speak,” the other went on, “like a man taken from the grave. I should have made my own grave, last night, had it not been for,this blessed hand.” “Oh, dear, he likes me too!” sobbed Milly, under her breath. “That’s another!” : “I could not have put myself in your way, last night, even for bread. But, to-day, my recollection of what has been between us is so strongly stirred, and is pre- sented to me, I don’t know how, so vividly, that I have dared to come at her suggestion, and to take your bounty, and to thank you for it, and to beg you, Redlaw, in your dying hour, to be as merciful to me in your thoughts, as you are in your deeds.” - - - - He turned towards the door, and stopped a moment on his way forth. - “I hope my son may interest you, for his mother’s Sake. I hope he may deserve to do so. Unless my life should be preserved a long time, and I should know that I have not misused your aid, I shall never look upon laim more.” * . - - Going out, he raised his eyes to Redlaw for the first time. Redlaw, whose steadfast gaze was fixed upon him, dreamily held out his hand. He returned and touched it—little more—with both his own—and bend- ing down his head, went slowly out. - ln the few moments that elapsed, while Milly silently took him to the gate, the Chemist diopped into his chair, 406 THE HAUNTED MAN. and covered his face with his hands. Seeing him thus, when she came back, accompanied by her husband and his father (who were both greatly concerned for him), she avoided disturbing him, or permitting him to be dis- turbed; and kneeled down near the chair, to put some warm clothing on the boy. * -- “That’s exactly where it is. That’s what I always say, father!” exclaimed her admiring husband. “There's a motherly feeling in Mrs. William's breast that must and will have went!” - - - “Ay, ay,” said the old man; “you’re right. My son William's right!” - g “It happens all for the best, Milly, dear, no doubt,” said Mr. William, tenderly, “that we have no children of Our Own; and yet I sometimes wish you had one to love and cherish. Our little dead child that you built such hopes upon, and that never breathed the breath of life—it has made you quiet-like, Milly.” * “I am very happy in the recollection of it, William, dear,” she answered. ... “I think of it every day.” “I was afraid you thought of it a good deal.” “Don’t say afraid; it is a comfort to me; it speaks to me in so many ways. The innocent thing that never lived on earth, is like an angel to me, William.” “You are like an angel to father and me,” said Mr. William, softly. “I know that.” “When I think of all those hopes I built upon it, and the many times I sat and pictured to myself the little smiling face upon my bosom that never lay there, and the sweet eyes turned up to mine that never opened to the light,” said Milly, “I can feel a greater tenderness, I think, for all the disappointed hopes in which there is no harm. When I see a beautiful child in its fond mother's arms, I love it all the better, thinking that my child might have been like that, and might have made my heart as proud and happy.” & Redlaw raised his head and looked towards her. “All through life it seems by me,” she continued, “to tell me something. For poor, neglected children, my little child pleads as if it were alive, and had a voice I knew, with which to speak to me. When I hear of youth in suffering or shame, I think that my child might have come to that, perhaps, and that God took it from me in His mercy. Even in age and grey hair, such as * - THE HAUNTED MAN. 407 father's, it is present: saying that it, too, might have lived to be old, long and long after you and I were gone, and to have needed the respect and love of younger people.” Her quiet voice was quieter than ever, as she took her husband’s arm, and laid her head against it. “Children love me so, that sometimes I half fancy— it’s a silly fancy, William—they have some way I don’t know of, of feeling for my little child, and me, and un- derstanding why their love is precious to me. If I have been quiet since, I have been more happy, William, in a hundred ways. Not least happy, dear, in this—that even when my little child was born and dead but a few days, and I was weak and sorrowful, and could not help grieving a little, the thought arose, that if I tried to lead a good life, I should meet in heaven a bright creature, who would call me Mother!” Tedlaw fell upon his knees, with a loud cry. “Oh, Thou,” he said, “who through the teaching of pure love, has graciously restored me to the memory which was the memory of Christ upon the cross, and of all the good who perished in His cause, receive my thanks, and bless her!” Then he folded her to his heart; and Milly, sobbing more than ever, cried, as she laughed, “He is come back to himself! He likes me very much indeed, too? Oh, dear, dear, dear me, here's another!” Then, the student entered, leading by the hand a lovely girl, who was afraid to come. And Redlaw so changed towards him, seeing in him and in his youthful choice, the softened shadow of that chastening passage in his own life, to which, as to a shady tree, the dove so long imprisoned in his solitary ark might fly for rest and company, fell upon his neck, entreating them to be his children. Then, as Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around us, should be active with us, not less than our own experiences, for all good, he laid his hand upon the boy, and, silently calling Him to witness who laid His hand on children in old time, rebuking in the majesty of His prophetic knowledge those who kept them from Him, vowed to protect him, teach him, and reclaim him. 40s THE HAUNTED MAN. Then, he gave his right hand cheerily to Philip, and said that they would that day hold a Christmas dinner in what used to be, before the ten poor gentlemen com- muted, their great Dinner Hall; and that they would bid to it as many of that Swidger family, who, his son had told him, were so numerous that they might join hands and make a ring round England, as could be brought together on So short a notice. - And it was that day done. There were so many Swidgers there, grown up and children, that an attempt to state them in round numbers might engender doubts, in the distrustful, of the veracity of this history. There- fore the attempt shall not be made. But, there they were, by dozens and scores—and there was good news and good hope there, ready for them, of George, who had been visited again by his father and brother, and by Milly, and again left in a quiet sleep. There, present at the dinner, too, were the Tatterbys, including young Adolphus, who arrived in his prismatic comforter, in good time for the beef. Johnny and the baby were too late, of course, and came in all on one side, the one exhausted, the other in a supposed state of double-tooth; but that was customary, and not alarming. It was sad to see the child who had no name or lineage, watching the other children as they played, not know- ing how to talk with them, or sport with them, and more strange to the ways of childhood than a rough dog. It was sad, though in a different way, to see what an in- stinctive knowledge the youngest children there had of his being different from all the rest, and how they made timid approaches to him with soft words and touches, and with little presents, that he might not be unhappy. IBut he kept by Milly, and began to love her—that was another, as she said!—and, as they all liked her dearly, they were glad of that, and when they saw him peeping at them from behind her chair, they were pleased that he was so close to it. . . - All this, the Chemist, sitting with the student and his bride that was to be, and Philip, and the rest, S3, W. - Some people have said since, that he only thought what has been herein set down; others, that he read it in the fire, one winter night about the twilight time; others, that the Ghost was but the representation of his THE HAUNTED MAN. 409 gloomy thoughts, and Milly the embodiment of his better wisdom. I say nothing. —Except this. That as they were assembled in the old Hall, by no other light than that of a great fire (having dined early), the shadows once more stole out of their hiding-places, and danced about the room, showing the children marvellous shapes and faces on the walls, and gradually changing what was real and familiar there, to what was wild and magical. But that there was one thing in the Hall, to which the eyes of Redlaw, and of Milly and her husband, and of the old man, and of the student, and his bride that was to be, were often turned, which the shadows did not obscure Or change. Deepened in its gravity by the firelight, and gazing from the darkness of the panelled wall like life, the sedate face in the portrait, with the beard and ruff, looked down at them from under its verdant wreath of holly, as they looked up at it; and clear and gº below, as if a voice had uttered them, were the Words, “Toond, beep my $lemony Green,” THE END. § º # º ; § ‘º Sºlitº ºš - ! § n §§ {{###$ # # | ſ | |##|º " |}}} Śląć * \\ º AAE/zzcº- LEAVING THE MORGUE. Uncommercial Traveller. THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. By CHARLES DICKENS. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. NEW YORK : R. WORTHINGTON, PUBLISHER. 1884. CONTENTS. No. PAGE I. HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS . o * © tº wº l II. THE SHIPWRECK . & e e o * © º 2 III. WAPPING WWORKHOUSE e & e gº º te º 6 IV. TWO VIICWS OF A CIHEAP THEATRE . © * wº e 27 V. POOR MERC ANTILE J A C K . © . g * * * . 38 YI. REIFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS & g e * 51 VII. travelling A BRCAD * * º © . . . . . 60 viii. The GREAT TASMANIA’s CARGO & ſº * g & 72 IX. CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES º § * * § . 82 X. SHIY NEIGHBOURHOODS . * . . § * º 93 XI. TRAMPS . & s e & sº © * . . . 103 XII. DULLBoRough Town sº & § & º g º 116 XIII. NIGHT walks . * s © © * ſº e . 127 xiv. Chambers * © . g º e g . , 136 xv. NURSE's STORIES . e * º & * º & 149 XVI, AIRCADIAN I,ONDON . . . * e de & . 160 XVII. THE CAL AIS NIGHT-MAIL . e º * e tº º 170 xviii. some RECoLLECTIONs of MoRTALITY . *. g te ... 179 XIX. BIRTEIDAY CELEBRATIONS g - g * e te g 190 XX. BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT I, AIKE * © te ë . 200 XXI. THE CITY OF THE ABSENT * º * . 213 XXII. AN OLD STAGE-COAO IIING FIOUSE . & wº * º . 221 XXIII. THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAN ID . sº * . © 23ſ) XXIV, CHATHAM DOCKYARD . e • t • • w . 239 iv . CONTENTS. NC. - . - * PAGE XXV. IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH COUNTRY ſº © . . * 249 xxvi. Medicine Mes of CIVILISATION & * g wº . 260 xxvii. TITBULL's ALMs-Houses . tº e g tº e g 269 XXVIII. THE Italias PRISONER . * gº © g e . 281 XXIX. THE SHORT-TIMERS . tº & & & tº . . 291 XXX. A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST . & & º • . 303 XXXI. ABOARD SHIP . . . ſº g ge º e * . 314 XXXII. A. LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR e ge * © . . 325 XXXIII. M.R. BARLOW . tº tº º e & & tº . 332 XXXIV. ON AN AMATEUR BEAT . e g . . º . 338 XXXV. A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE . . e gº dº . 347 XXXVI. THE RUFFIAN . e * {3 tº Q © o . 351 IIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE A CHEAP THEATRE–SATURDAY NIGHT - - * * * 32 A CTY PERSONAGE - - - - - - º- 89 “THIS Is A sweeT SPOT, AIN'T IT 2 A LovELLY SPOT | " - 105 LAUNDRESSES º - - - - º - tº- 138 LEAVING THE MORGUE - - º - - - º 185 TIME AND HIS WIFE – - º - - - tº- 215 - A PHENOMENON AT TITBULL’s - * - - - - 280 PooDLES GOING THE ROUND - - *s - tº- 343 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. CHAPTER I. HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS. A LLOW me to introduce myself—first negatively. No landlord is my friend and brother, no cham- bermaid loves me, no waiter worships me, no boots ad- mires and envies me. No round of beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especiall made for me, no hotel-advertisement is personally ad- dresed to me, no hotel-room tapestried with great-coats and railway wrappers is set apart for me, no house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its brandy or sherry. When I go upon my journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill; when I come home from my journeys, Inever get any commission. I know nothing about prices, and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man into ordering something he doesn’t want. As a town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes are baking in layers. As a country traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on the plat- form of a branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of . a light Stonehenge of samples. WOL. I. 1 2 . THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. And yet—proceeding now, to introduce myself posi- fively-I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way. Literally speaking, I am always Wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent- garden, London—now about the city streets: now, about the country by-roads—seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest others. - These are my brief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller, CHAPTER II. T H E S H I P W R. E. C. K. EVER had I seen a year going out, or going on, under quieter circumstances. Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine had but another day to live, and truly its end was Peace on that sea-shore that morning. So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the bright light of the sun and under the transparent shadows of the clouds, that it was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, for years past or to come, than it was that very day. The Tug-steamer lying a little off the shore, the Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boat alongside the Lighter, the regularly-turning wind- lass aboard the Lighter, the methodical figures at work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and down with the breathing of the sea, all seemed as much a part of the nature of the place as the tide itself. The tide was on the flow, and had been for some two hours and a-half; there was a slight obstruction in the sea within a few yards of my feet: as if the stump of a tree, with earth enough about it to keep it from lying horizontally on the water, had slipped a little from the land—and as I stood upon the beach and observed it dimpling the light swell that was coming in, I cast a stone over it. So orderly, so quiet, so regular—the rising and falling of the Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat—the turn- THE SHIPWRECK, 3 ing of the windlass—the coming in of the tide—that I myself seemed, to my own thinking, anything but new to the spot. Yet, I had never seen it in my life, a minute before, and had traversed two hundred miles to get at it. That very morning I had come bowling down, and struggling up, hill-country roads; looking back at Snowy summits; meeting courteous peasants well to do, driving fat pigs and cattle to market: not- ing the neat and thrifty dwellings, with their unusual Quantity of clean white linen, drying on the bushes; having windy weather suggested by every cotter's little rick, with its thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged into overlapping compartments like the back of a rhin- oceros. Had I not given a lift of fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just now parted com- pany? So it was; but the journey seemed to glide down into the placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the moment nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight as the gentle rising and falling of the water with its freight, the regular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruction so very near my feet. - O reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at Home, and hearing the night wind rumble in the chimney, that slight obstruction was the uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the Royal Charter, Australian trader and passenger ship, Homeward bound, that struck here on the terrible morning of the twenty-sixth of this October, broke into three parts, went down with her treasure of at least five hundred human lives, and has never stirred since! From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, stern foremost; on which side, or on which, she passed the little Island in the bay, for ages henceforth to be aground certain yards outside her; these are rendered bootless questions by the darkness of that night and the darkness of death. Here she went down. Even as I stood on the beach with the words “Here she went down!” in my ears, a diver in his grotesque dress, dipped heavily over the side of the boat along- side the Lighter, and dropped to the bottom. On the shore by the water’s edge, was a rough tent, made of fragments of wreck, where other divers and workmen 4 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. sheltered themselves, and where they had kept Christ- mas-day with rum and roast beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney. Cast up among the stones and boulders of the beach, were great spars of the lost ves- sel, and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the sea into the strangest forms. The timber was already bleached and iron rusted, and even these objects did no violence to the prevailing air the whole scene wore, of having been exactly the same for years and years. Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, living on the nearest hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown out of bed at about daybreak by the wind that had begun to strip his roof off, and getting upon a ladder with his nearest neighbour to construct some temporary device for keeping his house over his head, saw from the ladder's elevation as he looked down by chance towards the shore, some dark troubled object close in with the land. And he and the other, descending to the beach, and finding the sea mercilessly beating over a great broken ship, had clambered up the stony ways, like staircases without stairs, on which the wild village hangs in little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs, and had given the alarm. And so, over the hill-slopes, and past the waterfall, and down the gullies where the land drains off into the ocean, the scattered quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting that part of Wales had come running to the dismal sight—their clergyman among them. And as they stood in the leaden morning stricken with pity, leaning hard against the wind, their breath and vision often failing as the sleet and spray rushed at them from the eyer forming and dissolving mountains of sea, and as the wool which was a part of the vessel’s cargo blew in with the salt foam and re- mained upon the land when the foam melted, they saw the ship's life-boat put off from one of the heaps of wreck; and first, there were three men in her, and in a moment she capsized, and there were but two; and again, she was struck by a vast mass of water, and there was but one; and again, she was thrown bottom upward, and that one, with his arm struck through the broken planks and waving as if for the help that could never reach him, went down into the deep. It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, while I stood on the shore, looking in his kind whole- THE SHIPWRECK, 5 some face as it turned to the spot where the boat had been. The divers were down then, and busy. They were “lifting ” to-day the gold found yesterday—some five-and-twenty thousand pounds. Of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds’ worth of gold, three hundred thousand pounds’ worth, in round numbers, was at that time recovered. The great bulk of the remainder was surely and steadily coming up. Some loss of sovereigns there would be, of course; indeed, at first sovereigns had drifted in with the sand, and had been scattered far and wide over the beach, like sea- shells; but most other golden treasure would be found. As it was brought up, it went aboard the Tug-steamer, where good account was taken of it. So tremendous had the force of the sea been when it broke the ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of gold, deep into a strong and heavy piece of her solid iron-work: in which, also, several loose sovereigns that the ingot had swept in before it, had been found, as firmly embedded as though the iron had been liquid when they were forced there. It had been remarked of such bodies come ashore, too, as had been seen by scientific men, that they had been stunned to death, and not suffocated. Ob- servation, both of the internal change that had been wrought in them, and of their external expression, showed death to have been thus merciful and easy. The report was brought, while I was holding such discourse on the beach, that no more bodies had come ashore since last night. It began to be very doubtful whether many more would be thrown up, until the north-east winds of the early spring set in. Moreover, a great number of the passengers, and particularly the second-class women-passengers, were known to have been in the middle of the ship when she parted, and thus the collapsing wreck would have fallen upon them after yawning open, and would keep them down. A diver made known, even then, that he had come upon the body of a man, and had sought to release it from a great superincumbent weight ; but that, finding he could not do so without mutilating the remains, he had left it where it was. It was the kind and wholesome face I have made mention as being then beside me, that I had purposed to myself to see, when I left home for Wales. had 6 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. heard of that clergyman, as having buried many scores of the shipwrecked people; of his having opened his house and heart to their agonised friends; of his havin used a most sweet and patient diligence for weeks an weeks, in the performance of the forlornest offices that Man can render to his kind; of his having most ten- derly and thoroughly devoted himself to the dead, and to those who were sorrowing for the dead. I had said to myself, “In the Christmas season of the year, I should like to see that man!” And he swung the gate of his little garden in coming out to meet me, not half an hour ago. So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true practical Christianity ever is! I read more of the New Testament in the fresh frank face going up the village beside me, in five minutes, than I have read in anathematising discourses (albeit put to press with enormous flourishing of trumpets), in all my life. I heard more of the Sacred Book in the cordial voice that had nothing to say about its owner, than in all the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that have ever blown conceit at me. We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, among the loose stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse grass, the outlying water, and other obstructions from which frost and snow had lately thawed. It was a mistake (my friend was glad to tell me, on the way) to suppose that the peasantry had shown any super- stitious avoidance of the drowned; on the whole, they had done very well, and had assisted readily. Ten shil- lings had been paid for the bringing of each body up to the church, but the way was steep, and a horse and cart (in which it was wrapped in a sheet) were neces- sary, and three or four men, and, all things considered, it was not a great price. The people were none the richer for the wreck, for it was the season of the her- ring-shoal—and who could cast nets for fish, and find dead men and women in the draught? - He had the church keys in his hand, and opened the churchyard gate, and opened the church door; and we went in. - - It is a little church of great antiquity; there is reason to believe that some church has occupied the spot, these thousand years or more. The pulpit was gone, and THE SHIPWRECK. . y other things usually belonging to the church were gone, owing to its living congregation having deserted it for the neighbouring school-room, and yielded it up to the dead. The very Commandments had been shouldered out of their places, in the bringing in of the dead; the black wooden tables on which they were painted, were askew, and on the stone pavement below them, and on the stone pavement all over the church, were the marks and stains where the drowned had been laid down. The eye, with little or no aid from the imagination, could yet see how the bodies had been turned, and where the head had been and where the feet. Some faded traces of the wreck of the Australian ship may be discernible on the stone pavement of this little church, hundreds of years hence, when the digging for gold in Australia shall have long and long ceased out of the land. Forty-four ship-wrecked men and women lay here at one time, awaiting burial. Here, with weeping and wailing in every room of his house, my companion worked alone for hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes that could not see him, and by lips that could not speak to him, patiently examining the tattered clothing, cutting off buttons, hair, marks from linen, anything that might lead to subsequent identi- fication, studying faces, looking for a scar, a bent finger, a crooked toe, comparing letters sent to him with the ruin about him. “My dearest brother had bright grey eyes and a pleasant Smile,” one sister wrote. O poor sister! well for you to be far from here, and keep that as your last remembrance of him! The ladies of the clergyman’s family, his wife and two sisters-in-law, came in among the bodies often. It grew to be the business of their lives to do so. Any new arrival of a bereaved woman would stimulate their pity to compare the description brought with the dead realities. Sometimes, they would go back able to say, “I have found him,” or “I think she lies there.” Per- haps, the mourner, unable to bear the sight of all that lay in the church, would be led in blindfold. Conducted to the spot with many compassionate words, and en- couraged to look, she would say, with a piercing cry, “This is my boy!” and drop insensible on the insen- sible figure, S THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. He soon observed that in some cases of women, the identification of persons, though complete, was quite at variance with the marks upon the linen; this led him to notice that even the marks upon the linen were some- times inconsistent with one another; and thus he came to understand that they had dressed in great haste and agitation, and that their clothes had become mixed to- gether. The identification of men by their dress, was rendered extremely difficult, in consequence of a large proportion of them being dressed alike—in clothes of One kind, that is to say, supplied by slopsellers and out- fitters, and not made by single garments but by hun- dreds. Many of the men were bringing over parrots, and had receipts upon them for the price of the birds; others had bills of exchange in their pockets, or in belts. Some of these documents, carefully unwrinkled and dried, were little less fresh in appearance that day, than the present page will be under ordinary circumstances, after having been opened three or four times. In that lonely place, it had not been easy to obtain even such common commodities in towns, as ordinary disinfectants. Pitch had been burnt in the church, as the readiest thing at hand, and the frying-pan in which it had bubbled over a brazier of coals was still there, with its ashes. Hard by the Communion-Table, were some boots that had been taken off the drowned and preserved—a gold-digger's boot, cut down the leg for its removal—a trodden-down man’s ankle-boot with a buff cloth top—and others—soaked and sandy, weedy and salt. From the church, we passed out into the churchyard. Here, there lay, at that time, one hundred and forty- five bodies, that had come ashore from the wreck. He had buried them, when not identified, in graves con- taining four each. He had numbered each body in a register describing it, and had placed a corresponding number on each coffin, and over each grave. Identified bodies he had buried singly, in private graves, in an- other part of the churchyard. Several bodies had been exhumed from the graves of four, as relatives had come from a distance and seen his register; and, when recog- nised, these have been reburied in private graves, so that the mourners might erect separate headstones over the remains. In all such cases he had performed the THE SHIPWRECK. 9 funeral service a second time, and the ladies of his house had attended. There had been no offence in the poor ashes when they were brought again to the light of day; the beneficent Earth' had already absorbed it. The drowned were buried in their clothes. To supply the great sudden demand for coffins, he had got all the neighbouring people handy at tools, to work the livelong day, and Sunday likewise. The coffins were neatly formed; I had seen two, waiting for occu- pants, under the lee of the ruined walls of a stone hut on the beach, within call of the tent where the Christ- mas Feast was held. Similarly, one of the graves for four was lying open and ready, here, in the church- yard. So much of the scanty space was already devoted to the wrecked people, that the villagers had begun to express uneasy doubts whether they themselves could lie in their own ground, with their forefathers and descendants, by-and-by. The churchyard being but a step from the clergyman’s dwelling-house, we crossed to the latter; the white surplice was hanging up near the door ready to be put on at any time, for a funeral service. The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian min- ister was as consolatory, as the circumstances out of which it shone were sad. I never have seen anything more delightfully genuine than the calm dismissal by himself and his household of all they had undergone, as a simple duty that was quietly done and ended. In speaking of it, they spoke of it with great compassion for the bereaved; but laid no stress upon their own hard share in those weary weeks, except as it had attached many people to them as friends, and elicited many touching expressions of gratitude. This clergyman’s brother—himself the clergyman of two adjoining par- ishes, who had buried thirty-four of the bodies in his own churchyard, and who had done to them all that his brother had done as to the larger number—must be under- stood as included in the family. He was there, with his heatly arranged papers, and made no more account of his trouble than anybody else did. Down to yesterday's post outward, my clergyman alone had written one thousand and seventy five letters to relatives and friends of the lost people. In the absence of self-assertion, it was only through my now and then delicately putting 10 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. a question as the occasion arose, that I became informed of these things. It was only when I had remarked again and again, in the church, on the awful nature of the scene of death he had been required so closely to familiarise himself with for the soothing of the living, that he had casually said, without the least abatement of his cheerfulness, “indeed, it had rendered him unable for a time to eat or drink more than a little coffee now and then, and a piece of bread.” In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity, in this Serene avoidance of the least attempt to “im- prove” an occasion which might be supposed to have sunk of its Own weight into my heart, I seemed to have happily come, in a few steps, from the churchyard with its open grave, which was the type of Death, to the Christian dwelling side by side with it, which was the type of Resurrection. I never shall think of the former without the latter. The two will always rest side by side in my memory. If I had lost any one dear to me in this unfortunate ship, if I had made a voyage from Australia to look at the grave in the churchyard, I should go away, thankful to GOD that that house was so close to it, and that its shadow by day, and its domestic lights by night fell upon the earth in which its Master had so tenderly laid my dear one’s head. \ The references that naturally rose out of our conver- sation, to the descriptions sent down of shipwrecked persons, and to the gratitude of relations and friends, made me very anxious to see some of those letters. I was presently seated before a shipwreck of papers, all bordered with black, and from them I made the follow- ing few extracts. A mother writes : REVEREND SIR. Amongst the many who perished on your shore was numbered my beloved son. I was only just recovering from a severe illness, and this fearful affliction has caused a relapse, so that I am unable at present to go to identify the remains of the lowed and lost. My darling son would have been sixteen on Christmas-day next. He was a most amiable and obedient child, early taught the way of salvation. We fondly hoped that as a British seaman he might be an ornament to his profession, but, “it is well; ” I feel assured my dear boy is now with the redeemed. Oh, he did not wish to go this last voyage | On the fifteenth of October I received a letter from him from Melbourne, date { # THE SHIPWRECK. 11 August twelfth; he wrote in high spirits, and in conclusion he says: “Pray for a fair breeze, mamma, and I'll not forget to whistle for it! and, God permitting, I shall see you and all my little pets again. Good-bye, dear mother—good-bye, dearest parents. Good-bye, dear brother.” Qh, it was indeed an eternal farewell. I do not apologise for thus writing you, for oh, my heart is so very sorrowful. A. husband writes: My DEAR KIND SIR. Will you kindly inform me whether there are any initials upon the ring and guard you have in possession, found, as the Standard says, last Tuesday? Believe me, my dear sir, when I say that I cannot express my deep gratitude in words sufficiently for your kind- ness to me on that fearful and appalling day. Will you tell me what I can do for you, and will you write me a consoling letter to prevent my mind from going astray 7 - A widow writes: Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I thought it best that my dear husband should be buried where he lies, and much as I should have liked to have had it otherwise, I must submit. I feel from all I have heard of you, that you will see it done decently and in order. Little does it signify to us, when the soul has departed, where this poor body lies, but we who are left behind would do all we can to show how we loved them. This is denied me, but it is God's hand that afflicts us, and I try to submit. Some day I may be able to visit the spot, and see where he lies, and erect a simple stone to his memory. Oh! it will be long, long before I forget that dreadful night! Is there such a thing in the vicinity, or any shop in Bangor, to which I could send for a small picture of Moelfra or Llanallgo church, a spot now sacred to me? Another widow writes: I have received your letter this morning, and do thank you most kindly for the interest you have taken about my dear husband, as well for the sentiments yours contains, evincing the spirit of a Christian who can sympathise with those who, like myself, are broken down with grief. May God bless and sustain you, and all in connection with you, in this great trial. Time may roll on and bear all its sons away, but your name as a disinterested person will stand in history, and, as successive years pass, many a widow will think of your noble conduct, and the tears of gratitude flow down many a cheek, the tribute of a thankful heart, when other things are forgotten forever. A father writes: I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently express my gratitude to you for your kindness to my son Richard upon the melancholy occasion of 12 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. his visit to his dear brother's body, and also for your ready attention in pronouncing our beautiful burial service over my poor unfortunate son's remains. God grant that your prayers over him may reach the Mercy Seat, and that his soul may be received (through Christ's intercession) into heaven. - * His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heartfelt thanks. Those who were received at the clergyman’s house, write thus, after leaving it: DEAR AND NEVER-To-BE-FORGOTTEN FRIENDs. I arrived here yesterday morning without accident, and am about to proceed to my home by railway. - I am overpowered when I think of you and your hospitable home. No words could speak language suited to my heart. I refrain. God reward you with the same measure you have meted with ! I enumerate no names, but embrace you all. My BELOVED FRIENDs. This is the first day that I have been able to leave my bedroom since I returned, which will explain the reason of my not writing sooner. - If I-could only have had my last melancholy hope realised in recover- ing the body of my beloved and lamented son, I should have returned home somewhat comforted, and I think I could then have been com- paratively resigned. - I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as one without hope. i. only consolation to my distressed mind is in having been so feel- ingly allowed by you to leave the matter in your hands, by whom I well know that everything will be done that can be, according to arrangements made before I left the scene of the awful catastrophe, both as to the identification of my dear son, and also his interment. I feel most anxious to hear whether anything fresh has transpired since I left you; will you add another to the many deep obligations I am under to you by writing to me? And should the body of my dear and unfortunate son be identified, let me hear from you immediately, and I will come again. Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to you all for your benevolent aid, your kindness, and your sympathy. MY DEARLY BELovED FRIENDS. I arrived in safety at my house yester- day, and a night's rest has restored and tranquillised me. I must again repeat, that language has no words by which I can express my sense of obligation to you. You are enshrined in my heart of hearts. I have seen him ' and can now realise my misfortune more than I have hitherto been able to do. Oh, the bitterness of the cup I drink! But I bow submissive. God must have done right. I do not want to feel less, but to acquiesce more simply. THE SHIPWRECK. . 13 There were some Jewish passengers on board the Royal Charter, and the gratitude of the Jewish people is feelingly expressed in the following letter bearing date from “the Office of the Chief Rabbi: ” REVEREND SIR. I cannot refrain from expressing to you my heartfelt thanks on behalf of those of my flock whose relatives have unfortunately been among those who perished at the late wreck of the Royal Charter. You have, indeed, like Boaz, “not left off your kindness to the living and the dead.” - - * *. You have not alone acted kindly towards the living by receiving them hospitably at your house, and energetically assisting them in their mourn- ful duty, but also towards the dead, by exerting yourself to have our co-religionists buried in our ground, and according to our rites. May our heavenly Father reward you for your acts of humanity and true philanthropyl The “Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool” thus express themselves through their secretary: REVEREND SIR. The wardens of this congregation have learned with great pleasure that, in addition to those indefatigable exertions, at the scene of the late disaster to the Royal Charter, which have received universal recognition, you have very benevolently employed your valuable efforts to assist such members of our faith as have sought the bodies of lost friends to give them burial in our consecrated grounds, with the observances and rites prescribed by the ordinances of our religion. The wardens desire me to take the earliest available opportunity to offer to you, on behalf of our community, the expression of their warm acknowledgments and grateful thanks, and their sincere wishes for your continued welfare and prosperity. * A Jewish gentleman writes: REVEREND AND DEAR SIR. I take the opportunity of thanking you right earnestly for the promptness you displayed in answering my note with full particulars concerning my much lamented brother, and I also herein beg to express my sincere regard for the willingness you displayed and for the facility you afforded for getting the remains of my poor brother exhumed. It has been to us a most sorrowful and painful event, but when we meet with such friends as yourself, it in a measure, somehow or other, abates that mental anguish, and makes the suffering so much easier to be borne. Considering the circumstances commected with my poor brother's fate, it does, indeed, appear a hard one. He had been away in all seven years; he returned four years ago to see his family. He was then engaged to a very amiable young lady. He had been very successful abroad, and was now returning to fulfill his sacred vow; he brought all his property with him in gold uninsured. We heard from 14 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. him when the ship stopped at Queenstown, when he was in the highest of hope, and in a few short hours afterwards all was washed away. Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for quotation here, were the numerous references to those miniatures of women worn round the necks of rough men (and found there after death), those locks of hair, those scraps of letters, those many many slight me- morials of hidden tenderness. One man cast up by the sea bore about him, printed on a perforated lace card, the following singular (and unavailing) charm: A BLESSING. May the blessing of God await thee. May the sun of glory shine around thy bed; and may the gates of plenty, honour, and happiness be ever open to thee. May no sorrow distress thy days; may no grief dis- turb thy nights. May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and the pleasures of imagination attend thy dreams; and when length of years makes thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of death gently closes around thy last sleep of human existence, may the Angel of God attend thy bed, and take care that the expiring lamp of life shall not receive one rude blast to hasten on its extinction. A sailor had these devices on his right arm. “Our Saviour on the Cross, the forehead of the Crucifix and the vesture stained red; on the lower part of the arm, a man and woman; on One side of the Cross, the appear- ance of a half moon, with a face; on the other side, the sun; on the top of the Cross, the letters I.H.S.; on the left arm, a man and woman dancing, with an effort to delineate the female’s dress, under which, initials.” Another seaman “had, on the lower part of the right arm, the device of a sailor and a female; the man hold- ing the Union Jack with a streamer, the folds of which waved over her head, and the end of it was held in her hand. On the upper part of the arm, a device of Our Lord on the Cross, with stars surrounding the head of the Cross, and one large star on the side in Indian ink. On the left arm a flag, a true lover's knot, a face, and initials.” This tattooing was found still plain, below the discoloured Outer surface of a mutilated arm, when such surface was carefully scraped away with a knife. It is not improbable that the perpetuation of this mark- ing custom among seamen, may be referred back to THE SHIPWRECK: 15 their desire to be identified, if drowned and flung ashore. It was some time before I could sever myself from the many interesting papers on the table, and then I broke bread and drank wine with the kind family before I left them. As I brought the Coast-guard down, so I took the Postman back with his leathern wallet, walking- Stick, bugle, and terrier dog. Many a heart-broken let- ter had he brought to the Rectory House within two months; many a bénignantly painstaking answer had he carried back. As I rode along, I thought of the many people, inhab- itants of this mother country, who would make pilgrim- ages to the little churchyard in the years to come; I thought of the many people in Australia, who would have an interest in such a shipwreck, and would find their way here when they visit the Old World; I thought of the writers of all the wreck of letters I had left upon the table; and I resolved to place this little record where it stands. Convocations, Conferences, Diocesan Epistles, and the like, will do a great deal for Religion, I dare say, and Heaven send they may! but I doubt if they will ever do their Master's service half so well, in all the time they last, as the Heavens have seen it done in this bleak spot upon the rugged coast of Wales. Had I lost the friend of my life, in the wreck of the Royal Charter; had I lost my bethrothed, the more than friend of my life; had I lost my maiden daughter, had I lost my hopeful boy, had Ilost my little child; I would kiss the hands that worked so busily and gently in the church, and say, “None better could have touched the form, though it had lain at home.” I could be sure of it, I could be thankful for it: I could be content to leave the grave near the house the good family pass in and out of every day, undisturbed, in the little churchyard where so many are so strangely brought together. Without the name of the clergyman to whom—I hope, not without carrying comfort to some heart at some time—I have referred, my reference would be as noth- ing. He is the Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes, of Llanallgo, near Moelfra, Anglesey. His brother is the Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes, of Penrhos, Alligwy. 16 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. CHAPTER III. WAPPING WORKHOUSE. M M Y day’s no-business beckoning me to the East end of London, I had turned my face to that point of the metropolitan compass on leaving Covent-garden, and had got past the India House, thinking in my idle manner of Tippoo-Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my little wooden midshipman, after affection- ately patting him on one leg of his knee-shorts for old acquaintance' sake, and had got past Aldgate Pump, and had got past the Saracen's Head (with an ignomin- ious rash of posting bills disfiguring his swarthy coun- tenance), and had strolled up the empty yard of his ancient neighbour the Black or Blue Boar, or Bull, who departed this life I don’t know when, and whose coaches are all gone I don’t know where; and I had come out *ś into the age of railways, and I had got past hitechapel Church, and was—rather inappropriately for an Uncommercial Traveller—in the Commercial Road. Pleasantly wallowing in the abundant mud of that thoroughfare, and greatly enjoying the huge piles of building belonging to the sugar refiners, the little masts and vanes in small back gardens in back streets, the neighbouring canals and docks, the India, vans lum- bering along their stone tramway, and the pawnbro- kers’ shops where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sextants and quadrants, that I should have bought a few cheap if I had the least notion how to use them, I at last began to file off to the right, towards Wapping. Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, or that I was going to look at the locality, be- cause I believe (for I don’t) in the constancy of the oung woman who told her sea-going lover, to such a jr. old tune, that she had ever continued the same, since she gave him the 'baccer-box marked with his WAPPING WORKHOUSE. jº name; I am afraid he usually got the worst of those transactions, and was frightfully taken in. No, I was going to Wapping, because an Eastern police magis- trate had said, through the morning papers, that there was no classification at the Wapping workhouse for women, and that it was a disgrace and a shame, and divers other hard names, and because I wished to see how the fact really stood. For, that Eastern police magistrates are not always the wisest men of the East, may be inferred from their course of procedure respect- ing the fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at St. George’s in that quarter: which is usually, to discuss the matter at issue, in a state of mind betokening the weakest perplexity, with all parties concerned and un- concerned, and for a final expedient, to consult the complainant as to what he thinks ought to be done with the defendant, and take the defendant’s opinion as to what he would recommend to be done with himself. -- * Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as having lost my way, and, abandoning myself to the narrow Streets in a Turkish frame of mind, relied on predestination to bring me somehow or other to the place I wanted if I were ever to get there. When I had ceased for an hour or so to take any trouble about the matter, I found myself on a swing bridge looking down at Some dark locks in some dirty water. Over against me, stood a creature remotely in the likeness of a young man, with a puffed sallow face, and a figure all dirty and Shiny and slimy, who may have been the youngest Son of his filthy old father, Thames, or the drowned man about whom there was a placard on the granite post like a large thimble, that stood between us. I asked this apparition what it called the place? Unto which, it replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like gurgling water in its throat: “Mr. Baker's trap.” As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on Such occasions to be equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, I deeply considered the meaning of this speech, while I eyed the apparition—then engaged in hugging and sucking a horizontal iron bar at the top of the locks. Inspiration suggested to me that Mr. Baker was the acting coroner of that neighbourhood. WOL. I. 2 18 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. “A common place for suicide,” said I, looking down at the locks. “Sue?” returned the ghost, with a stare. “Yes! And Poll. Likewike Emily. And Nancy. And Jane;” he sucked the iron between each name; “and all the bile- ing. Ketches off their bonnets or shorls, takes a run, and headers down here, they doos. Always a headerin’ down here, they is. Like one o'clock.” “And at about that hour of the morning, I suppose?” “Ah!” said the apparition. . . They an’t partickler. Two 'ull do for them. Three. All times o' night. On’y mind you!” Here the apparition rested his profile on the bar, and gurgled in a sarcastic manner. “There must be somebody comin’. They don’t go a headerin’ down here, wen there ain’t no Bobby nor general Cove, fur to hear the splash.” ºf g According to my interpretation of these words, I was myself a General Cove, or member of the miscellaneous public. In which modest character I remarked: - “They are often taken out, are they, and restored?” “I dunno about restored,” said the apparition, who, for some occult reason, very much objected to that word; “they’re carried into the werkiss and put into a ’ot bath, and brought round. But I dunno about restored,” said the apparition; “blow that l”— and vanished. As it had shown a desire to become Offensive, I was not sorry to find myself alone, especially as the “werkiss” it had indicated with a twist of its matted head, was close at hand. So I left Mr. Baker’s terrible trap (baited with a scum that was like the soapy rins- ing of sooty chimneys), and made bold to ring at the workhouse gate, where I was wholly unexpected and Quite unknown. A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch of keys in her hand, responded to my request to see the House. I began to doubt whether the police magistrate was quite right in his facts, when I noticed her quick active little figure and her intelligent eyes. The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the worst first. He was welcome to see everything. Such as it was, there it all was. - This was the only preparation for our entering “the Foul wards.” They were in an old building squeezed WAPPING WORKHOUSE. 19 away in a corner of a paved yard, quite detached from the more modern and spacious main body of the work- house. They were in a building most monstrously be- hind the time—a mere series of garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient and objectionable circumstance in their construction, and only accessible by steep and narrow staircases, infamously ill-adapted for the pas- sage up-stairs of the sick or down-stairs of the ... A-bed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there (for a change, as I understood it) on the floor, were women in every stage of distress and disease. None but those who have attentively observed such scenes, can conceive the extraordinary variety of ex- pression still latent under the general monotony and uniformity of colour, attitude, and condition. The form a little coiled up and turned away, as though it had turned its back on this world for ever; the unin- terested face at once lead-coloured and yellow, looking passfwely upward from the pillow; the haggard mouth a little dropped, the hand outside the coverlet, so dull and indifferent, so light, and yet so heavy; these were on every pallet; but when I stopped beside a bed, and said ever so slight a word to the figure lying there, the ghost of the old character came into the face, and made the Foul ward as various as the fair world. No One appeared to care to live, but no one complained; all who could speak, said that as much was done for them as could be done there, that the attendance was kind and patient, that their suffering was very heavy, but they had nothing to ask for. The wretched rooms were as clean and sweet as it is possible for such rooms to be; they would become a pest-house in a single week, if they were ill-kept. I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous staircase, into a better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic and imbecile. There was at least Light in it, whereas the windows in the former wards had been like sides of schoolboys' bird-cages. There was a strong grating over the fire here, and holding a kind of state on either side of the hearth, separated by the breadth of this grating, were two old ladies in a con- dition of feeble dignity, which was surely the very last and lowest reduction of self-complacency, to be found in this wonderful humanity of ours. They were 20 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. evidently jealous of each other, and passed their whole time (as some people do, whose fires are not grated) in mentally disparaging each other, and contemptuously watching their neighbours. One of these parodies on provincial gentlewomen was extremely talkative, and expressed a strong desire to attend the service on Sun- days, from which she represented herself to have de- rived the greatest interest and consolation when allowed that privilege. She gossiped so well, and looked alto- gether so cheery and harmless, that I began to think this a case for the Eastern magistrate, until I found that on the last occasion of her attending chapel she had Secreted a small stick, and had caused some con- fusion in the responses by suddenly producing it and belabouring the congregation. So these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the grating—otherwise they would fly at one another's caps—Sat all day long, suspecting One another, and con- templating a world of fits. For, everybody else in the room had fits except the wards-woman; an elderly, able-bodied pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air of repressing and saving her strength, as she stood with her hands folded before her, and her eyes slowly rolling, bidding her time for catching or holding some- body. This civil personage (in whom I regretted to identify a reduced member of my honourable friend Mrs. Gamp's family) said, “They has 'em continiwal, sir. They drops without no more notice than if they was coach-horses dropped from the moon, sir. And when One drops, another drops, and sometimes there’ll be as many as four or five on ’em at once, dear me, a rolling and a tearin', bless you!—this young woman, now, has 'em dreadful bad.” She turned up this young woman’s face with her hand as she said it. This young woman was seated on the floor, pondering in the foreground of the afflicted. There was nothing repellent either in her face or head. Many, apparently worse, varieties of epilepsy and hysteria were about her, but she was said to be the worst here. When I had spoken to her a little, she still sat with her face turned up, pondering, and a gleam of the mid-day sun shone in upon her. —Whether this young woman, and the rest of these so Sorely troubled, as they sit or lie pondering in their WAPPING WORKHOUSE. 21 confused dull way, ever get mental glimpses among the motes in the sunlight, of healthy people and healthy things? Whether this young woman, brooding like this in the summer season, ever thinks that somewhere there are trees and flowers, even mountains and the great sea? Whether, not to go so far, this young woman ever has any dim revelation of that young woman—that young woman who is not here and never will come here; who is courted, and caressed, and loved, and has a hus- band, and bears children, and lives in a home, and who never knows what it is to have this lashing and tearing coming upon her? And whether this young woman, God help her, gives herself up then and drops like a coach-horse from the moon? I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children, penetrating into so hopeless a place, made a Sound that was pleasant or painful to me. It was something to be reminded that the weary world was not all aweary, and was ever renewing itself; but, this young woman was a child not long ago, and a child not long hence might be such as she. Howbeit, the active step and eye of the vigilant matron conducted me past the two provincial gentlewomen (whose dignity was ruffled by the chil- dren), and into the adjacent nursery. There were many babies here, and more than one handsome young mother. There were ugly young moth- ers also, and sullen young mothers, and callous young mothers. But, the babies had not appropriated to them- selves any bad expression yet, and might have been, for anything that appeared to the contrary in their soft faces, Princes Imperial, and Princesses Royal. I had the pleasure of giving a poetical commission to the baker’s man to make a cake with all despatch and toss it into the oven for one red-headed young pauper and myself, and felt much the better for it. Without that refreshment, I doubt if I should have been in a condition for “the Refractories,” towards whom my quick little matron—for whose adaptation to her office I had by this time conceived a genuine respect—drew me next, and marshalled me the way that I was going. The Refractories were picking oakum, in a small room giving on a yard. They sat in line on a form, with their backs to a window; before them, a table, and their work. The oldest Refractory was, say twenty; 22 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. youngest Refractory, say sixteen. I have never yet ascertained in the course of my uncommercial travels, why a Refractory habit should affect the tonsils and uvula; but, I have always observed that Refractories of both sexes and every grade, between a Ragged School and the Old Bailey, have one voice, in which the tonsils and uvula gain a diseased ascendency. “Five pound indeed! I hain’t a going fur to pick five pound,” said the Chief of the Refractories, keeping time to herself with her head and chin. “ More than enough to pick what we picks now, in sich a place as this, and on wot we gets here!” (This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intima- tion that the amount of work was likely to be increased. It certainly was not heavy then, for one Refractory had already done her day’s task—it was barely two o'clock— and was sitting behind it, with a head exactly match- ing it.) “A pretty Ouse this is, matron, ain’t it?” said Refrac- tory. Two, “where a pleeseman’s called in, if a gal says a word!” “And wen you’re sent to prison for nothink or less!” said the Chief, tugging at her oakum as if it were the matron’s hair, “But any place is better than this; that's one thing, and be thankful!” A laugh of Refractories led by Oakum Head with folded arms—who originated nothing, but who was in command of the skirmishers outside the conversation. “If any place is better than this,” said my brisk guide, in the calmest manner, “it is a pity you left a good place when you had one.” “Ho, ho, I didn’t, matron,” returned the Chief, with another pull at her oakum, and a very expressive look at the enemy’s forehead. “Don’t say that, matron, cos it’s lies!” Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skirmished, and retired. “And I warn’t a going,” exclaimed Refractory Two, “ though I was in one place for as long as four year—I warn’t a going fur to stop in a place that warn’t fit for me—there! And where the family warn’t º characters—there! And where I fort’nately or hunfort- 'nately, found that the people warn’t what they pre- tended to make theirselves out to be—there! And where WAPPING WORKHOUSE. 23 it wasn’t their faults, by chalks, if I warn’t made bad and ruinated—Hah! ” . During this speech, Oakum Head had again made a diversion with the skirmishers, and had again with- drawn. The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark that he supposed Chief Refractory and Number. Two, to be the two young women who had been taken before the magistrate? “Yes!” said the Chief, “we har! and the wonder is, that a pleeseman ain’t 'ad in now, and we took off agen. "You can’t open your lips here, without a pleeseman.” Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skir- mishers followed suit. “I’m sure I’d be thankful,” protested the Chief look- ing sideways at the Uncommercial, “if I could be got into a place, or got abroad. I’m sick and tired of this precious Ouse, I am, with reason.” So would be, and so was Number Two. So would be, and so was, Oakum Head. So would be, and so were, Skirmishers. The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that he hardly thought it probable that any lady or gentleman in want of a likely young domestic of retiring manners would be tempted into the engagement of either of the two leading Refractories, on her own presentation of herself as per sample. - - “It ain’t no good being nothink else here,” said the Chief. The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying. “Oh no it ain’t,” said the Chief. “Not a bit of good,” said Number Two. “And I’m sure I’d be very thankful to be got into a place, or got abroad,” said the Chief. “And so should I,” said Number Two. “Truly thankful, I should.” Oakum Head then rose, and announced as an entirely new idea, the mention of which profound novelty might be naturally expected to startle her unprepared hearers, that she would be very thankful to be got into a, 8. or got abroad. And, as if she had then said, “Chorus, ladies!” all the Skirmishers struck up to the Same purpose. We left them, thereupon, and began a 24 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. long walk among the women who were simply old and infirm; but whenever, in the course of this same walk, I looked out of any high window that commanded the yard, I saw Oakum Head and all the other Refractories looking out at their low window for me, and never fail- ing to catch me, the moment I showed my head. In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables of a golden time as youth, the prime of life, or a hale old age. In ten minutes, all the lights of womankind seemed to have been blown out, and nothing in that way to be left this vault to brag of, but the flickering and expiring Snuffs. And what was very curious, was, that these dim old women had one company notion which was the fashion of the place. Every old woman who became aware of a vsition and was not in bed hobbled over a form into her accustomed seat, and became one of a line of dim Old women confronting another line of dim old women across a narrow table. There was no obligation whatever upon them to range themselves in this way; it was their man- ner of “receiving.” As a rule, they made no attempt to talk to one another, or to look at the visitor, Or to look at anything, but sat silently working their mouths, like a sort of poor old Cows. In some of these wards, it was good to see a few green plants; in others, an isolated Refractory acting as nurse, who did well enough in that capacity, when separated from her compeers; every one of these wards, day room, night room, or both combined, was scrupulously clean and fresh. I have seen as many such places as most travellers in my line, and I never saw one such, better kept. Among the bedridden there was great patience, great reliance on the books under the pillow, great faith in GOD. All cared for sympathy, but none much cared to be encouraged with hope of recovery; on the whole, I should say, it was considered rather a distinction to have a complication of disorders, and to be in a worse way than the rest. From some of the windows, the river could be seen with all its life and movement; the day was bright, but I came upon no one who was looking Out. In One large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs of distinction, like the President and Vice of the good company, were two old women, upwards of ninety years WAPPING workHOUSE. 25 of age. The younger of the two, jº. turned ninety, was deaf, but not very, and could easily be made to hear. In her early time she had nursed a child, who was now another old woman, more infirm than herself, inhabiting the very same chamber. . She perfectly un- derstood this when the matron told it, and, with sundry nods and motions of her forefinger, pointed out the woman in question. The elder of this pair ninety-three, seated before an illustrated newspaper (but not reading it), was a bright-eyed old soul, really not deaf, wonder- fully preserved, and amazingly conversational. She had not long lost her husband, and had been in that place little more than a year. At Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, this poor creature would have been individually addressed, would have been tended in her own room, and would have had her life gently assimi- lated to a comfortable life out of doors. Would that be much to do in England for a woman who has kept her- self out of a workhouse more than ninety rough long years? When Britain first, at Heaven's command, arose, with a great deal of allegorical confusion, from out the azure main, did her guardian angels positively forbid it in the Charter which has been so much besung? The object of my journey was accomplished when the nimble matron had no more to show me. As I shook hands with her at the gate, I told her that I thought Justice had not used her very well, and that the wise men of the East were not infallible. - * Now, I reasoned with myself, as I made my journey home again, concerning those Foul wards. They ought not to exist; no person of common decency and hu- manity can see them and doubt it. But what is this Union to do? The necessary alteration would cost several thousands of pounds ; it has already to support three workhouses; its inhabitants work hard for their bare lives, and are already rated for the relief of the Poor to the utmost extent of reasonable endurance. One poor parish in this very Union is rated to the amount of FIVE AND SIXPENCE in the pound, at the very same time when the rich parish of Saint George’s, Hanover Square, is rated at about SEVENPENCE in the ound, Paddington at about FOURPENCE, Saint James's, estminster, at about TENPENCE! It is only through the equalisation of Poor Rates that what is left undone 26 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. in this wise, can be done. Much more is left undone, or is ill-done, than I have space to suggest in these notes of a single uncommercial journey; but, the wise men of the East, before they can reasonably hold forth about it, must look to the North and South and West; let them also, any morning before taking the seat of Solomon, look into the shops and dwellings all around the Temple, and first ask themselves “how much more can these poor people—many of whom keep themselves with diffi- culty enough out of the workhouse—bear?” I had yet other matter for reflection as I journeyed home, inasmuch as, before I altogether departed from the neighbourhood of Mr. Baker’s trap, I had knocked at the gate of the workhouse of St. George's-in-the-East, and had found it to be an establishment highly creditable to those parts, and thoroughly well administered by a most intelligent master. I remarked in it an instance of the collateral harm that obstinate vanity and folly can do. “This was the Hall where those old paupers, male and female, whom I had just seen, met for the Church service, was it?”—“Yes.”—“Did they sing the Psalms to any instrument?”—“They would like to, very much; they would have an extraordinary interest in doing so.”—“And could none be got?”—“Well, a piano could even have been got for nothing, but these unfortunate dissensions—” Ah! better, far better, my Christian friend in the beautiful garment, to have let the singing boys alone, and left the multitude to .# for themselves! You should know better than I, but think I have read that they did so, Once upon a time, and that “when they had sung an hymn,” Some one (not in a beautiful garden) went up into the Mount of Olives. It made my heart ache to think of this miserable trifling, in the streets of a city, where every stone seemed to call to me, as I walked along, “Turn this way, man, and see what waits to be done!” So I de- coyed myself into another train of thought to ease my heart. But, I don’t know that I did it, for I was so full of paupers, that it was, after all, only a change to a single pauper, who took possession of my remembrance instead of a thousand. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he had said, in a confi- dential manner, on another occasion, taking me aside; “but I have seen better days,” Two views of A CHEAP THEATRE. 2; “I am very sorry to hear it.” “Sir, I have a complaint to make against the master.” .." have no power here, I assure you. And if I ha —” & “But allow me, sir, to mention it, as between your- self and a man who has seen better days, sir. The master, and myself are both masons, sir, and I make him the sign continually; but, because I am in this un- fortunate position, sir, he won’t give me the counter- . sign!” - CHAPTER IV. TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE. S I shut the door of my lodging behind me, and came out into the streets at six on a drizzling Sat- urday evening in the last past month of January, all that neighbourhood of Covent-garden looked very des- olate. It is so essentially a neighbourhood which has seen better days, that bad weather affects it sooner than another place which has not come down in the world. In its present reduced condition it bears a thaw almost worse than any place I know. It gets so dreadfully low- spirited when damp breaks forth. . Those wonderful houses about Drury-lane Theatre, which in the palmy days of theatres were prosperous and long-settled places of business, and which now change hands every week, but never change their character of being divided and sub-divided on the ground floor into mouldy dens of shops where an Orange and half-a-dozen nuts, or a pomatum-pot, one cake of fancy Soap, and a cigar-box, are offered for sale and never sold, were most ruefully contemplated that evening, by the statue of Shakes- peare, with the rain-drops coursing one another down its innocent nose. Those inscrutable pigeon-hole offices, with nothing in them (not so much as an inkstand) but a model of a theatre before the curtain, where, in the Italian Opera season, tickets at reduced prices are kept on sale by nomadic gentlemen in Smeary hats too tall for them, whom one occasionally seems to have 28 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. seen on race-courses, not wholly unconnected with strips of cloth of various colours and a rolling ball— those Bedouin establishments, deserted by the tribe, and tenantless, except when sheltering in one corner an irregular row of ginger-beer-bottles, which would have made one shudder on such a night, but for its be- ing plain that they had nothing in them, shrunk from the shrill cries of the newsboys at their Exchange in the • kennel of Catherine-street, like guilty things upon a fearful summons. At the pipe-shop in Great Russell- street, the Death's-head pipes were like theatrical memento mori, admonishing beholders of the decline of the playhouse as an Institution. I walked up Bow- street, disposed to be angry with the shops there, that were letting out theatrical secrets by exhibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff of which diadems and robes of kings are made. I noticed that some shops which had once been in the dramatic line, and had struggled out of it, were not getting on prosperously— like some actors I have known, who took to business and failed to make it answer. In a word, those streets looked so dull, and, considered as theatrical streets, so broken and bankrupt, that the FOUND DEAD on the black board at the police station might have announced the decease of the Drama, and the pools of water out- side the fire-engine maker's at the corner of Long-acre might have been occasioned by his having brought out the whole of his stock to play upon its last Smouldering ashes. - And yet, on such a night in so degenerated a time, the object of my journey was theatrical. And yet within half an hour I was in an immense theatre, capa- ble of holding nearly five thousand people. What Theatre 2. Her Majesty’s?, Far better. Royal Italian Opera P. Far better. Infinitely superior to the latter for hearing in; infinitely superior to both, for seeing in. To every part of this Theatre, spacious fire- proof ways of ingress and egress. For every part of it, convenient places of refreshment and retiring-rooms. Everything to eat and drink carefully supervised as to uality, and sold at an appointed price; respectable female attendants ready for the commonest women in the audience; a general air of consideration, decorum, and supervision, most commendable; an unquestionably Two VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE. 29 humanising influence in all the Social arrangements of the place. - Surely a dear Theatre, then P Because there were in London (not very long ago) Theatres with entrance- prices up to half-a-guinea a head, whose arrangements were not half so civilised. Surely, therefore, a dear Theatre 2 Not very dear. A gallery at threepence, another gallery at fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes and pit-stalls at a shilling, and a few private-boxes at half-a-crown. My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into every nook of this great place, and among every class of the audience assembled in it—amounting that even- ing, as I calculated, to about two thousand and Odd hundreds. Magnificently lighted by a firmament of sparkling chandeliers, the building was ventilated to perfection. My sense of smell, without being particu- larly delicate, has been so offended in some of the com- moner places of public resort, that I have often been obliged to leave them when I have made an uncommer- cial journey expressly to look on. The air of this Theatre was fresh, cool, and wholesome. To help towards this end, very sensible precautions had been used, ingeni- Ously combining the experience of hospitals and rail- way stations. Asphalt pavements substituted for wooden floors, honest bare walls of glazed brick and tile—even at the back of the boxes—for plaster and paper, no benches stuffed, and no carpeting or baize used; a cool material with a light glazed surface, being the covering of the seats. These various contrivances are as well considered in the place in question as if it were a Fever Hospital; the result is, that it is sweet and healthful. It has been constructed from the ground to the roof with a careful reference to sight and sound in every corner; the result is, that its form is beautiful, and that the appearance of the audience, as seen from the proscenium—with every face in it commanding the stage, and the whole so admirably raked and turned to that centre, that a hand can scarcely move in the great assemblage with- out the movement being seen from thence—is highly remarkable in its union of vastness with compactness. The stage itself and all its appurtenances of machinery, cellarage, height and breadth, are on a scale more like 30 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. the Scala at Milan, or the San Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia. Theatre at Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke’s Hospital in the Old-street-road, London. The Forty Thieves might be played here, and . . every thief ride his real horse, and the disguised cap- tain bring in his oil jars on a train of real camels, and nobody be put out of the way. This really extraordi- nary place is the achievement of one man’s enterprise, and was erected on the ruins of an inconvenient old building in less than five months, at a round cost of five- and-twenty thousand pounds. To dismiss this part of my subject, and still to render to the proprietor the credit that is strictly his due, I must add that his sense of the responsibility upon him to make the best of his audience, and to do his best for them, is a highly agree- able sign of these times. As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will presently show, were the object of my journey, I entered on the play of the night as one of the two thousand and odd hundreds, by looking about me at my neighbours. We were a motley assemblage of people, and we had a good many boys and young men among us; we had also many girls and young women. To represent, however, that we did not include a very great number, and a very fair proportion of family groups, would be to make a gross mis-statement. Such groups were to be seen in all parts of the house; in the boxes and stalls particu- larly, they were composed of persons of very decent ap- pearance, who had many children with them. Among our dresses there were most kinds of shabby and greasy wear, and much fustian and corduroy that was neither sound nor fragrant. The caps of our young men were mostly of a limp character, and we who wore them, slouched, high-shouldered, into our places with our hands in our pockets, and occasionally twisted Qur cravats about our necks like eels, and occasionally tied them down our breasts like links of sausages, and occasionally had a screw in our hair over each cheek- bone with a slight Thief-flavour in it. Besides prowlers and idlers, we were mechanics, dock-labourers, Coster- mongers, petty tradesmen, small clerks, milliners, stay- makers, shoe-binders, slop workers, poor workers in a hundred highways and by-ways. Many of us-on the t j - TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE. 31 whole, the majority—were not at all clean, and not at all choice in our lives or conversation. But we had all come together in a place where Our convenience was well consulted, and where we were well looked after, to enjoy an evening's entertainment in common. We were not going to lose any part of what we had paid for through anybody’s caprice, and as a community we had a character to lose. So, we were closely attentive, and kept excellent order; and let the man or boy who did otherwise instantly get out from this place, or we would put him out with the greatest expedition. We began at half-past six with a pantomime—with a Fº so long, that before it was over I felt as if had been travelling for six weeks—going to India, say by the Overland Mail. The Spirit of Liberty was the principal personage in the Introduction, and the Four Quarters of the World came out of the globe, glitter- ing, and discoursed with the Spirit, who sang charm- ingly. We were delighted to understand that there was no liberty anywhere but among ourselves, and we highly applauded the agreeable fact. In an allegorical way, which did as well as any other way, we and the Spirit of Liberty got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins, and found them at war with a potentate who called in to his aid their old arch enemy Rust, and who would have got the better of them if the Spirit of Lib- erty had not in the nick of time transformed the leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, Harle- quina, and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of a remarkably stout father and three spineless sons. We all knew what was coming when the Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with a big face, and His Majesty backed to the side-scenes and began untying himself behind, with his big face all on one side. Our excite- nent at that crisis was great, and our delight unbound- ed. After this era in our existence, we went through all the incidents of a pantomime; it was not by any means a savage pantomime, in the way of burning or boiling people, or throwing them out of window, or cut- ting them up; was often very droll; was always lib- erally got up, and cleverly presented. I noticed that the people who kept the shops, and who represented the passengers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had no conventionality in them, but were unusually like the 32 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. real thing—from which I infer that you may take that audience in (if you wish to) concerning Knights and Ladies, Fairies, Angels, or such like, but they are not to be done as to anything in the streets. I noticed, also, that when two young men, dressed in exact imitation of the eel-and-sausage-cravated portion of the audi- ence, were chased by policemen, and, finding them- selves in danger of being caught, dropped so suddenly as to oblige the policeman to tumble over them, there was great rejoicing among the caps—as though it were a delicate reference to something they had heard of before. The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melo-Drama. Throughout the evening I was pleased to observe Virtue Quite as triumphant as she usually is out of doors, and indeed I thought rather more so. . We all agreed (for the time) that honesty was the best policy, and we were as hard as iron upon Vice, and we wouldn’t hear of Villainy getting on in the world—no, not on any con- sideration whatever. Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and refreshed. Many of us went the length of drinking beer at the bar of the neighbouring public-house, some of us drank spirits, crowds of us had sandwiches and ginger-beer at the refreshment-bars established for us in the Theatre. The sandwich—as substantial as was consistent with portability, and as cheap as possible— we hailed as one of our greatest institutions. It forced its way among us at all stages of the entertainment, and we were always delighted to see it; its adaptability to the varying moods of our nature was surprising; we could never weep so comfortably as when our tears fell on our sandwich; we could never laugh so heartily as when we choked with sandwich; Virtue never looked so beautiful or Vice so deformed as when we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what would come of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever Innocence in flowered chintz from Honest Industry in striped stockings. When the curtain fell for the night, we still fell back upon sandwich, to help us through the rain and mire, and home to bed. - This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night. Be- ing Saturday night, I had accomplished but the half of my uncommercial journey; for, its object was to º º º . Pradº §§ E. §§§ - ºrz ... º. Ž % Nº w § %. t 'º, * : º, , ºf ºr, t * - * y fºllº - º, ë. f s #ſº - % % }r - /* } * #//ºffſ. % % Two VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE. 33 compare the play on Saturday evening with the preach- ing in the same Theatre on Sunday evening. Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on the similarly damp and muddy Sunday evening, I returned to this Theatre. I drove up to the entrance (fearful of being late, or I should have come on foot), and found myself in a large crowd of people who, I am happy to state, were put into excellent spirits by my arrival. Having nothing to look at but the mud and the closed doors, they looked at me, and highly enjoyed the comic spectacle. My modesty inducing me to draw off, some hundreds of yards, into a dark corner, they at once forgot me, and applied themselves to their former occu- pation of looking at the mud and looking in at the closed doors: which, being of grated ironwork, allowed the lighted passage within to be seen. They were chief- ly people of respectable appearance, Odd and impulsive as most crowds are, and making a joke of being there as most crowds do. . In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but that a very obliging passer-by informed me that the Theatre was already full, and that the people whom I saw in the street were all shut out for want of room. After that, I lost no time in worming myself into the building, and creeping to a place in a ‘Proscenium box that had been kept for me. There must have been full four thousand people resent. Carefully estimating the pit alone, I could ring it out as holding little less than fourteen hun- dred. Every part of the house was well filled, and I had not found it easy to make my way along the back of the boxes to where I sat. The chandeliers in the ceil- ing were lighted; there was no light on the stage; the Orchestra was empty. The green curtain was down, and, packed pretty closely on chairs on the small space of stage before it, were some thirty gentlemen, and two or three ladies. In the centre of these, in a desk or pulpit covered with red baize, was the presiding minis- ter. The kind of rostrum he occupied will be very well understood, if I liken it to a boarded-up-fireplace turned towards the audience, with a gentleman in a black Surtout standing in the stove and leaning forward Over the mantelpiece. A portion of Scripture was being read when I went WOL. I, 3 34 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. in. It was followed by a discourse, to which the con- gregation listened with most exemplary attention and uninterrupted silence and decorum. My own attention comprehended both the auditory and the speaker, and shall turn to both in this recalling of the scene, exactly as it did at the time. “A very difficult thing,” I thought, when the dis- course began, “to speak appropriately to so large an audience, and to speak with tact. Without it, better not to speak at all. Infinitely better, to read the New Testament well, and to let that speak. In this congre- gation there is indubitably one pulse; but I doubt if any power short of genius can touch it as one, and make it answer as one.” I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse pro- ceeded, that the minister was a good speaker. I could not possibly say to myself that he expressed an understand- ing of the general mind and character of his audience. There was a suppositious working-man introduced into the homily, to make suppositious objections to our Christian religion and be reasoned down, who was not only a very disagreeable person, but remarkably un- like life—very much more unlike it than anything I had seen in the pantomime. The native independence of character this artisan was supposed to possess, was represented by a suggestion of a dialect that I certainly never heard in my uncommercial travels, and with a coarse swing of voice and manner anything but agree- able to his feelings I should conceive, considered in the light of a portrait, and as far away from the fact as a Chinese Tartar. There was a model pauper intro- duced in like manner, who appeared to me to be the most intolerably arrogant pauper ever relieved, and to show himself in absolute want and dire necessity of a course of Stone Yard. For, how did this pauper testify to his having received the gospel of humility? . A gentleman met him in the workhouse, and said (which I myself really thought good-natured of him), “Ah, John? I am sorry to see you here. I am sorry to see #. so poor.” “Poor, sir!” replied that man, drawing imself up, “I am the son of a Prince! My father is the King of Kings. My father is the Lord of Lords. My father is the ruler of all the Princes of the Earth!” etc. And this was what all the preacher's fellow-sin- TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE. 35 ners might come to, if they would embrace this blessed book—which I must say it did some violence to my own feelings of reverence, to see held out at arm’s length at frequent intervals and soundingly slapped, like a slow lot at a sale. Now, could I help asking myself the uestion, whether the mechanic before me, who must 3. the preacher as being wrong, about the visible manner of himself and the like of himself, and about such a noisy lip-server as that pauper, might not, most unhappily for the usefulness of the occasion, doubt that preacher's being right about things not visible to human senses? * Again. Is it necessary or advisable to address such an audience continually as “fellow-sinners?” Is it not enough to be fellow-creatures, born yesterday, suffering and striving to-day, dying to-morrow? By Our common humanity, my brothers and sisters, by Our common capacities for pain and pleasure, by Our com- mon laughter and our common tears, by our common aspiration to reach something better than ourselves, by our common tendency to believe in something good, and to invest whatever we love or whatever we lose with some qualities that are superior to our own fail- ings and weaknesses as we know them in our own poor hearts—by these, Hear me!—Surely, it is enough to be fellow-creatures. Surely, it includes the other designation, and some touching meanings Over and above. Again. There was a personage introduced into the discourse (not an absolute novelty, to the best of my re- membrance of my reading), who had been personally known to the preacher, and had been quite a Crichton in all the ways of philosophy, but had been an infidel. Many a time had the preacher talked with him on that subject, and many a time had he failed to convince that intelligent man. But he fell ill, and died, and be- fore he died he recorded his conversion—in words which the preacher had taken down, my fellow-sinners, and would read to you from this piece of paper. I must confess that to me, as one of an uninstructed audience, they did not appear particulary edifying. I thought their tone extremely selfish, and I thought they had a spiritual vanity in them which was of the before-men- tioned refractory pauper's family. 36 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, but the slang and twang of the conventicle—as bad in its way as that of the House of Commons, and nothing worse can be said of it—should be studiously avoided under such circumstances as I describe. The avoidance was not complete on this occasion. Nor was it quite agreeable to see the preacher addressing his pet “points * to his backers on the stage, as if appeal- ing to those disciples to show him up, and testify to the multitude that each of those points was a clincher. But, in respect of the large Christianity of his general tone; of his renunciation of all priestly au- thority; of his earnest and reiterated assurance to the people that the commonest among them could work out their own salvation if they would, by simply, lov- ingly, and dutifully following Our Saviour, and that they needed the mediation of no erring man; in these particulars, this gentleman deserved all praise. Nothing could be better than the spirit, or the plain emphatic words of his discourse in these respects. And it was a most significant and encouraging circumstance that whenever he struck that, chord, or whenever he de- scribed anything which Christ himself had done, the array of faces before him was very much more earnest and very much more expressive of emotion, than at any other time. And now, I am brought to the fact, that the lowest part of the audience of the previous night, was not there. There is no doubt about it. There was no such thing in that building, that Sunday evening. I have been told since, that the lowest part of the audience of the Victoria. Theatre has been attracted to its Sunday services. I have been very glad to hear it, but on this occasion of which I write, the lowest part of the usual audience of the Britannia. Theatre, decidedly and un- questionably stayed away. When I first took my seat and looked at the house, my surprise at the change in its occupants was as great as my disappointment. To the most respectable class of the previous evening, was added a great number of respectable strangers attracted by curiosity, and drafts from the regular con- gregations of various chapels. It was impossible to failin identifying the character of these last, and they were very numerous. I came out in a strong, slow Two VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE. 37 tide of them setting from the boxes. Indeed, while the discourse was in progress, he respectable character of the auditory was so manifest in their appearance, that when the minister addressed a suppositious “outcast,” one really felt a little impatient of it, as a figure of speech not justified by anything the eye could discover. The time appointed for the conclusion of the proceed- ings was eight o’clock. The address having lasted until full that time, and it being the custom to conclude with a hymn, the preacher intimated in a few sensible words that the clock had struck the hour, and that those who desired to go before the hymn was sung, could go now, without giving offence. No one stirred. The hymn was then sung, in good time and tune and unison, and its effect was very striking. A compre- hensive benevolent prayer dismissed the throng, and in seven or eight minutes there was nothing left in the Theatre but a light cloud of dust. That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, I do not doubt. , Nor do I doubt that they will work lower and lower down in the social scale, if those who preside over them will be very careful on two heads: firstly, not to disparage the places in which they speak, or the intelligence of their hearers; secondly, not to sit themselves in antagonism to the natural in- born desire of the mass of mankind to recreate them- selves and to be amused. * There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to which my remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended. In the New Testament there is the most beautiful and affecting history conceivable by man, and there are the terse models for all prayer and for all preaching. As to the models, imitate them, Sunday preachers—else why are they there, consider? As to the history, tell it. Some people cannot read, some people will not read, many people (this especially holds among the young and ignorant) find it hard to pursue the verse-form in which the book is presented to them, and imagine that those breaks imply gaps and want of continuity. Help them over that first stumbling-block, by setting forth the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting it. You will never preach so well, you will never move them so profoundly, you will never 38 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. send them away with half so much to think of. Which is the better interest: Christ’s choice of twelve poor men to help in those merciful wonders among the poor and rejected; or the pious bullying of a whole Union- full of paupers ? What is your changed philosopher to wretched me, peeping in at the door out of the mud of the streets and of my life, when you have the widow’s son to tell me about, the ruler's daughter, the other figure at the door when the brother of the two sisters was dead, and one of the two ran to the mourner, cry- ing, “The Master is come and calleth for thee ?”—Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget himself and remember no individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand up before four thousand men and women at the Britannia. Theatre any Sunday night, recounting that narrative to them as fellow-creatures, and he shall See a sight ! CHAPTER V. POOR MERCANTILE JACK. * IS the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and keeps watch on the life of poor Jack, Commissioned to take charge of Mercantile Jack, as well as Jack of the national navy P. If not, who is? What is the cherub about, and what are we all about, when poor Mercantile Jack is having his brains slowly knocked out by penny- weights, aboard the brig Beelzebub, or the barque Bowie-knife—when he looks his last at that infernal craft, with the first officer's iron boot-heel in his re- maining eye, or with his dying body towed overboard in the ship's wake, while the cruel wounds in it do “the multitudinous seas incarnadine " ? It is unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the brig Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the first officer did half the damage to cotton that he does to men, there would presently arise from both sides of the Atlantic so vociferous an invocation of the sweet little cherub who sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on the markets that pay, that such vigilant cherub would, with a winged sword, have that gallant officer's organ POOR MERCANTILE JACK. 39 of destructiveness out of his head in the space of a flash of lightning P If it be unreasonable; then am I the most unreason- able of men, for I believe it with all my soul. This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at Liverpool, keeping watch on poor Mercantile Jack. Alas for me ! I have long outgrown the state of sweet little cherub; but there I was, and there Mercantile Jack was, and very busy he was, and very cold he was, the snow yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land, and the north-east winds Snip- ping off the tops of the little waves in the Mersey, and rolling them into hailstones to pelt him with. Mercantile Jack was hard at it, in the hard weather: as he mostly is in all weathers, poor Jack. He was girded to ships' masts and funnels of steamers, like a forester to a great oak, scraping and painting; he was lying out on yards, furling sails that tried to beat him off; he was dimly discernible up in a world of giant cobwebs, reefing and splicing; he was faintly audible down in holds, stowing and unshipping cargo; he was winding round and round at capstans melodious, monotonous, and drunk; he was of a diabolical aspect, with coaling for the Antipodes; he was washing decks barefoot, with the breast of his red shirt open to the blast, though it was sharper than the knife in his leathern girdle; he was looking over buiwarks, all eyes and hair; he was standing by at the shoot of the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in trade of several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down into the ice-house; he was coming aboard of other vessels, with his kit in a tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the very last moment of his shore-going existence. As though his senses, when released from the uproar of the elements, were under obligation to be confused by other turmoil, there was a rattling of wheels, a clattering of hoofs, a clashing of iron, a jolt- ing of cotton and hides and casks and timber, an inces- sant deafening disturbance on the quays, that was the very madness of sound. And as, in the midst of it, he stood swaying about, with his hair blown all manner of wild ways, rather crazedly taking leave of his plunder- ers, all the rigging in the docks was shrill in the wind, and every little steamer coming and going across the 40 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Mersey was sharp in its blowing off, and every buoy in the river bobbed spitefully up and down, as if there were a general taunting chorus of “Come along, Mercantile Jack l Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed, entrapped, anticipated, cleaned out. Come along, Poor Mercantile Jack, and be tempest-tossed till you are drowned l’” The uncommercial transaction which had brought me and Jack together, was this :—I had entered the Liver- pool police-force, that I might have a look at the various unlawful traps which are every night set for Jack. As my term of service in that distinguished corps was short, and as my personal bias in the capacity of one of its members has ceased, no suspicion will attach to my evidence that it is an admirable force. Besides that it is composed, without favour, of the best men that can be picked, it is directed by an unusual intelligence. Its organisation against Fires, I take to be much better than the metropolitan system, and in all respects it tempers its remarkable vigilance with a still more remarkable discretion. Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, and I had taken, for purposes of identification, a photo- graph-likeness of a thief, in the portrait-room at-Our head police office (on the whole, he seemed rather com- plimented by the proceeding), and I had been on police parade, and the small hand of the clock was moving on to ten, when I took up my lantern to follow Mr. Super- intendent to the traps that were set for Jack. In Mr. Superintendent I saw, as anybody might, a tall well- looking well set-up man of a soldierly bearing, with a cavalry air, a good chest, and a resolute but not by any means ungentle face. He carried in his hand a plain black walking-stick of hard wood: and whenever and wherever, at any after-time of the night, he struck it on the pavement with a ringing sound, it instantly pro- duced a whistle out of the darkness, and a policeman. To this remarkable stick, I refer an air of mystery and magic which pervaded the whole of my perquisition among the traps that were set for Jack. We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes of the port. Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheer- ful discourse, before a dead wall, apparently some ten miles long, Mr. Superintendent struck upon the ground, and the wall opened and shot out, with military salute POOR MERCANTILE JACK. 41 of hand to temple, two policemen—not in the least surprised themselves, not in the least Surprising Mr. Superintendent. “All right, Sharpeye P” “All right, sir.” “All right, Trampfoot ?” “All right, sir.” “Is Quickear there P” “Here am I, sir.” “Come with us.” “Yes, sir.” So, Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and I went next, and Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear-guard. Sharpeye, I soon had occasion to re- mark, had a skilful and quite professional way of opening doors—touched latches delicately, as if they were keys of musical instruments—opened every door he touched, as if he were perfectly confident that there was stolen property behind it—instantly insinuated himself, to prevent its being shut. Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set for J . but Jack did not happen to be in any of them. They were all such miserable places that really, Jack, if I were you, I would give them a wider berth. In every trap, somebody was sitting over a fire, waiting for Jack. Now, it was a crouching old woman, like the picture of the Norwood Gipsy in the old sixpenny dream-books; now, it was a crimp of the male sex, in a checked shirt and without a coat, reading a newspaper; now, it was a man crimp and a woman crimp, who always introduced themselves as united in holy matri- mony; now, it was Jack’s delight, his (un)lovely Nan; but they were all waiting for Jack, and were all fright- fully disappointed to see us. “Who have you got up-stairs here?” says Sharpeye, generally. (In the Move-on tone.) “Nobody, surr; sure not a blessed sowl!” (Irish fem- inine reply.) “What do you mean by nobody? Didn’t I hear a woman’s step go up-stairs when my hand was on the latch?’” “Ah! sure thin you’re right, surr, I forgot her. 'Tis on’y Betsy White, surr. Ah! you know Betsy, surr. Come down, Betsy darlin’, and say the gintlemin.” 42 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep staircase is in the room) with a forcible expression in her protesting face, of an intention to compensate her- self for the present trial by grinding Jack finer than usual when he does come. Generally, Sharpeye turns to Mr. Superintendent, and says, as if the subjects of his remarks were wax-work: “One of the worst, sir, this house is. This woman has been indicted three times. This man’s a regular bad one likewise. His real name is Pegg. Gives him- self out as Waterhouse.” “Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, thin, since I was in this house, bee the good Lard!” says the WOIſla,IOl. Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes exceedingly round-shouldered, and pretends to read his paper with rapt attention. Generally, Sharpeye directs our observation with a look, to the prints and pictures that are invariably numerous on the walls. Always, Trampfoot and Quickear are taking notice on the door- step. In default of Sharpeye being acquainted with the exact individuality of any gentleman encountered, one of these two is sure to proclaim from the Outer air, like a gruff spectre, that Jackson is not Jackson, but knows himself to be Fogle ; or that Canlon is Walker's brother, against whom there was not sufficient evi- dence; or that the man who says he never was at sea since he was a boy, came ashore from a voyage last Thursday, or sails to-morrow morning. “And that is a bad class of man, you see,” says Mr. Superintendent, when he got out into the dark again, “and very dif- ficult to deal with, who when he has made this place too hot to hold him, enters himself for a voyage as steward or cook, and is out of knowledge for months, and then turns up again worse than ever.” When we had gone into many such houses, and had come out (always leaving everybody relapsing into waiting for Jack), we started off to a singing-house where Jack was expected to muster strong. The vocalisation was taking place in a long low room up-stairs; at One end, an orchestra of two performers, and a small platform; across the room, a series of Open pews for Jack, with an aisle down the middle; at the other end a larger pew than the rest, entitled SNUG, and f POOR MERCANTILE JACK. 43 reserved for mates and similar good company. About the room, some amazing coffee-coloured pictures varn- ished an inch deep, and some stuffed creatures in cases; dotted among the audience, in Snug and out of Snug, the “Professionals;” among them, the celebrated comic favourite Mr. Banjo Bones, looking very hideous with his blackened face and limp sugar-loaf hat; beside him, sipping rum-and-water, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her natural colours—a little heightened. - It was a Friday night, and Friday night was consid- ered not a good night for Jack. At any rate, Jack did not show in very great force even here, though the house was one to which he much resorts, and where a good deal of money is taken. There was British Jack, a little maudlin and sleepy, lolling over his empty glass, as if he were trying to read his fortune at the bottom; there was Loafing jack of the stars and Stripes, rather an unpromising customer, with his long nose, lank cheek, high cheek-bones, and nothing soft about him but his cabbage-leaf hat; there was Spanish Jack, with curls of black hair, rings in his ears, and a knife, not far from his hand, if you got into trouble with him; there were Maltese Jack, and Jack of Sweden, and Jack the Finn, looming through the Smoke of their pipes, and turning faces that looked as if they were carved out of dark wood, towards the young lady dancing the hornpipe; who found the platform so ex- ceedingly small for it, that I had a nervous expectation of seeing her, in the backward steps, disappear through the window. Still, if all hands had been got together, they would not have more than half-filled the room, Observe, however, said Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, that it was Friday night, and besides, it was getting on for twelve, and Jack had gone aboard. A sharp and watchful man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, with tight lips and a complete edition of Cocker’s arithmetic in each eye. Attended to his business him- self, he said. Always on the spot. When he heard of talent, trusted nobody’s account of it, but went off by rail to see it. If true talent, engaged it. Pounds a week for talent—four pound—five pound. Banjo Bones was undoubted talent. Hear this instrument that was going to play—it was real talent! In truth, it was very good; a kind of piano-accordion, played by 44 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. a young girl of a delicate prettiness of face, figure, and dress, that made the audience look coarser. She sang to the instrument, too; first, a song about village bells, and how they chimed; then a song about how I went to sea; winding up with an imitation of the bagpipes, which Mercantile Jack seemed to understand much the best. A good girl, said Mr. Licensed Victualler. Kept herself select. Sat in Snug, not listening to the bland- ishments of Mates. Tived with mother. Father dead. Once a merchant well to do, but over-speculated him- self. On delicate inquiry as to salary paid for item of talent under consideration, Mr. Victualler’s pounds dropped suddenly to shillings—still it was a very com- fortable thing for a young person like that, you know; she only went on six times a night, and was only re- quired to be there from six at night to twelve. What was more conclusive was, Mr. Victualler's assurance that he “never allowed any language, and never suf- fered any disturbance.” Sharpeye confirmed the state- ment, and the order that prevailed was the best proof of it that could have been cited. So, I came to the conclusion that poor Mercantile Jack might do (as I am afraid he does) much worse than trust himself to Mr. Victualler, and pass his evenings here. \ But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent—said Trampfoot, receiving us in the street again, with mili- tary salute—for Dark Jack. True, Trampfoot. Ring the wonderful stick, rub the wonderful lantern, and cause the spirits of the stick and lantern to convey us to the Darkies. There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark Jack; he was producible. The Genii set us down in the little first floor of a little public-house, and there, in a stiflingly close atmosphere, were Dark Jack and Dark Jack’s delight, his white unlovely Nan, sitting against the wall all round the room. More than that: Dark Jack’s delight was the least unlovely Nan, both morally and physically, that I saw that night. As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear suggested why not strike up? “Ah, la’ads!” said a negro sitting by the door, “gib the jebblem a darnse. Tak’yah pardlers, jebblem, for 'um QUAD-rill.” This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress POOR MERCANTILE JACK. 45 half Greek and half English. As master of the cere- monies, he called all the figures, and occasionally addressed himself parenthetically—after this manner. When he was very loud, I use capitals. “Now den! Hoy! ONE. Right and left. (Put a Steam on, gib 'um powder.) LA-dies’ chail. BAL-loon say. Lemonade! Two. AD-warnse and go back (gib ’ell a breakdown, shake it out o' yerselbs, keep a movil). SWING-corners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade! (Hoy!) THREE. GENT come for’ard with a lady and go back, hoppersite come for’ard and do what yer can. (Aeiohoy!) BAL-loon say, and leetle lemonade (Dat hair nigger by °um fireplace 'hind a time, shake it out o' yerselbs, gib ’ell a breakdown.) Now den! Hoy! Four! Lemonade. BAL-loon say, and swing. FOUR ladies meets in 'um middle, FOUR gents goes round 'um ladies, FOUR gents passes out under 'um ladies' arms, SWING—and Lemon- ade till 'a moosic can’t play no more! (Hoy, Hoy!)” The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an un- usually powerful man of six feet three or four. The sound of their flat feet on the floor was as unlike the sound of white feet as their faces were unlike white faces. They toed and heeled, shuffled, double-shuffled, double-double-shuffled, covered the buckle, and beat the time out, rarely, dancing with a great show of teeth, and with a childish good-humoured enjoyment that was very prepossessing. The generally kept together, these poor fellows, said Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a disadvantage singly, and liable to slights in the neighbouring streets. But, if I were Light Jack, I should be very slow to interfere oppressively with Dark Jack, for, whenever I have had to do with him I have found him a simple and gentle fellow. Bearing this in mind, I asked his friendly permission to leave him restoration of beer, in wishing him good night, and thus it fell out that the last words I heard him say as I blun- dered down the worn stairs, were, “Jebblem’s elth ! Tadies drinks fust!” - The night was now well on into the morning, but, for miles and hours we explored a strange world, where nobody ever goes to bed, but everybody is eternally sitting up, waiting for Jack. This exploration was among a labyrinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries, kept in wonderful order by the 46 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. police, and in much better order than by the corpora- tion: the want of gaslight in the most dangerous and infamous of these places being quite unworthy of so spirited a town. I need describe but two or three of the houses in which Jack was waited for as specimens of the rest. Many we attained by noisome passages so profoundly dark that we felt our way with our hands. Not one of the whole number we visited, was without its show of prints and ornamental crockery; the quan- tity of the latter set forth on little shelves and in little cases, in otherwise wretched rooms, indicating that Mercantile Jack must have an extraordinary fondness for crockery, to necessitate so much of that bait in his traps. Among such garniture, in one front-parlour in the dead of the night, four women were sitting by a fire. One of them had a male child in her arms. On a stool among them was a swarthy youth with a guitar, who had evidently stopped playing when our footsteps were heard. “Well! how do you do?” says Mr. Superintendent, looking about him. “Pretty well sir, and hope you gentlemen are going to treat us ladies, now you have come to see us.” “Order there!” says Sharpeye. “None of that!” says Quickear. Trampfoot outside, is heard to confide to himself “Meggisson’s lot this is. And a bad 'un!” “Well!” says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand on the shoulder of the swarthy youth, “and who's this?” “Antonio, sir.” “And what does he do here?” “Come to give us a bit of music. No harm in that, I suppose?” “A young foreign sailor?” g “Yes. He's a Spaniard. You're a Spaniard, ain’t you, Antonio?” “Me Spanish.” º “And he don’t know a word you say, not he; not if you was to talk to him till doomsday.” (Triumphantly, as if it redounded to the credit of the house). a “Will he play something?” © “Oh, yes, if you like. Play something, Antonio. You ain’t ashamed to play something; are you?” The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, POOR MERCANTILE JACK. 47 and three of the women keep time to it with their heads, and the fourth with the child. If Antonio has brought any money in with him, I am afraid he will never take it out, and it even strikes me that his jacket and guitar may be in a bad way. . But, the look of the young man and the tinkling of the instrument so change the place in a moment to a leaf out of Don Quixote, that I wonder where his mule is stabled, until he leaves off. * I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my uncommercial confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in this establishment, by having taken the child in my arms. For, on my offering to restore it to a ferocious joker not unstimulated by rum, who claimed to be its mother, that unnatural parent put her hands behind her, and declined to accept it; backing into the fire- place, and very shrilly declaring, regardless of remon- starance from her friends, that she knowed it to be Law, that whoever took a child from its mother of his own will, was bound to stick to it. The uncommercial sense of being in a rather ridiculous position with the poor little child beginning to be frightened, was re- lieved by my worthy friend and fellow-constable, Trampfoot; who, laying hands on the article as if it were a Bottle, passed it on to the nearest woman, and bade her “take hold of that.” As we came out the Bottle was passed to the ferocious joker, and they all sat down as before, including Antonio and the guitar. It was clear that there was no such thing as a night- cap to this baby’s head, and that even he never went to bed, but was always kept up—and would grow up, kept up—waiting for Jack. Later still in the night, we came (by the court “where the man was murdered,” and by the other court across the street, into which his body was dragged) to another parlour in another Entry, where several people were sitting round a fire in just the same way. }: "Wa,S a, dirty and offensive place, with some ragged clothes drying in it; but there was a high shelf over the en- trance-door (to be out of the reach of marauding hands, possibly) with two large white loaves on it, and a groat piece of Cheshire cheese. - “Well!” says Mr. Superintendent, with a comprehen- sive look all round. “How do you do?” 48 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. “ Not much to boast of, sir.” From the curtseying woman of the house. “This is my good man, sir.” “You are not registered as a common Lodging House?” “No, sir.” - Sharpeye (in the move-on tone) puts in the pertinent inquiry, “Then why ain’t you?” . “Ain’t got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,” rejoin the woman and my good man together, “but our own family.” - “How many are you in family?” The woman takes time to count, under the pretence of coughing, and adds, as one scant of breath, “Seven, Sir.” But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all about it, says: “Here’s a young man here makes eight, who ain’t of your family?” “No, Mr. Sharpeye, he’s a weekly lodger.” “What does he do for a living?” The young man here, takes the reply upon himself, and shortly answers, “Ain’t got nothing to do.” The young man here, is modestly brooding behind a damp apron pendent from a clothes-line. As I glance at him I become—but I don’t know why—vaguely re- minded of Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and Dover. When we get out, my respected fellow-con- stable Sharpeye, addressing Mr. Superintendent, says: “You noticed that young man, sir, in at Darby’s?” “Yes. What is he?” “Desertér, sir.” Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we have done with his services, he will step back and take that young man. Which in course of time he does; feeling at perfect ease about finding him, and knowing for a moral certainty that nobody in that region will be gone to bed. Later still in the night, we came to another parlour up a step or two from the street, which was very cleanly, meatly, even tastefully, kept, and in which, set forth on a draped chest of drawers masking the staircase, was such a profusion of ornamental crockery, that it would have furnished forth a handsome sale-booth at a fair. It backed up a stout old lady—HOGARTH drew her exact BOOR MERCANTILE JACK. 49 likeness more than once—and a boy who was carefully Writing a copy in a copy-book. “Well, ma'am, how do you do?” Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentleman, sweetly. Charmingly, charmingly. And Overjoyed to see us! “Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing his copy. In the middle of the night!” “So it is, dear gentlemen, Heaven bless your welcome faces and send ye prosperous, but he has been to the Play with a young friend for his diversion, and he combinates his improvement with entertainment, by † his school-writing afterwards, God be good O ye! 33 The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the fire of every fierce desire. One might have thought it recommended stirring the fire, the old lady so approved it. There she sat, rosily beaming at the copy-book and the boy, and invoking showers of blessings on Our heads, }. weieff her in the middle of the night, waiting for a CRC. Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous room with an earth floor, into which the refuse scum of an alley trickled. The stench of this habitation was abominable; the seeming poverty of it, diseased and dire. Yet, here again, was visitor or lodger—a man sitting before the fire, like the rest of them elsewhere, and apparently not distasteful to the mistress's niece, who was also before the fire. The mistress herself had the misfortune of being in jail. Three weird old women of transcendent ghastliness, were at needlework at a table in this room. Says Trampfoot to First Witch, “What are you making?” Says she, “Money-bags.” “What are you making?” retorts Trampfoot, a little off his balance. ‘‘Bags to hold your money,” says the witch, shaking her head, and setting her teeth; “ you as has got it.” She holds up a common cash-bag, and on the table is a heap of such bags. Witch. Two laughs at us. Witch Three scowls at us. Witch sisterhood all, stitch stitch. First Witch has a red circle round each eye. I fancy it like the beginning of the development of a perverted diabolical halo, and that when it spreads all round her head, she will die in the odour of devilry. WOL. I. 4. 50 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First Witch has got behind the table, down by the side of her, there? Witches Two and Three croak angrily, “Show him the child!” • She drags out a skinny little arm from a brown dust- heap on the ground. Adjured not to disturb the child, she lets it drop again. Thus we find at last that there is one child in the world of Entries who goes to bed—if this be bed. Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they going to work at those bags? How long? First Witch repeats. Going to have sup- per presently. See the cups and saucers and the plates. “Late? Ay! But we has to 'arn our supper afore we eats it!” Both the other witches repeat this after First Witch and take the Uncommercial measurement with their eyes, as for a charmed winding-sheet. Some grim discourse ensues, referring to the mistress of the cave, who will be released from jail to-morrow. Witches pronounce Trampfoot “right there,” when he deems it a trying distance for the old lady to walk; she shall be fetched by niece in a spring-cart. \ * As I took a parting look at First Witch in turning away, the red marks round her eyes seemed to have already grown larger, and she hungrily and thirstily looked out beyond me into the dark doorway, to see if Jack were there. For, Jack came even here, and the mistress had got into jail through deluding Jack. When I at last ended this night of travel and got to bed, I failed to keep my mind on comfortable thoughts of Seaman’s Homes (not overdone with strictness), and improved dock regulations giving Jack greater benefit of fire and candle aboard ship, through my mind's wan- dering among the vermin I had seen. Afterwards the same vermin ran all over my sleep. Evermore, when on a breezy day I see Poor Mercantile Jack running into port with a fair wind under all sail, I shall think of the unsleeping host of devourers who never go to bed, and are always in their set traps waiting for him. REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERs. 51 a' CHAPTER VI. REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS. TN the late high winds I was blown to a great many places—and indeed, wind or no wind, I generally have extensive transactions on hand in the article of Air—but I have not been blown to any English place lately, and I very seldom have blown to any Finglish place in my life, where I could get anything good to eat and drink in five minutes, or where if I sought it, I was received with a welcome. * This is a curious thing to consider. But before (stim- ulated by my own experiences and the representations of many fellow-travellers of every uncommercial and commercial degree) I consider it further, I must utter a passing word of wonder concerning high winds. I wonder why metropolitan gales always blow so hard at Walworth. I cannot imagine what Walworth has done to bring such windy punishment upon itself, as I never fail to find recorded in the newspapers when the wind has blown at all hard. Brixton seems to have Something on its conscience; Peckham suffers more than a virtuous Peckham might be supposed to deserve; the howling neighbourhood of Deptford figures largely in the accounts of the ingenious gentlemen who are out in every wind that blows, and to whom it is an ill high wind that blows no good; but, there can hardly be any Walworth left by this time. It must surely be blown away. I have read of more chimney-stacks and house-copings coming down with terrific smashes at Walworth, and of more sacred edifices being nearly (not quite) blown out to sea from the same accursed locality, than I have read of practised thieves with the appearance and manners of gentlemen—a popular phenomenon which never existed on earth out of fiction and a police report. Again: I wonder why people are 52 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. always blown into the Surrey Canal, and into no other piece of water! Why do people get up early and go out in groups, to be blown into the Surrey Canal? l)o they say to one another, “Welcome death, so that we get into the newspapers?” Even that would be an insufficient explanation, because even then they might sometimes put themselves in the way of being blown into the Regent's Canal, instead of always saddling Surrèy for the field. Some nameless policeman, too, is con- stantly, on the slightest provocation, getting himself blown into this same Surrey Canal. Will SIR RICCARD MAYNE, see to it, and restrain that weak-minded and feeble-bodied constable? • To resume the consideration of the curious question of Refreshment. I am a Briton, and, as such, I am aware that I never will be a slave—and yet I have latent suspicion that there must be some slavery of wrong custom in this matter. I travel by railroad. I start from home at seven or eight in the morning after breakfasting hurriedly. What with skimming over the open landscape, what with mining in the damp bowels of the earth, what with banging, booming and shrieking the scores of miles away, I am hungry when I arrive at the ‘‘ Refresh- ment ’’ station where I am expected. Please to observe, expected. I have said, I am hungry; perhaps I might say, with greater point and force, that I am to some extent exhausted, and that I need—in the expressive French sense of the word—to be restored. What is provided for my restoration? The apartment that is to restore me is a wind-trap, cunningly set to inveigle all the draughts in that country-side, and to communicate a special intensity and velocity to them as they rotate in two hurricanes: one, about my wretched head: one, about my wretched legs. The training of the young ladies behind the counter who are to restore me, has been from their infancy directed to the assumption of a defiant dramatic show that I am not expected. It is in vain for me to represent to them by my humble and conciliatory manners, that I wish to be liberal. It is in vain for me to represent to myself, for the encourage- ment of my sinking soul, that the young ladies have a pecuniary interest in my arrival. Neither my reason nor my feelings can make head against the cold glazed REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS. 53. glare of eye with which I am assured that I am not ex- ; and not wanted. The solitary man among the Ottles would sometimes take pity on me, if he dared, but he is powerless against the rights and mights of Woman. (Of the page I make no account, for, he is a boy, and therefore the natural enemy of Creation.) Chilling fast in the deadly tornadoes to which my upper and lower extremities are exposed, and subdued by the moral disadvantage at which I stand, I turn my disconsolate eyes on the refreshments that are to re- store me. I find that I must either scald my throat by insanely ladling into it, against time and for no wager, brown hot water stiffened with flour; or I must make myself flaky and sick with Banbury cake; or, I must stuff into my delicate organisation, a currant pin- cushion which I know will swell into immeasurable dimensions when it has got there; or, I must extort from an iron-bound quarry, with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable soil, some glutinous lumps of gristle and grease, called pork-pie. While thus for- lornly occupied, I find that the depressing banquet on the table is, in every phrase of its profoundly unsatis- factory character, so like the banquet at the meanest and shabbiest of evening parties, that I begin to think . I must have “brought down” to supper, the old lady unknown, blue with cold, who is setting her teeth on edge with a cool orange at my elbow—that the pastry- Cook who has compounded for the company on the lowest terms per head, is a fraudulent bankrupt, re- deeming his contract with the stale stock from his win- dow—that for some unexplained reason, the family giving the party have become my mortal foes, and have given it on purpose to affront me. Or, I fancy that I am “breaking up * again, at the evening conversazione at School, charged two-and-sixpence in the half-year's bill; or breaking down again at that celebrated even- ing party given at Mrs. Bogles's boarding-house when I was a boarder there, on which occasion Mrs. Hogles was taken in execution by a branch of the legal pro- fession who got in as the harp, and was removed (with the keys and subscribed capital) to a place of du- rance, half an hour prior to the commencement of the festivities. - Take another case. 54 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Mr. Grazinglands, of the Midland Counties, came to London by railroad one morning last week, accompa- nied by the amiable and fascinating Mrs. Grazinglands. Mr. G. is a gentleman of a comfortable property, and had a little business to transact at the Bank of England, which required the concurrence and signature of Mrs. G. Their business disposed of, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands viewed the Royal Exchange, and the exterior of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The spirits of Mrs. Grazinglands then gradually beginning to flag, Mr. Grazinglands (who is the tenderest of husbands) remarked with sym- pathy “Arabella, my dear, I fear you are faint.” Mrs. Grazinglands replied, “ Alexander, I am rather faint; but don’t mind me, I shall be better presently.” Touched by the feminine meekness of this answer, Mr. Grazing- lands looked in at a pastry cook’s window, hesitating as to the expediency of lunching at that establishment. He beheld nothing to eat, but butter in various forms, slightly charged with jam, and languidly frizzling over tepid water. Two ancient turtle-shells, on which was inscribed the legend, “Soups,” decorated a glass par- tition within, enclosing a stuffy alcove, from which a ghastly mockery of a marriage-breakfast spread on a rickety table, warned the terrified traveller. An oblong box of stale and broken pastry at “reduced prices, mounted on a stool, ornamented the doorway; and two high chairs that looked as if they were performing on stilts, embellished the counter. Over the whole, a young lady presided, whose gloomy haughtiness as she Surveyed the street, announced a deep-seated grievance against Society, and an implacable determination to be avenged. From a beetle-haunted kitchen below this institution, fumes arose, suggestive of a class of soup which Mr. Grazinglands knew, from painful experience, enfeebles the mind, distends the stomach, forces itself into the complexion, and tries to ooze out at the eyes. As he decided against entering, and turned away, Mrs. Grazinglands becoming perceptibly weaker, repeated, “I’m rather faint, Alexander, but don’t mind me.” Urged to new efforts by these words of resignation, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a cold and floury baker's shop, where utilitarian buns unrelieved by a currant, consorted with hard biscuits, a stone filter of cold Water, a hard pale clock, and a hard little old woman REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERs. 55 with flaxen hair, of an undeveloped-farinaceous aspect, as if she had been fed upon seeds. He might have en- tered even here, but for the timely remembrance com- ing upon him that Jairing's was but round the corner. Now, Jairing's being an hotel for families and gentle- men, in high repute among the midland counties, Mr. Grazinglands plucked up a great spirit when he told Mrs. Grazinglands she should have a chop there. That lady, likewise, felt that she was going to see Life. Arriving on that gay and festive scene, they found the second waiter, in a flabby undress, cleaning the win- dows of the empty coffee-room; and the first waiter, denuded of his white tie, making up his cruets behind the "Post-Office Directory. The latter (who took them in hand) was greatly put out by their patronage, and showed his mind to be troubled by a sense of the press- ing necessity of instantly smuggling Mrs. Grazinglands into the obscurest corner of the building. This slighted lady (who is the pride of her division of the county) was immediately conveyed, by several dark passages, and up and down several steps, into a penitential apartment at the back of the house, where five invalided old plate- warmers, leaned up against one another under a dis- carded old melancholy sideboard, and where the wintry leaves of all the dining-tables in the house lay thick. Also, a Sofa, of incomprehensible form regarded from any sofane point of view, murmured “Bed;” while an air of mingled fluffiness and heeltaps, added “Second Waiter’s.” Secreted in this dismal hold, objects of a mysterious distrust and suspicion, Mr. Grazinglands and his charming partner waited twenty minutes for the Smoke (for it never came to a fire), twenty-five min- utes for the sherry, half an hour for the tablecloth, forty minutes for the knives and forks, three-quarters of an hour for the chops, and an hour for the potatoes. On settling the little bill—which was not much more than the day’s pay of a Lieutenant in the navy—Mr. Grazinglands took heart to remonstrate against the gen- eral quality and cost of his reception. To whom the waiter replied, substantially, that Jairing’s made it a merit to have accepted him on any terms: ‘‘ for,” added the waiter (unmistakably coughing at Mrs. Grazing- lands, the pride of her division of the county), “when individuals is not staying in the 'Ouse, their favours is 56 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. not as a rule looked upon as making it worth Mr. Jair- ing’s while; nor is it, indeed, a style of business Mr. Jairing wishes.” Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands passed out of Jairing’s hotel for Families and Gentle- men, in a state of the greatest depression, scorned by the bar; and did not recover their self-respect for several days. * Or take another case. Take your own case. You are going off by railway, from any Terminus. You have twenty minutes for dinner, before you go. You want your dinner, and like Dr. Johnson, Sir, you like to dine. You present to your mind, a picture of the refreshment-table at that terminus. The conyen- tional shabby evening-party Supper—accepted as the model for all termini and all refreshment stations, because it is the last repast known to this state of exist- ence of which any human creature would partake, but in the direst extremity—sickens your contemplation, and your words are these: “I cannot dine on stale sponge-cakes that turn to Sand in the mouth. I cannot dine on shining brown patties, composed of unknown animals within, and offering to my view the device of an indigestible star-fish, in laden, pie-crust without. I cannot dine on a sandwich that has long been pining under an exhausted receiver. I cannot dine On barley- sugar. I cannot dine on Toffee. , You repair to the nearest hotel, and arrive agitated, in the coffee- I’OOTY). It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is very cold to you. Account for it how you may, smooth it over how you will, you cannot deny that he is cold to you. He is not glad to see you, he does not want you, he would much rather you hadn’t come. He Opposes to your flushed condition, an immovable composure. As if this were not enough, another waiter, born, as it would seem, expressly to look at you in this passage of your life, stands at a little distance, with his napkin under his arm and his hands folded, looking at you with all his might. You impress on your waiter that you have ten minutes for dinner, and he proposes that you shall begin with a bit of fish which will be ready in twenty. That proposal, declined, he suggests—as a meat, origin- ality—“a weal or mutton cutlet. You close with either cutiet, any cutlet, anything. He goes leisurely behind REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS. 57 a door and calls down some unseen shaft. A ventrilo- quial dialogue ensues, tending finally to the effect that weal only is available on the spur of the moment. You anxiously call out, ‘‘Veal, then!” Your waiter having settled that point, returned to array your tablecloth, with a table napkin folded cocked-hat-wise (slowly, for something out of window engages his eye), a white wine-glass, a green wine-glass, a blue finger-glass, a tumbler, and a powerful field battery of fourteen castors with nothing in them; or at all events—which is enough for your purpose—with nothing in them that will come out. All this time, the other waiter looks at you—with an air of mental comparison and curiosity, now, as if it had occurred to him that you are rather like his brother. Half your time gone, and nothing come but the jug of ale and the bread, you implore your waiter to “See after that cutlet, waiter; pray do!” He cannot go at Once, for he is carrying in seventeen pounds of American cheese for you to finish with, and a small Landed Estate of celery and water-cresses. The other waiter changes his leg, and takes a new view of you, doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected the resemblance to his brother, and had begun to think you more like his aunt or his grandmother. Again you beseech your waiter with pa- thetic indignation, to “see after that cutlet!” He steps out to see after it, and by-and-by, when you are going away without it, comes back with it. Even then, he will not take the sham silver cover off, without a pause for a flourish, and a look at the musty cutlet as if he were surprised to see it—which cannot possibly be the case, he must have seen it so often before. A sort of fur has been produced upon its surface by the cook's art, and in a sham silver vessel staggering on two feet instead of three, is a cutaneous kind of sauce, of brown pimples and pickled cucumber. You order the bill, but your waiter cannot bring your bill yet, because he is bringing, instead, three flinty-hearted potatoes and two grim head of broccoli, like the occasional ornaments on area railings, badly boiled. You know that you will never come to this pass, any more than to the cheese and the celery, and you imperatively demand your bill; but, it takes time to get, even when gone for, because our waiter has to communicate with a lady who lives ehind a sash-widow in a corner, and who appears to 58 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. have to refer to several Ledgers before she can make it out—as if you had been staying there a year. You become distracted to get away, and the other waiter, Once more changing his leg, still looks at you—but sus- piciously, now, as if you had begun to remind him of the party who took the great-coats last winter. Your bill at last brought and paid, at the rate of sixpence a mouthful, your waiter reproachfully reminds you that ‘‘attendance is not charged for a single meal,” and you have to search in all your pockets for sixpence more. He has a worse opinion of you than ever, when you have given it to him, and lets you out into the street with the air of One saying to himself, as you cannot doubt he is, “I hope we shall never see you here again!” Or, take any other of the numerous travelling in- stances in which, with more time at your disposal, you are, have been, or may be, equally ill served. Take the old-established Bull’s Head with it old-established knife- boxes on its old established sideboards, its old-estab- lished flue under its old-established four-post bedsteads in its old-established airless rooms, its old-established frouziness up-stairs and down-stairs, its old-established cookery, and its old established principles of plunder. Count up your injuries, in its side-dishes of ailing sweet- breads in white poultices, of apothecaries' powders in rice for curry, of pale stewed bits of calf ineffectually relying for an adventitious interest on forcemeat balls. You have had experience of the old-established Bull’s Head stringy fowls, with lower extremities like wooden legs, sticking up out of the dish; of its cannibalic boiled mutton, gushing horribly among its capers, when carved; of its little dishes of pastry—roofs of spermaceti oint- ment, erected over half an apple or four gooseberries. Well for you if you have yet forgotten the old-estab- lished Bull’s Head fruity port; whose reputation was gained solely by the old-established price the Bull’s IHead put upon it, and by the old-established air with which the Bull’s Head set the glasses and D'Oyleys on, and held that Liquid Gout to the three-and-sixpenny wax-candle, as if its old-established colour hadn’t come from the dyer's. - Or lastly, take to finish with, two cases that we all know, every day. We all know the new hotel near the station, where it T.EFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS. 59 N is always gusty, going up the lane which is always muddy, where we are sure to arrive at night, and where we make the gas start awfully when we open the front door. We all know the flooring of the passages and staircases that is too new, and the walls that are too new, and the house that is haunted by the ghost of mortar. We all know the doors that have cracked, and the cracked shutters through which we get a glimpse of the disconsolate moon. We all know the new people, who have come to keep the new hotel, and who wish they had never come, and who (inevitable result) wish we had never come. We all know how much too scant and smooth and bright the new furniture is, and how it has never settled down, and cannot fit itself into right places, and will get into wrong places. We all know how the gas, being lighted, shows maps of Damp upon the walls. We all know how the ghost of mortar asses into our sandwich, stirs our negus, goes up to ed with us, ascends the pale bedroom chimney, and prevents the smoke from following. We all know how a leg of our chair comes off at breakfast in the morning, and how the dejected waiter attributes the accident to a general greenness pervading the establishment, and informs us, in reply to a local inquiry, that he is thankful to say he is an entire stranger in that part of the country, and is going back to his own connection on Saturday. We all know, on the other hand, the great station hotel belonging to the company of proprietors, which has suddenly sprung up in the back outskirts of any place we like to name, and where we look out of our palatial windows, at little back yards and gardens, old summer-houses, fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and pigsties. We all know this hotel in which we can get anything we want, after its kind, for money; but where nobody is glad to see us, or sorry to see us, or minds (our bill paid) whether we come or go, or how, or when, or why, or cares about us. We all know this hotel, where we have no individuality, but put ourselves into the general post, as it were, and are sorted and disposed of accor- ding to our division. We all know that we can get on very well indeed at such a place, but still not perfectly well; and this may be, because the place is largely wholesale, and there is a lingering personal retail inter- est within us that asks to be satisfied. 60 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. To sum up.’ My uncommercial travelling has not yet brought me to the conclusion that we are close to perfec- tion in these matters. And just as I do not believe that the end of the world will ever be near at hand, so long as any of the very tiresome and arrogant people who con- stantly predict that catastrophe are left in it, so I shall have small faith in the Hotel Millennium, while any of the uncomfortable superstitions I have glanced at re- main in existence. CHAPTER VII. TRAVELLING ABROAD. GOT into the travelling chariot—it was of German make, roomy, heavy, and unvarnished—I got into the travelling chariot, pulled up the steps after me, shut myself in with a smart bang of the door, and gave the word, “Go on l’” Immediately, all that W. and S. W. division of Lon- don began to slide away at a pace so lively, that I was over the river, and past the Old Kent Road, and out on Blackheath, and even ascending Shooter’s Hill, before I had had time to look about me in the carriage, like a collected traveller. I had two ample imperials on the roof, other fitted storage for luggage in front, and other up behind; Ihad a net for books overhead, great pockets to all the win- dows, a leathern pouch or two hung up for Odds and ends, and a reading lamp fixed in the back of the chariot, in case I should be benighted. I was amply provided in all respects, and had no idea where I was going (which was delightful), except that I was going abroad. So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the horses, and so fast went I, that it was midway be- tween Gravesend and Rochester, and the widening river was bearing the ships, white sailed, or black- smoked, out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy. “Halloa, l’” said I, to the very queer Small boy, “where do you live?” “At Chatham,” says he. TRAVELLING ABROAD. 61 “What do you do there?” says I. “I go to school,” says he. Itook him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently, the very queer small boy says, “This is Gads-hill we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and ran away.” “You know something about Falstaff, eh?” said I. “All about him,” said the very queer small boy. “I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But do let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house there, if you please!” “You admire that house?” said i. “Bless you, sir,” said the very queer small boy, “when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now, I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said to me, “If you were to be very º and were to work hard, you might some ay come to live in it.” Though that’s impossible!” said the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of window with all his might. I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer Small boy; for that house happens to be my house, and I have reason to believe that what he said was true. Well! I made no halt there, and I soon dropped the very queer small boy and went on. Over the road where the old Romans used to march, Over the road where the old Canterbury pilgrims used to go, over the road where the travelling trains of the old imperious priests and princes used to jingle on horseback between the conti- .nent and this Island through the mud and water, over the road where Shakespeare hummed to himself, “Blow, blow, thou winter wind,” as he sat in the saddle at the gate of the inn yard noticing the carriers; all among the cherry orchards, apple orchards, corn-fields, and hop-gardens; so went I, by Canterbury to Dover. There, the sea was tumbling in, with deep sounds, after dark, and the revolving French light on Cape Grinez was seen regularly bursting out and becoming obscured, as if the head of a gigantic light-keeper in an anxious state of mind were interposed every half minute, to look how it was burning. 62 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Early in the morning I was on the deck of the steam- packet, and we were aiming at the bar in the usual in- tolerable manner, and the bar was aiming at us in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar got by far the best of it, and we got by far the worst—all in the usual in- tolerable manner. - But, when I was clear of the Custom House on the other side, and when I began to make the dust fly on the thirsty French roads, and when the twigsome trees by the wayside (which, I suppose, never will grow leafy, for they never did) guarded here and there a dusty soldier, or field labourer, baking on a heap of broken stones, sound asleep in a fiction of shade, I be- gan to recover my travelling spirits. Coming upon the breaker of the broken stones, in a hard hot shining hat, On which the sun played at a distance as on a burning- glass, I felt that now, indeed, I was in the dear old France of my affection. I should have known it, with- out the well-remembered bottle of rough ordinary wine, the cold roast fowl, the loaf, and the pinch of salt, on which I lunched with unspeakable satisfaction, from one of the stuffed pockets of the chariot. I must have fallen asleep after lunch, for when a ºt face looked in at the window, I started, and S8,1C1 . “Good God, Louis, I dreamed you were dead!” My cheerful servant laughed and answered: “Me? Not at all, sir.” “How glad I am to wake! What are we doing, Louis?” “We go to take relay of horses. Will you walk up the hill?” - “Certainly.” Welcome the old French hill, with the old French lunatic (not in the most distant degree related to Sterne's Maria) living in a thatched dog-kennel half way up, and flying out with his crutch and his big head and ex- tended nightcap, to be beforehand with the old men and women exhibiting crippled children, and with the children exhibiting old men and women, ugly and blind, who always seemed by resurrectionary process to be recalled out of the elements for the sudden peopling of the solitude! “It is well,” said I, scattering among them what { | TRAVELLING ABROAD. 63 small coin I had; “here comes Louis, and I am quite roused from my nap.” - We journeyed on again, and I welcomed every new as- surance that France stood where I had left it. There were the posting-houses, with their archways, dirty stable-yards, and clean postmasters' wives, bright wo- men of business, looking on at the putting-to of the horses; there were the postilions counting what money they got, into their hats, and never making enough of it; there were the standard population of grey horses of Flanders descent, invariably biting One another when they got a chance; there were the fleecy sheep- skins, looped on over their uniforms by the postilions, like bibbed aprons when it blew and rained; there were their jack-boots, and their cracking whips; there were the cathedrals that I got out to see, as under some cruel bondage, in no wise desiring to see them; there were the little towns that appeared to have no reason for be- ing towns, since most of their houses were to let and nobody could be induced to look at them, except the eople who couldn’t let them and had nothing else to do i. look at them all day. I lay a night upon the road and enjoyed delectable cookery of potatoes, and some other sensible things, adoption of which at home would inevitably be shown to be fraught with ruin, somehow or other, to that rickety national blessing, the British farmer; and at last I was rattled, like a single pill in a box, over leagues of stones, until—madly cracking, plunging, and flourishing two grey tails about—I made my triumphal entry into Paris. At Paris, I took an upper apartment for a few days in one of the hotels of the Rue de Rivoli; my front windows looking into the garden of the Tuileries (where the principal difference between the nursemaids and the flowers seemed to be that the former were loco- motive and the latter not); my back windows looking at all the other back windows in the hotel, and deep down into a paved yard, where my German chariot had retired under a tight-fitting archway, to all appearance for life, and where bells rang all day without anybody’s minding them but certain chamberlains with feather brooms and green baize caps, who here and there leaned out of some high window placidly looking down, and where neat waiters with trays on their 64 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. lºhoulders passed and repassed from morning to night. & - - Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible force into the Morgue. I never want to go there, but am always pulled there. One Christmas Day, when I would rather have been anywhere else, I was attracted in, to see an old grey man lying all alone on his cold bed, with a tap of water turned on over his grey hair, and running drip, drip, drip, down his wretched face until it got to the corner of his mouth, where it took a turn, and made him look sly. One New Year's Morn- ing (by the same token, the Sun was shining outside, and there was a mountebank balancing a feather on his nose, within a yard of the gate), I was pulled in again to look at a flaxen-haired boy of eighteen, with a heart hanging on his breast—“from his mother,” was engraven on it—who had come into the net across the river, with a bullet wound in his fair forehead and his hands cut with a knife, but whence or how was a blank mystery. This time, I was forced into the same dread place, to see a large dark man whose disfigurement by water was in a frightful manner comic, and whose ex- pression was that of a prize-fighter who had closed his eyelids under a heavy blow, but was going immediately to open them, shake his head, and “come up Smiling.” Oh what this large dark man cost me in that bright City | - †. was very hot weather, and he was none the better for that, and I was much the worse. Indeed, a very neat and pleasant little woman with the key of her lodging on her forefinger, who had been showing him to her little girl while she and the child ate sweetmeats, observed monsieur looking poorly as we came out to- gether, and asked monsieur, with her wondering little eyebrows prettily raised, if there were anything the matter? Faintly replying in the negative, monsieur crossed the road to a wine-shop, got some brandy, and resolved to freshen himself with a dip in the great floating bath on the river. The bath was crowded in the usual airy manner, by a male population in Striped drawers of various gay colours, who walked up and down arm in arm, drank coffee, smoked cigars, sat at little tables, conversed politely with the damsels who dispensed the towels, TRAVELLING ABROAD. 65 and every now and then pitched themselves into the river head foremost, and came out again to repeat this social routine. I made haste to participate in the water part of the entertainments, and was in the full enjoy- ment of a delightful bath, when all in a moment I was seized with an unreasonable idea that the large dark body was floating straight at me. I was out of the river, and dressing instantly. In the shock I had taken some water into my mouth, and it turned me sick, for I fancied that the contamination of the creature was in it. I had got back to my cool darkened room in the hotel, and was lying on a sofa there, before I began to reason with myself. Of course, I knew perfectly well that the large dark creature was stone dead, and that I should no more come upon him out of the place where I had seen him dead, than I should come upon the cathedral of Notre- Dame in an entirely new situation. What troubled me was the picture of the creature; and that had so curi- ously and strongly painted itself upon my brain, that I could not get rid of it until it was worn out. I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, while it was a real discomfort to me. That very day, at dinner, some morsel on my plate looked like a piece of him, and I was glad to get up and go out. Later in the even- ing, I was walking along the Rue St. Honoré, when I saw a bill at a public room there, announcing small- sword exercise, broad-sword exercise, wrestling, and other such feats. I went in, and some of the sword- play being very skilful, remained. A specimen of our own national sport, The British Boaxe, was announced to be given at the close of the evening. In an evil hour, I determined to wait for this Boaxe, as became a Briton. It was a clumsy specimen (executed by two English grooms out of place), but one of the combat- ants, receiving a straight right-hander with the glove between his eyes, did exactly what the large dark creature in the Morgue had seemed going to do—and finished me for that night. There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an unusual fragrance in Paris) in the little ante-room of my apart- ment at the hotel. The large dark creature in the Morgue was by no direct experience associated with my sense of smell, because, when I came to the knowledge VOL. I. 5 66 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. of him, he lay behind a wall of thick plate-glass as good as a wall of steel or marble for that matter. Yet the whiff of the room never failed to reproduce him. What was more curious, was the capriciousness with which his portrait seemed to light itself up in my mind, else- where. I might be walking in the Palais Royal, lazily enjoying the shop windows, and might be regaling my- self with one of the ready-made clothes shops that are set out there. My eyes, wandering over impossible- waisted dressing-gowns and luminous waistcoats, would fall upon the master, or the shopman, or even the very dummy at the door, and would suggest to me, “Something like him!”—and instantly I was sickened again. This would happen at the theatre, in the same man- ner. Often it would happen in the street, when I cer- tainly was not looking for the likeness, and when probably there was no likeness there. It was not be- cause the creature was dead that I was so haunted, be- cause I know that I might have been (and I know it because I have been) equally attended by the image of a living aversion. This lasted about a week. The picture did not fade by degrees, in the sense that became a whit less forcible and distinct, but in the sense that it obtruded itself less and less frequently. The experience may be worth considering by some who have the care of children. It would be difficult to over- state the intensity and accuracy of an intelligent child’s observation. At that impressible time of life, it must sometimes produce a fixed impression. If the fixed im- pression be of an object terrible to the child, it will be §. want of reasoning upon) inseparable from great ear. Force the child at such a time, be Spartan with it, send it into the dark against its will, leave it in a lonely bedroom against its will, and you had better murder it. On a bright morning I rattled away from Paris, in the German chariot, and left the large dark creature behind me for good. I Ought to confess, though, that I had been drawn back to the Morgue, after he was put underground, to look at his clothes, and that I found them frightfully like him—particularly his boots. How- ever, I rattled away for Switzerland, looking forward and not backward, and so we parted company. TRAVELLING ABROAD. 6% Welcome again, the long long spell of France, with the queer country inns, full of vases of flowers and clocks, in the dull little towns, and with the little popu- lation not at all dull on the little Boulevard in the even- ing, under the little trees! Welcome Monsieur the Curé walking alone in the early morning a short way out of the town, reading that eternal Breviary of yours, which surely might be almost read, without book, by this time! Welcome Monsieur the Curé, later in the day, jolting through the highway dust (as if you had already ascended to the cloudy region), in a very big- headed cabriolet, with the dried mud of a dozen winters on it. Welcome again Monsieur the Curé, as we ex- change salutations; you, straightening your back to look at the German chariot, while picking in your little village garden a vegetable or two for the day’s soup: I, looking out of the German chariot window in that de- licious traveller's trance which knows no cares, no yes- terdays, no to-morrows, nothing but the passing objects and the passing scents and sounds! And so I came, in due course of delight, to Strasbourg, where I passed a wet Sunday evening at a window, while an idle trifle of a vaudeville was played for me at the opposite house. How such a large house came to have only three people living in it, was its own affair. There were at least a score of windows in its high roof alone; how many in its grotesque front, I soon gave up counting. The owner was a shopkeeper, by name Straudenheim; by trade—I couldn’t make out what by trade, for he º forborne to write that up, and his shop was Shut. At first, as I looked at Straudenheim’s, through the steadily falling rain, I set him up in business in the goose-liver line. But, inspection of Straudenheim, who became visible at a window on the second floor, con- vinced me that there was something more precious than liver in the case. He wore a black velvet skull- cap, and looked usurious and rich. A large-lipped, pear-nosed old man, with white hair, and keen eyes, though near-sighted. He was writing at a desk, was Straudenheim, and ever and again left off writing, put his pen in his mouth, and went through actions with his right hand, like a man steadying piles of cash. Rive-franc pieces, Straudenheim, or golden Napoleons? 68 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. A jeweller, Straudenheim, a dealer in money, a diamond merchant, or what? - Below Straudenheim, at a window on the first floor, Sat his housekeeper—far from young, but of a comely gº suggestive of a well-matured foot and ankle. he was cheerily dressed, had a fan in her hand, and wore large gold ear-rings and a large gold cross. She would have been out holiday-making (as I settled it) but for the pestilent rain. Strasbourg had given up holiday-making for that once, as a bad job, because the rain was jerking in gushes out of the old roof- Spouts, and running in a brook down the middle of the street. The housekeeper, her arms folded on her bosom. and her fan tapping her chin, was bright and smiling at her open window, but otherwise Straudenheim’s house front was very dreary. The housekeeper's was the only open window in it; Straudenheim kept himself close, though it was a Sultry evening when air is pleas- ant, and though the rain had brought into the town that vague refreshing smell of grass which rain does bring in the summer time. The dim appearance of a man at Strauderſheim’s shoulder, inspired me with a misgiving that somebody had come to murder that flourishing merchant for the wealth with which I had handsomely endowed him: the rather, as it was an excited man, lean and long of figure, and evidently stealthy of foot. But, he confer- red with Straudenheim instead of doing him a mortal injury, and then they both Softly opened the other win- dow of that room—which was immediately over the housekeeper's—and tried to see her by looking down. And my opinion of Straudenheim was much lowered when I saw that eminent citizen spit out of window, clearly with the hope of spitting on the housekeeper. The unconscious housekeeper fanned herself, tossed her head, and laughed. Though unconscious of Strau- denheim, she was conscious of somebody else—of me? there was nobody else. After leaning so far out of window, that I confidently expected to see their heels tilt up, Straudenheim and the lean man drew their heads in and shut the window. Presently the house door secretly opened, and they slowly and spitefully crept forth into the pouring rain. They were coming over to me (I thought) to demand TRAVELLING ABROAD. 69 satisfaction for my looking at the housekeeper, when they plunged into a recess in the architecture under my window and dragged out the puniest of little soldiers, begint with the most innocent of little swords. The tall glazed head-dress of this warrior, Straudenheim in- stantly knocked off, and out of it fell two sugar-sticks, and three or four large lumps of Sugar. The warrior made no effort to recover his property or to pick up his shako, but looked with an expression of attention at Straudenheim when he kicked him five times, and also at the lean man when he kicked him five times, and again at Straudenheim when he tore the breast of his (the warrior's) little coat open, and shook all his ten fingers in his face, as if they were ten thousand. When these outrages had been committed Straudenheim and his man went into the house again and barred the door. A wonderful circumstance was, that the housekeeper who saw it all (and who could have taken six such warriors to her buxom bosom at once), only fanned herself and laughed as she had laughed before, and seemed to have no opinion about it one way or other. - But, the chief effect of the drama was the remark- able vengeance taken by the little warrior. Left alone in the rain, he picked up his shako; put it on, all wet and dirty as it was; retired into a court, of which Straudenheim’s house formed the corner ; wheeled about; and bringing his two forefingers close to the top of his nose, rubbed them over one another, crosswise, in derision, defiance, and contempt of Straudenheim. Although Straudenheim could not possibly be supposed to be conscious of this strange proceeding, it so inflated and comforted the little warrior's soul, that twice he went away, and twice came back into the court to re- peat it, as though it must goad his enemy to madness. Not only that, but he afterwards came back with two other small warriors, and they all three did it together. Not only that—as I live to tell the tale!—but just as it was falling quite dark, the three came back, bringing with them a huge bearded Sapper, whom they moved by recital of the original wrong, to go through the same performance, with the same complete absence of all pos- sible knowledge of it on the part of Straudenheim. And then they all went away, arm in arm, singing. 70 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. I went away too, in the German chariot at sunrise, and rattled on, day after day, like one in a sweet dream; with so many clear little bells on the harness of the horses, that the nursery rhyme about Banbury Cross and the venerable lady who rode in state there, was always in my ears. And now I came to the land of wooden houses, innocent cakes, thin butter soup, and spotless little inn bedrooms with a family likeness to Dairies. And now the Swiss marksmen were for ever rifle-shooting at marks across gorges, so exceedingly near my ear, that I felt like a new Gesler in a Canton of Tells, and went in highly-deserved danger of my tyrannical life. The prizes at these shootings were watches, Smart handkerchiefs, hats, spoons, and (above all) tea-trays; and at these contests I came upon a more. than usually accomplished arid amiable countryman of my own, who had shot himself deaf in whole years of competition, and had won so many tea-trays that he went about the country with his carriage full of them, like a glorified Cheap-Jack. In the mountain-country into which I had now travelled, a yoke of oxen were sometimes hooked on before the post-horses, and I went lumbering up, up, up through mist and rain, with the roar of falling water for change of music. Of a sudden, mist and rain would clear away, and I would come down into picturesque little towns with gleaming spires and odd towers; and would stroll afoot into market-places in steep winding streets, where a hundred women in bodices, sold eggs and honey, butter and fruit, and suckled their children as they sat by their clean baskets, and had such enor- mous goitres (or grandular swellings in the throat) that it became a science to know where the nurse ended and the child began. About this time, I deserted my German chariot for the back of a mule (in colour and consistency so very like a dusty old hair trunk I Once had at school, that I half-expected to see my initials in brass-headed nails on his backbone), and went up a thousand rugged ways, and looked down at a thousand woods of fir and pine, and would on the whole have pre- ferred my mule's keeping a little nearer to the inside, and not usually travelling with a hoof or two over the precipice—though much consoled by explanation that this was to be attributed to his great Sagacity, by TRAVELLING ABROAD. - 71 reason of his carrying broad loads of wood at other times, and not being clear but that I myself belonged to that station of life, and required as much room as they. He brought me safely, in his own wise way, among the passes of the Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen climates a day; being now (like Don Quixote on the back of the wooden horse) in the region of wind, now in the region of fire, now in the region of unmelt- ing ice and snow. Here, I passed over trembling domes of ice, beneath which the cataract was roaring; and here was received under arches of icicles, of unspeak- able beauty; and here the sweet air was so bracing and so light, that at halting-times I rolled in the Snow when I saw my mule do it, thinking that he must know best. At this part of the journey we would come, at mid-day into half an hour's thaw: when the rough mountain inn would be found on an island of deep mud in a sea of snow, while the baiting strings of mules, and the carts full of casks and bales, which had been in an Arctic condition a mile off, would steam again. By such ways and means, I would come to the cluster of châlets where I had to turn out of the track to see the waterfall; and then, uttering a howl like a young giant, on espying a traveller—in other words, Something to eat—coming up the steep, the idiot lying on the wood-pile who sunned himself and nursed his goitre, would rouse the woman-guide within the hut, who would stream out hastily, throwing her child over One of her shoulders and her goitre over the other, as she came along. I slept at religious houses, and bleak refuges of many kinds, on this journey, and by the stove at night heard stories of travellers who had perished within call, in wreaths and drifts of snow. One night the stove within, and the cold outside, awakened childish associations long forgotten, and I dreamed I was in Russia—the identical serf out of a picture-book I had, before I could read it for myself—and that I was going to be knouted by a noble personage in a fur cap, boots, and ear-rings, who I think, must have come out of some melodrama. Commend me to the beautiful waters among these mountains! Though I was not of their mind: they, being inveterately bent on getting down into the level country, and I ardently desiring to linger where I was, 72 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. What desperate leaps they took, what dark abysses they plunged into, what rocks they tore away, what echoes they invoked! In one part where I went, they were pressed into the service of carrying wood down, to be burnt next winter, as costly fuel, in Italy. But, their fierce savage nature was not to be easily con- strained, and they fought with every limb of the wood; whirling it round and round, stripping its bark away, dashing it against pointed corners, driving it out of the course, and roaring and flying at the peasants who steered it back again from the bank with long stout poles. Alas! concurrent streams of time and water carried me down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely clear day, to the Lausanne shore of the Lake of Geneva, where I stood looking at the bright blue water, the flushed white mountains opposite, and the boats at my feet with their furled Mediterranean sails, showing like enormous magnifications of this goose-quill pen that is now in my hand. —The sky became overcast without any notice; a wind very like the March east wind of England, blew across me; and a voice said, “How do you like it? Will it, dOP.” . I had merely shut myself for half a minute, in a Ger- man travelling chariot that stood for sale in the Car- riage Department of the London Pantechnicon. I had a commission to buy it, for a friend who was going abroad; and the look and manner of the chariot, as I tried the cushions and the springs, brought all these hints of travelling remembrance before me. . “It will do very well,” said I, rather sorrowfully, as I got out at the other door, and shut the carriage up. CHAPTER VIII. THE GREAT TASMANIA’s CARGO. T TRAVEL constantly, up and down a certain line of railway that has a terminus in London. It is the railway for a large military depôt, and for other large barracks, To the best of my serious belief, I have THE GREAT TASMANIA'S CARGO. 73 never been on that railway by daylight, without seeing some handcuffed deserters in the train. It is in the nature of things that such an institution as our English army should have many bad and trouble- some characters in it. But, this is a reason for, and not against, its being made as acceptable as possible to well-disposed men of decent behaviour. Such men are assuredly not tempted into the ranks, by the beastly inversion of natural laws, and the compulsion to live in worse than swfnish foulness. Accordingly, when any such Circumlocution embellishments of the soldier’s condition have of late been brought to notice, we civil- ians, seated in Outer darkness cheerfully meditating on an Income Tax, have considered the matter as being our business, and have shown a tendency to declare that we would rather not have it misregulated, if such declaration may, without violence to the Church Cate- chism, be hinted to those who are put in authority OVéI Uls. Any animated description of a modern battle, any private soldier's letter published in the newspapers, any page of the records of the Victoria Cross, will show that in the ranks of the army, there exists under all disadvantages as fine a sense of duty as is to be found in any station on earth. Who doubts that if we all did our duty as faithfully as the soldier does his, this world would be a better place? There may be greater difficulties in our way than in the soldier's. - Nº. disputed. But, let us at least do our duty towards Q/h)?). I had got back again to that rich and beautiful port where I had looked after Mercantile Jack, and I was walking up a hill there, on a wild March morning. My conversation with my official friend Pangloss, by whom I was accidentally accompanied, took this direction as we took the up-hill direction, because the object of my uncommercial journey was to see some discharged sol- diers who had recently come home from India. There were men of HAVELOCK's among them; there were men who had been in many of the great battles of the great Indian campaign among them; and I was curious to note what our discharged soldiers looked like, when they were done with. I was not the less interested (as I mentioned to my *4 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. * official friend Pangloss) because these men had claimed to be discharged, when their right to be discharged was not admitted. They had behaved with unblem- ished fidelity and bravery; but, a change of circum- stances had arisen, which, as they considered, put an end to their compact and entitled them to enter on a new one. Their demand had been blunderingly resisted by the authorities in India; but, it is to be presumed that the men were not far wrong, inasmuch as the bungle had ended in their being sent home discharged, in pursuance of orders from home. (There was an im- mense waste of money, of course). Under these circumstances—thought I, as I walked up the hill, on which I accidentally encountered my official friend—under these circumstances the men having successfully opposed themselves to the Pagoda Department of that great Circumlocution Office on which the sun never sets and the light of reason never rises, the Pagoda Department will have been particu- larly careful of the national honour. It will have shown these men, in the scrupulous good faith, not to say the generosity, of its dealing with them, that great national authorities can have no small retaliations and revenges. It will have made every provision for their health on the passage home, and will have landed them restored from their campaigning fatigues by a sea- voyage, pure air, sound food, and good medicines. And fºld. myself with dwelling beforehand, on the great accounts of their personal treatment which these men would carry into their various towns and villages, and on the increasing popularity of the service that would insensibly follow. I almost began to hope that the hitherto-never-failing deserters on my railroad would by-and-by become a phenomenon. In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the work- house of Liverpool.-For, the cultivation of laurels in a sandy soil, had brought the soldiers in question to to that abode of Glory. * Before going into their wards to visit them, I inquired how they had made their triumphant entry there 2 They had been brought through the rain in carts, it seemed, from the landing-place to the gate, and had then been carried up-stairs on the backs of paupers. Their groans and pains during the performance of this THE GREAT TASMANIA’S CARGO. 75 glorious pageant, had been so distressing, as to bring tears into the eyes of spectators but too well accus- tomed to scenes of suffering. The men were so dread- fully cold, that those who could get near the fires were hard to be restrained from thrusting their feet in among the blazing coals. They were so horribly reduced, that they were awful to look upon. Racked with dysentery and blackened with scurvy, one hundred and forty wretched soldiers had been revived with brandy and laid in bed. My official friend Pangloss is lineally descended from a learned doctor of that name, who was once tutor to Candide, an ingenious young gentleman of some celebrity. In his personal character, he is as humane and worthy a gentleman as any I know: in his official capacity, he unfortunately preaches the doctrines of his renowned ancestor, by demonstrating on all occasions that we live in the best of all possible official worlds. “In the name of Humanity,” said I, “how did the men fall into this deplorable state? Was the ship well found in stores?” “I am not here to asseverate that I know the fact, of my own knowledge, ’’ answered Pangloss, “but I have grounds for asserting that the stores were the best of all possible stores.” & A medical officer laid before us a handfull of rotten biscuit, and a handful of split peas. The biscuit was a honeycombed heap of maggots, and the excrement of maggots. The peas were even harder than this filth. A similar handful had been experimentally boiled six hours, and had shown no signs of softening. lººse were the stores on which the soldiers had been €Ol. - “The beef-” I began, when Pangloss cut me short. “Was the best of all possible beef,” said he. But, behold, there was laid before us certain evi- dence given at the Coromer's Inquest, holden on some of the men (who had obstimately died of their treat- ment), and from that evidence it appeared that the beef was the worst of possible beef! “Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and take my stand,” said Pangloss, “by the pork, which was the best of all possible pork.” “But look at this food before our eyes, if one may so 76 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. misuse the word,” said I. “Would any Inspector who did his duty, pass such abomination?” “It Ought not to have been passed,” Pangloss admitted. - “Then the authorities out there—” I began, when Pangloss cut me short again. “There would certainly seem to have been something wrong somewhere,” said he; ‘‘ but I am prepared to prove that the authorities out there, are the best of all possible authorities.” X- I never heard of any impeached public authority in my life, who was not the best public authority in existence. “We are told of these unfortunate men being laid low by scurvy,” said I. “Since lime-juice has been regularly stored and served out in our navy, Surely that disease, which used to devastate it, has almost disappeared 2 Was there lime-juice aboard this transport?” My official friend was beginning “the best of all pos- sible—”.when an inconvenient medical forefinger pointed out another passage in the evidence, from which it appeared that the lime-juice had been bad too. Not to mention that the vinegar had been bad too, the vegetables bad too, the cooking accommodation insuf- ficient (if there had been anything worth mentioning to cook), the water supply exceedingly inadequate, and the beer sour. “Then the men,” said Pangloss, a little irritated, “were the worst of all possible men.” “In what respect 2 " I asked. * “Oh Habitual drunkards,” said Pangloss. But, again the same incorrigible medical forefinger pointed out another passage in the evidence, showing that the dead men had been examined after death, and that they, at least, could not possibly have been habitual drunkards, because the organs within them which must have shown traces of that habit, were perfectly sound. - “And besides,” said the three doctors present, one and all, “ habitual drunkards brought as low as these men have been, could not recover under care and food, as the great majority of these men are recovering. They would not have strength of constitution to do it.” THE GREAT TASMANIA'S CARGO. 77 “Reckless and improvident dogs, then,” said Pan- gloss. “Always are—nine times out of ten.” I turned to the master of the workhouse, and asked him whether the men had any money? “Money?” said he. “I have in my iron safe, nearly four hundred pounds of theirs; the agents have nearly a hundred pounds more; and many of them have left money in Indian banks besides.” “Hah l’” said I to myself, as we went up-stairs, “this is not the best of all possible stories, I doubt!” We went into a large ward, containing some twenty or five-and-twenty beds. We went into several such wards, one after another. I find it very difficult to in- dicate what a shocking sight I saw in them, without frightening the reader from the perusal of these lines, and defeating my object of making it known. O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked between the rows of beds, or—worse still—that glaz- edly looked at the white ceiling, and saw nothing and cared for nothing ! Here lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly covered with a thin unwholesome skin, that not a bone in the anatomy was clothed, and I could clasp the arm above the elbow, in my finger and thumb. Here, lay a man with the black scurvy eating his legs away, his gums gone, and his teeth all gaunt and bare. This bed was empty, be- cause gangrene had set in, and the patient had died but yesterday. That bed was a hopeless one, because its occupant was sinking fast, and could only be roused to turn the poor pinched mask of face upon the pillow, with a feeble moan. The awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the awful brightness of the deep- set eyes, the lips of lead, the hands of ivory, the re- cumbent human images lying in the shadow of death with a kind of solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who had died aboard the ship and were lying at the bottom of the sea, O Pangloss, GoD forgive you! In one bed, lay a man whose life had been saved (as it was hoped) by deep incisions in the feet and legs. While I was speaking to him, a nurse came up to change the poultices which this operation had rendered necessary, and I had an instinctive feeling that it was not well to turn away, merely to spare myself. He was Sorely wasted and keenly susceptible, but the efforts he 78 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. made to subdue any expression of impatience or suffer- ing, were quite heroic. It was easy to see, in the shrinking of the figure, and the drawing of the bed- clothes over the head, how acute the endurance was, and it made me shrink too, as if I were in pain; but, when the new bandages were on, and the poor feet were composed agan, he made an apology for himself (though he had not uttered a word), and said plaintively, “I am so tender and weak, you see, sir!” Neither from him nor from any one sufferer of the whole ghastly number, did I hear a complaint. Of thankful- ness for present solicitude and care, I heard much; of complaint, not a word. I think I could have recognised in the dismalest skel- eton there, the ghost of a soldier. Something of the old air was still latent in the palest shadow of life I talked to. One emaciated creature, in the strictest lit- erality worn to the bone, lay stretched on his back, looking so like death that I asked one of the doctors if he were not dying, or dead? A few kind words from the doctor, in his ear, and he opened his eyes, and smiled—looked, in a moment, as if he would have made a salute, if he could. “We shall pull him through, please God,” said the Doctor. “Plase God, surr, and thankye,” said the patient. “You are much better to- day; are you not?” said the Doctor. “Plase God, surr; 'tis the slape I want, surr; ’tis my breathin’ makes the nights so long.” “He is a careful fellow this, you must know,” said the Doctor, cheerfully; “it was rain- ing hard when they put him in the open cart to bring him here, and he had the presence of mind to ask to have a sovereign taken Out of his pocket that he had there, and a cab engaged. Probably it saved his life.” The patient rattled out the skeleton of a laugh, and said, proud of the story, “’Deed, surr, an open cairt was a comical means O' bringin' a dyin’ man here, and a clever way to kill him.” You might have sworn to him for a soldier when he said it. One thing had perplexed me very much in going from bed to bed. A very significant and cruel thing. I could find no young man but one. He had attracted my notice, by having got up and dressed himself in his soldier's jacket and trousers, with the intention of sit- ting by the fire; but he had found himself too weak, THE GREAT TASMANIA'S CARGO. 79 and had crept back to his bed and laid himself down on the outside of it. I could have pronounced him, alone, to be a young man aged by famine and sickness. As we were standing by the Irish soldier's bed, I men- tioned my perplexity to the Doctor. He took a board with an inscription on it from the head of the Irish- man’s bed, and asked me what age I supposed that man to be? I had observed him with attention while talking to him, and answered, confidently, “Fifty.” The Doctor, with a pitying glance at the patient, who had dropped into a stupor again, put the board back, and said, “Twenty-four.” All the arrangements of the wards were excellent. They could not have been more humane, sympathising, gentle, attentive, or wholesome. The owners of the ship, too, had done: all they could, liberally. There were bright fires in every room, and the convalescent men were sitting round them, reading various papers and periodicals. I took the liberty of inviting my offi- cial friend Pangloss to look at those convalescent men, and to tell me whether their faces and bearing were or were not, generally, the faces and bearing of steady respectable soldiers? The master of the workhouse, Overhearing me, said he had had a pretty large experi- ence of troops, and that better conducted men than these, he had never had to do with. They were always (he added) as we saw them. And of us visitors (I add) #. knew nothing whatever, except that we were there. - It was audacious in me, but I took another liberty with Pangloss. Prefacing it with the observation that, of course, I knew beforehand that there was not the faintest desire, anywhere, to hush up any part of this dreadful business, and that the Inquest was the fairest of all possible Inquests, I besought four things of Pan- gloss. Firstly, to observe that the Inquest was mot held in that place, but at some distance off. Secondly, to look round upon those helpless spectres in their beds. Thirdly, to remember that the witnesses produced from among them before that Inquest, could not have been selected because they were the men who had the most to tell it, but because they happened to be in a state admitting of their safe removal. Fourthly, to say whether the coroner and Jury could have come there, 80 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. to those pillows, and taken a little evidence? My offi- cial friend declined to commit himself to a reply, There was a sergeant, reading, in one of the fireside groups. As he was a man of very intelligent counte- nance, and as I have a great respect for non-commis- sioned officers as a class, I sat down on the nearest bed, to have some talk with him. (It was the bed of one of the grisliest of the poor skeletons, and he died soon afterwards.) “I was glad to see, in the evidence of an officer at the Inquest, sergeant, that he never saw men behave better on board ship than these men.” “They did behave very well, sir.” “I was glad to see, too, that every man had a hammock.” The sergeant gravely shook his head. “There must be some mistake, sir. The men of my own mess had no hammocks. There were not hammocks enough on board, and the men of the two next messes laid hold of , hammocks for themselves as soon as they got on board, and squeezed my men out, as I may say.” . “Had the squeezed-out men none then?” “None, sir. As men died, their hammocks were used by other men, who wanted hammocks; but many men had none at all.” - “Then you don’t agree with the evidence on that point?” - “Certainly not, sir. A man can’t, when he knows to the contrary.” “Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink?” “There is some mistake on that point too, sir. Men were under the impression—I knew it for a fact at the time—that it was not allowed to take blankets or bed- ding on board, and so men who had things of that sort came to sell them purposely.” “Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink?” “They did, sir. (I believe there never was a more truthful witness than the sergeant. He had no inclina- tion to make out a case.) 6 & Many? 22 “Some, sir?’ (considering the question). “Soldier- like. They had been long marching in the rainy season, by bad roads—no roads at all, in short—and 40 - THE GREAT TASMANIA'S CARGO. 81 when they got to Calcutta, men turned to and drank, before taking a last look at it. Soldier-like.” “Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who sold clothes for drink at that time?” - The sergeant's wan eye, happily just beginning to re- kindle with health, travelled round the place and came back to me. “Certainly, sir.” “The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must have been severe?” “It was very severe, sir.” “Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I should have thought that the men (even the men who got drunk) would have soon begun to recover on board Ship P” *ś, they might; but the bad food told upon them, and when we got into a cold latitude, it began to tell more, and the men dropped.” - “The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am told, sergeant?” “Have you seen the food, sir?” “Some Of it. ” “Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir?” If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, had spoken the amount of this volume, he could not have settled that question better. I believe the sick could as soon have eaten the ship, as the ship's provisions. I took the additional liberty with my friend Pan- gloss, when I had left the sergeant with good wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he had ever heard of biscuit getting drunk and bartering its nutritious qualities for putrefaction and vermin; of peas becoming hardened in liquor; of hammocks drinking themselves off the face of the earth; of lime-juice, vegetables, vinegar, cooking accommodation, water supply, and beer, all taking to drinking together and going to ruin? “If not (I asked him), what did he say in defence of the officers con. demned by the Coroner's Jury, who, by signing the General Inspection report relative to the ship Great Tasmania, chartered for these troops, had deliberately asserted all that bad and poisonous dung-hill refuse, to be good and wholesome food?” My official friend re- plied that it was a remarkable fact, that whereas some officers were only positively good, and other officers VOL. I. 6 - 82 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. only comparatively better, those particular officers were superlatively the very best of all possible officers. My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record of this journey. The spectacle of the ji. in the hospital-beds of that Liverpool workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be it understood), was so shocking and so shameful, that as an Englishman I blush to re- member it. It would have been simply unbearable at the time, but for the consideration and pity with which they were soothed in their sufferings. No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is worthy of the name when set against the guilt of this transaction. But, if the memory of it die out unavenged, and if it do not result in the inexorable dismissal and disgrace of those who are responsible for it, their escape will be infamous to the Government (no matter of what party) that so neglects its duty, and infamous to the nation that tamely suffers such intolerable wrong to be done in its name. CHAPTER IX. CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES. F the confession that I have often travelled from this Covent Garden lodging of mine on Sundays, should give offence to those who never travel on Sundays, they will be satisfied (I hope) by my adding that the jour- neys in question were made to churches. Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preach- ers. Time was, when I was dragged by the hair of my head, as one may say, to hear too many. On Summer evenings, when every flower, and tree, and bird, might have better addressed my soft young heart, I have in my day been caught in the palm of a female hand by the crown, have been violently scrubbed from the neck to the roots of the hair as a purification for the Temple, and have then been carried off highly charged with saponaceous electricity, to be steamed like a potato in the unventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges . Boiler and his congregation, until what small mind I had, was quite steamed out of me. In which pitiable plight I have then been haled out of the place of meeting, CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES. 83 *. at the conclusion of the exercises, and catechised respec- ting Boanerges Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly, and his seventhly, until I have regarded that reverend person in the light of a most dismal and oppressive Charade. Time was, when I was carried off to platform assem- blages at which no human child, whether of wrath or grace, could possibly keep its eyes open, and when I felt the fatal sleep stealing, stealing over me, and when I gradually heard the Orator in possession, spinning and humming like a great top, until he rolled, collapsed, and tumbled over, and I discovered to my burning shame and fear, that as to that last stage it was not he, but I. I have sat under Boanerges when he has spe- cifically addressed himself to us—us, the infants—and. at this present writing I hear his lumbering jocularity (which never amused us, though we basely pretended that it did), and I behold his big round face, and I look up the inside of his outstretched coat-sleeve as if it were a telescope with the stooper on, and I hate him with an unwholesome hatred for two hours. Through such means did it come to pass that I knew the powerful preacher from beginning to end, all over and all through, while I was very young, and that I left him behind at an early period of life. Peace be with him! More peace than he brought to me! ºx. Now, I have heard many preachers since that time— not powerful; merely Christian, unaffected, and rever- ential—and I have had many such preachers on my roll of friends. But, it was not to hear these, any more than the powerful class, that I made my Sun- day journeys. They were journeys of curiosity to the numerous churches in the City of London. It came into my head one day, here had I been cultivating a familiarity with all the churches of Rome, and I knew nothing of the insides of the old churches of Lon- don! This befell on a Sunday morning. I began my expeditions that very same day, and they lasted me a V €a,I’. I never wanted to know the names of the churches to which I went, and to this hour I am profoundly ignorant in that particular of at least nine-tenths of them. Indeed, saving that I know the church of old Gower’s tomb (he lies in effigy with his head upon his books) to be the church of Saint Saviour’s, Southwark; S4 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. and the church of MILTON's tomb to be the church of Cripplegate; and the church on Cornhill with the great golden keys to be the church of Saint Peter; I doubt if I could pass a competitive examination in any of the names. . No question did I ever ask of living creature concerning these churches, and no answer to any anti- Quarian question on the subject that I ever put to books, shall harass the reader's soul. . A full half of my pleas- ure in them arose out of their mystery; mysterious I found them; mysterious they shall remain for me. Where shall I begin my round of hidden and forgot- ten old churches in the City of London? It is twenty minutes short of eleven on a Sunday morning, when I stroll down one of the many narrow hilly streets in the City that tend due south of the Thames. It is my first experiment, and I have come to the region of Whittington in an omnibus, and we have put down a fierce-eyed spare old woman, whose slate- coloured gown smells of herbs, and who walked up' Aldersgate-street to some chapel where she comforts herself with brimstone doctrine, I warrant. . We have also put down a stouter and sweeter old lady, with a pretty large prayer-book in an unfolded pocket- handkerchief, who got out at a corner of a court near Stationers' Hall, and who I think must go to church there, because she is the widow of some deceased old Company’s Beadle. The rest of our freight were mere chance pleasure-seekers and rural walkers, and went on to the Blackwall railway. So many bells are ring- ing, when I stand undecided at a street corner, that every sheep in the ecclesiastical fold might be a bell- wether. The discordance is fearful. My State of in- decision is referable to, and about equally divisible among, four great churches, which are all within sight and sound, all within the space of a few square ards. y As I stand at the street corner, I don’t see as many as four people at Once going to church, though I See, as many as four churches with their steeples clamouring for people. I choose my church, and go up the flight of steps to the great entrance in the tower. A mouldy tower within, and like a neglected washhouse. A rope comes through the beamed roof, and a man in the cor- ner pulls it and clashes the bell—a whity-brown man, 2-w^*- - - - - - - -, * t CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES. 85 whose clothes were once black—a man with flue on him, and cobweb. He stares at me, wondering how I come there, and I stare at him, wondering how he comes there. Through a screen of wood and glass, I peep into the dim church. About twenty people are discernible, waiting to begin. Christening would seem to have faded out of this church long ago, for the font has the dust of desuetude thick upon it, and its wooden cover (shaped like an old-fashioned tureen-cover) looks as if it wouldn’t come off, upon requirement. I per- ceive the altar to be rickety and the Commandments damp. Entering after this survey, I jostle the clergy- man in his canonicals, who is entering too from a dark lane behind a pew of state with curtains, where nobody sits. The pew is ornamented with four blue wands, once carried by four somebodys, I suppose, before somebody else, but which there is nobody now to hold or receive honour from. I open the door of a family pew, and shut myself in; if I could occupy twenty family pews at once I might have them. The clerk, a young man (how does he come here?), glances at me knowingly, as who should say, “You have done it now; you must stop.” Organ plays. Organ-loft is in a small gallery across the church; gallery congregation, two girls. I wonder with myself what will happen when we are required to sing. * There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and while the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I can hear more of the rusty working of the stops than of any music, I look at the books, which are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They belonged in 1754 to the Dowgate family; and who were they? Jane Comport must have married Young Dowgate, and come into the family that way; Young Dowgate was courting Jane Comport when he gave her her prayer-book, and recorded the presentation in the fly-leaf; if Jane were fond of Young Dowgate, why did she die and leave the book here? Perhaps at the rickety altar, and before the damp Commandments, she, Comport, had taken him, Dow- gate, in a flush of youthful hope and joy, and perhaps it had not turned out in the long run as great a success as was expected? The opening of the service recalls my wandering 86 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. thoughts. I then find, to my astonishment, that I have been, and still am, taking a strong kind of invisible Snuff, up my nose, into my eyes, and down my throat. I wink, sneeze, and cough. The clerk sneezes; the clergyman winks; the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably winks); all our little party wink, Sneeze, and cough. The snuff seems to be made of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth, and something else. Is the something else the decay of dead citizens in the vaults below? As sure as Death it is Not only in the cold damp February day, do we cough and Sneeze dead citizens, all through the ser- vice, but dead citizens have got into the very bellows of the organ, and half choked the same. We stamp our feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds. Dead citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverized on the sounding-board over the clergyman’s head, and, when a gust of air comes, tumble down upon him. - In this first experience I was so nauseated by too much snuff, made of the Dowgate family, the Com- port branch, and other families and branches, that I gave but little heed to our dull manner of ambling through the service; to the brisk clerk’s manner of encouraging us to try a note or two at psalm time; to the gallery-congregation’s manner of enjoying a shrill duet, without a notion of time or tune; to the whity- brown man’s manner of shutting the minister into the pulpit, and being very particular with the lock of the door, as if he were a dangerous animal. But, I tried again next Sunday, and soon accustomied myself to the dead citizens when I found that I could not possibly get on without them among the City churches. Another Sunday. After being again rung for by conflicting bells, like a leg of mutton or a laced hat a hundred years ago, I make selection of a church Oddly put away in a cor- ner among a number of lanes—a smaller church than the last, and an ugly: of about the date of Queen Anne. As a congregation, we are fourteen strong; not counting an exhausted charity School in a gallery, which has dwindled away to four boys, and two girls. In the porch is a benefaction of loaves of bread, which there would seem to be nobody left in the exhausted congre- CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES. 8: gation to claim, and which I saw an exhausted beadle, long faded out of uniform, eating with his eyes for self and family when I passed in. There is also an exhausted clerk in a brown wig, and two or three ex- hausted doors and windows have been bricked up, and the service books are musty, and the pulpit cushions are threadbare, and the whole of the church furniture is in a very advanced stage of exhaustion. We are three old women (habitual), two young lovers (acci- dental), two tradesmen, one with a wife and One alone, an aunt and nephew, again two girls (these two girls dressed out for church with every- thing about them limp that should be stiff, and vice versä, are an invariable experience), and three Snigger- ing boys. The clergyman is, perhaps, the chaplain of a civic company; he has the moist and vinous look, eke the bulbous boots, of one acquainted with 'Twenty port, and comet vintages. We are so quiet in our dulness that the three snig- gering boys, who have got away into a corner by the altar-railing, give us a start, like crackers, whenever they laugh. And this reminds me of my own village church where, during sermon-time on bright Sundays when the birds are very musical indeed, farmers' boys patter out over the stone pavement, and the clerk steps out from his desk after them, and is distinctly heard in the summer repose to pursue and punch them in the churchyard, and is seen to return with a meditative countenance, making believe that nothing of the sort has happened. The aunt and nephew in this City church are much disturbed by the Sniggering boys. The nephew is himself a boy, and the Sniggerers tempt him to secular thoughts of marbles and string, by secretly offering such commodities to his distant con- templation. This young Saint Anthony for a while resists, but presently becomes a back-slider, and in dumb show defies the sniggerers to “heave * a marble or two in his direction. Herein he is detected by the aunt (a rigorous reduced gentlewoman who has the charge of offices), and I perceive that worthy relative to poke him in the side, with the corrugated hooked handle of an ancient umbrella. The nephew revenges himself for this by holding his breath and terrifying his kinswomen with the dread belief that he has made SS THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. up his mind to burst. Regardless of whispers and shakes, he swells and becomes discoloured, and yet again Swells and becomes discoloured, until the aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him out, with no visible neck, and with his eyes going before him like a prawn’s. This causes the Sniggerers to regard flight as an eli- gible move, and I know which of them will go out first, because of the over devout attention that he suddenly concentrates on the clergyman. In a little while, this hypocrite, with an elaborate demonstration of hushing his footsteps, and with a face generally expressive of having until now forgotten a religious appointment elsewhere, is gone. Number two gets out in the same way, but rather quicker. Number three getting safely to the door, there turns reckless, and banging it open, flies forth with a Whoop! that vibrates to the top of the tower above us. The clergyman, who is of a prandial presence and a muffled voice, may be scant of hearing as well as of breath, but he only glances up as having an idea that somebody has said Amen in a wrong place, and con- tinues his steady jog-trot, like a farmer's wife going to market. He does all he has to do, in the same easy way, and gives us a concise Sermon, still like the jog- trot of the farmer's wife on a level road. Its drowsy cadence soon lulls the three old women asleep, and the unmarried tradesman sits looking Out at window, and the married tradesman sits looking at his wife’s bonnet, and the lovers sit looking at One another, so superla- tively happy, that I mind when I, turned of eighteen, went with my Angelica to a City church on account of a shower (by this special coincidence that it was in Huggin-lane), and when I said to my Angelica, “Let the blessed event, Angelica, occur at no altar but this!” and when my Angelica consented that it should occur at no other—which it certainly never did, for it never occurred anywhere. And O, Angelica, what has become of you, this present Sunday morning when I can’t attend to the sermon; and, more difficult question than that, what has become of Me as I was when I sat by your side! But, we receive the signal to make that unanimous dive which surely is a little conventional—like the strange rustlings and settlings and clearings of throats and noses, …” S. S.S SS * * ~ * = s S s -. - -zzzzz %%%% Z%* % %%%%%%% %%∞ſ. ， ！ź '4%Øſ： ſae ź7��§<！-- * ſººſ Ø2 ſº, N%~ ſaeſae Z^2* …’ ź% ģ% ; ºſſº. º º §§ º ± • ”. ±±，±，± 3. ±∞ 1 ſtutiſſi Źź233°. №e ：） 2，2，-3，…， - 2）; THE CITY PERSON AGE. Uncommercial Traveller. CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES. 89 which are never dispensed with, at certain points of the Church service, and are never held to be necessary under any other circumstances. In a minute more it is all over, and the organ expresses itself to be as glad of it as it can be of anything in its rheumatic state, and in another minute we are all of us out of the church, and Whity-brown has locked it up. Another minute or little more, and, in the neighbouring churchyard—not the yard of that church, but of another—a churchyard . like a great shabby old mignonette box, with two trees in it and one tomb—I meet Whity-brown, in his private capacity, fetching a pint of beer for his dinner from the public-house in the corner, where the keys of the rot- ting fire-ladders are kept and were never asked for, and where there is, a ragged, white-seamed, out-at- elbowed bagatelle board on the first floor. In one of these City churches, and only in one, I found an individual who might have been claimed as expressly a City, personage. I remember the church, by the feature that the clergyman couldn’t get to his own desk without going through the clerk’s, or couldn’t get to the pulpit without going through the reading- desk—I forget which, and it is no matter—and by the presence of this personage among the exceedingly sparse congregation. I doubt if we were a dozen, and we had no exhausted charity school to help us out. The personage was dressed in black of square cut, and was stricken in years, and wore a black velvet cap, and cloth shoes. He was of a staid, wealthy, and dissatis- fied aspect. In his hand, he conducted to church a mysterious child: a child of the feminine gender. The child had a beaver hat, with a stiff drab plume that surely never belonged to any bird of the air. The child was further attired in a nankeen frock and Spencer, brown boxing-gloves, and a veil. It had a blemish, in the nature of currant jelly, on its chin; and was a thirsty child. Insomuch that the personage carried in his pocket a green bottle, from which, when the first psalm was given out, the child was openly refreshed. At all other times throughout the service it was motion- less, and stood on the seat of the large pew, closely fitted into the corner, like a rain-water pipe. The personage never opened his book, and never looked at the clergyman, He never sat down either, 90 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. but stood with his arms leaning on the top of the pew, and his forehead sometimes shaded with his right hand, always looking at the church door. It was a long church for a church of its size, and he was at the upper end, but he always looked at the door. That he was an old bookkeeper, or an old trader who had kept his own books, and that he might be seen at the Bank of England about Dividend times, no doubt. That he had lived in the City all his life and was disdainful of other localities, no doubt. Why he looked at the door, I never absolutely proved, but it is my belief that he lived in expectation of the time when the citizens would come back to live in the City, and its ancient glories would be renewed. He appeared to expect that this would occur on a Sunday, and that the wanderers would first appear in the deserted churches, penitent and humbled. Hence, he looked at the door which they never darkened. Whose child the child was, whether the child of a disinherited daughter, or some parish Orphan whom the personage had adopted, there was nothing to lead up to. It never played, or skipped, or smiled. Once, the idea occurred to me that it was an automaton, and that the personage had made it; but following the strange couple out one Sunday, I heard the personage say to it, “Thirteen thousand pounds; ” to which it added in a weak human voice, “Seventeen and fourpence.” Four Sundays I followed them out, and this is all I ever heard or saw them say. One Sunday, I followed them home. They lived behind a pump, and the personage opened their abode with an exceeding large key. The one solitary inscription on their house related to a fire-plug. The house was partly undermined by a deserted and closed gateway; its windows were blind with dirt; and it stood with its face disconsolately turned to a wall. Five great churches and two small ones rang their Sunday bells between this house and the church the couple fre- Quented, so they must have had some special reason for going a quarter of a mile to it. The last time I saw them, was on this wise. I had been to explore another church at a distance, and happened to pass the church they frequented, at about two of the afternoon, when that edifice was closed. But a little side-door, which I had never observed before, stood open, and disclosed cer- CITY OF T.ONDON CHURCHES. 91 tain cellarous steps. Methought “They are airing the vaults to-day,” when the personage and the child silently arrived at the steps, and silently descended. Of course, I came to the conclusion that the person- age had at last despaired of the looked-for return of the penitent citizens, and that he and the child went down to get themselves buried. In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon one obscure church which had broken out in the melodra- matic style, and was got up with various tawdry deco- rations, much after the manner of the extinct London may-poles. These attractions had induced several young priests or deacons in black bibs for waistcoats, and several young ladies interested in that noble order (the proportion being, as I estimated, seventeen young ladies to a deacon), to come into the City as a new and Odd excitement. It was wonderful to see how these young people played out their little play in the heart of the City, all among themselves, without the deserted City knowing anything about it. It was as if you should take an empty counting-house on a Sunday, and act one of the old Mysteries there. They had impressed a small school (from what neighbourhood I don’t know) to assist in the performances, and it was pleasant to notice frantic garlands of inscription On the walls, especially addressing those poor inno- cents in characters impossible for them to decipher. There was a remarkably agreeable smell of pomatum in this congregation. But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead citizens formed the uppermost scent, while, infused into it in a dreamy way not at all displeasing, was the staple character of the neighbourhood. In the churches about Mark-lane, for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley Out of an aged has sock in one of them. From Rood-lane to Tower-street, and thereabouts, there was often a subtle flavour of wine: sometimes, of tea. One church near Mincing-lane smelt like a druggist’s drawer. Behind the Monument the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down towards the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the church in the 92 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Rake's Progress where the hero is being married to the horrible old lady, there was no speciality of atmos- phere, until the organ shook a perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse. Be the scent what it would, however, there was no Speciality in the people. There were never enough of them to represent any calling or neighbourhood. They had all gone elsewhere over-night, and the few strag- glers in the many churches languished there inex- pressibly. Among the Uncommercial travels in which I have en- gaged, this year of Sunday travel occupies its own place, apart from all the rest. Whether I think of the church where the sails of the oyster-boats in the river almost flapped against the windows, or of the church where the railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed by above the roof, I recal a curious experience. On Summer Sundays, in the gentle rain or the bright Sun- shine—either, deepening the idleness of the idle City— I have sat, in that singular silence which belongs to resting-places usually astir, in scores of buildings at the heart of the world’s metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers of people speaking the English tongue, than the ancient edifices of the Eternal City, or the Pyramids of Egypt. The dark vestries and registries into which I have peeped, and the little hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left impressions. On my memory as distinct and quaint as any it has in that way received. In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a line but made some hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their day. Still and dry now, still and dry ! and the old tree at the window with no room for its branches, has seen them all out. So with the tomb of the old Master of the old Company, on which it drips. His son restored it and died, his daughter restored it and died, and then he had been remembered long enough, and the tree took possession of him, and his name cracked out. There are few more striking indications of the changes of manners and customs that two or three hundred years have brought about, than these deserted churches. Many of them are handsome and costly structures, sev- eral of them were designed by WREN, many of them arose from the ashes of the great fire, others of them SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS. 93 outlived the plague and the fire too, to die a slow death in these later days. No one can be sure of the coming time; but it is not too much to say of it that it has no sign in its outsetting tides, of the reflux to these churches of their congregations and uses. They remain like the tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them and around them, Monuments of another age. They are worth a Sunday-exploration, now and then, for they yet echo, not unharmoniously, to the time when the City of London really was London; when the 'Prentices and Trained Bands were of mark in the state; when even the Lord Mayor himself was a Reality—not a Fiction conventionally be-puffed on one day in the year by illus- trious friends, who no less conventionally laugh at him On the remaining three hundred and sixty-four days. CHAPTER X. SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS. S? much of my travelling is done on foot, that if I cher- ished betting propensities, Ishould probably be found registered in sporting newspapers under some such title as the Elastic Novice, challenging all eleven stone man- kind to competition in walking. My last special feat was turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedes- trian and otherwise, and walking thirty miles into the country to breakfast. The road was so lonely in the night, that I fell asleep to the monotonous sound of my own feet, doing their regular four miles an hour. Mile after mile I walked without the slightest sense of exer- tion, dozing heavily and dreaming constantly. It was only when I made a stumble like a drunken man, or struck out into the road to avoid a horseman close upon me on the path—who had no existence—that I came to myself and looked about. . The day broke mistily (it was autumn time), and I could not disembarrass myself of the idea that I had to climb those heights and banks of clouds, and that there was an Alpine Convent some- where behind the sun, where I was going to breakfast. This sleepy motion was so much stronger than such sub- stantial objects as villages and haystacks, that, after the sun was up and bright, and when I was sufficiently 94 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. awake to have a sense of pleasure, in the prospect, I still occasionally caught myself looking about for wooden arms to point the right track up the mountain, and wondering there was no snow yet. It is a curiosity of broken sleep that I made immense quantities of verses on that pedestrian occasion (of course I never make any when I am in my right senses), and that I spoke a cer- tain language Once pretty familiar to me, but which I have nearly forgotten from disuse, with fluency. Of both these phenomena. I have such frequent experience in the state between sleeping and waking, that I some- times argue with myself that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I were, I should not be half so ready. The readi- ness is not imaginary, because I often recal long strings of the verses, and many turns of the fluent speech, after I am broad awake. My walking is of two kinds : one, straight on end to a definite gaol at a round pace; One, objectless, loitering, and purely vagabond. In the latter state, no gipsy on earth is a greater Vagabond than myself; it is so natu- ral to me, and strong with me, that I think I must be the descendant, at no great distance, of some irre- claimable tramp. - One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, in a vagabond course of shy metropolitan neighbour- hoods and small shops, is the fancy of a humble artist, as exemplified in two portraits representing Mr. Thomas Sayers, of Great Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United States of America. These illustrious men are highly coloured in fighting trim, and fighting attitude. To suggest the pastoral and meditative nature of their peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald sward, with primroses and other modest flowers spring- ing up under the heels of his half-boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the administration of his favour- ite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent eloquence of a vil- lage church. The humble homes of England, with their domestic virtues and honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to go in and win; and the lark and other singing birds are observable in the upper air, ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight. On the whole, the associations entwined with the pugilistic art by this artist are much in the manner of Izaak Walton. But, it is with the lower animals of back streets and SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS. 95 by-ways that my present purpose rests. For human notes we may return to such neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity serve. Nothings in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more, than the bad company birds keep. Foreign birds often get into good society, but British birds are insepa- rable from low associates. There is a whole street of them in St. Giles's ; and I always find them in poor and immoral neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and the pawnbroker's. They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man who makes their cages usually gets into a chronic state of black eye. Why is this? Also, they will do things for people in short- skirted velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the respectable orders of society to undertake. In a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found a goldfinch drawing his own water, and drawing as much of it as if he were in a consuming fever. That goldfinch lived at a bird-shop, and offered, in writing, to barter himself against old clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen stuff. Surely a low thing and a depraved taste in any finch I bought that goldfinch for money. He was sent home, and hung upon a nail Over against my table. He lived Outside a counterfeit dwelling-house, supposed (as I argued) to be a dyer's; otherwise it would have been impossible to account for his perch sticking out of the garret window. From the time of his appearance in my room, either he left off being thirsty— which was not in the bond—or he could not make up his mind to hear his little bucket drop back into his well when he let it go : a shock which in the best of times had made him tremble. He drew no water but by stealth and under the cloak of night. After an interval of futile and at length hopeless expectation, the merchant who had edu- cated him was appealed to. The merchant was a bow- legged character, with a flat and cushiony nose, like the last new strawberry. The wore a fur cap, and shorts, and was of the velveteen race, velveteeny. He sent word that he would “look round.” He looked round, appeared in the doorway of the room, and slightly Cocked up his evil eye at the goldfinch. Instantly a raging thirst beset that bird; when it was appeased, he still drew several unnecessary buckets of water; and 96 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. finally, leaped about his perch and sharpened his bill, as if he had been to the nearest wine vaults and got drunk. Donkeys again. I know shy neighbourhoods where the Donkey goes in at the street door, and appears to live up-stairs, for I have examined the back-yard from over the palings, and have been unable to make him out. Gentility, nobility, Royalty, would appeal to that donkey in vain to do what he does for a costermonger. Feed him with oats at the highest price, put an infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers on his back, adjust his delicate trappings to a nicety, take him to the softest slopes at Windsor, and try what pace you can get out of him. Then, starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck with a flat tray on it, and see him bowl from Whitechapel to Bayswater. There appears to be no particular private understanding between birds and donkeys, in a state of nature; but in the shy neighbourhood state, you shall see them always in the same hands and always developing their very best ener- gies for the very worst company. I have known a donkey—by sight; we were not on speaking terms—who lived over on the Surrey side of London-bridge, among the fastnesses of Jacob’s Island and Dockhead. It was the habit of that animal, when his services were not in immediate requisition, to go out alone, idling. I have met him a mile from his place of residence, loitering about the streets; and the expression of his countenance at such times was most degraded. He was attached to the establishment of an elderly lady who sold peri- winkles, and he used to stand on Saturday nights with a cartful of those delicacies outside a gin-shop, pricking up his ears when a customer came to the cart, and too evidently deriving satisfaction from the knowledge that they got bad measure. His mistress was sometimes overtaken by inebriety. The last time I ever saw him (about five years ago) he was in circumstances of diffi- culty, caused by this failing. Having been left alone with the cart of periwinkles, and forgotten, he went off idling. He prowled among his usual low haunts for some time, gratifying his depraved tastes until, not taking the cart into his calculations, he endeavoured to turn up a narrow alley, and became greatly involved. He was taken into custody by the police, and, the Green SHY INEIGHEOURHOODS. 97 Yard of the district being near at hand, was backed into that place of durance. At that crisis, I encountered him; the stubborn sense he evinced of being—not to compro- mise the expression—a blackguard, I never saw exceeded in the human subject. A flaring candle in a paper shade, stuck in among his periwinkles, showed him, with his ragged harness broken and his cart extensively shattered, twitching his mouth and shaking his hanging head, a picture of disgrace and obduracy. I have seen boys being taken to station-houses, who were as like him as his own brother. - The dogs of shy neighbourhoods, I observe to avoid play, and to be conscious of poverty. They avoid work, too, if they can, of course; that is in the nature of all animals. I have the pleasure to know a dog in a back street in the neighbourhood of Walworth, who has greatly distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who takes his portrait with him when he makes an en- gagement, for the illustration of the play-bill. His portrait (which is not at all like him) represents him in the act of dragging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to have tomahawked, or essayed to toma- hawk, a British officer. The design is pure poetry, for there is no such Indian in the piece, and no such inci- dent. He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty I would be bail to any amount; but whose intellectual qualities in association with dramatic fiction, I cannot rate high. Indeed, he is too honest for the profession he has entered. Being at a town in Yorkshire last Summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of the night, I attended the performance. His first Scene was eminently successful; but, as it occupied a second in its representation (and five lines in the bill), it scarcely afforded ground for a cool and deliberate judgment of his powers. He had merely to bark, run on, and jump through an inn window, after a comic fugitive. The next scene of importance to the fable was a little marred in its interest by his over-anxiety; forasmuch as while his master (a belated soldier in a den of robbers on a tempestuous night) was feelingly lamenting the absence of his faithful dog, and laying great stress on the fact that he was thirty leagues away, the faithful dog was barking furiously in the prompter's box, and clearly choking himself against his collar, ‘V Uiu. I. ; 98 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. But it was in his greatest scene of all, that his honesty got the better of him. He had to enter a dense and trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer, and there to fly at the murderer when he found him resting at the foot of a tree, with his victim bound ready for slaughter. It was a hot night, and he came into the forest from an altogether unexpected direction, in the sweetest temper, at a very deliberate trot, not in the least excited; trotted to the foot-lights with his tongue Out; and there sat down, panting, and amiably survey- ing the audience, with his tail beating on the boards, like a Dutch clock. Meanwhile the murderer, impatient to receive his doom, was audibly calling to him “CO-O-OME here!” while the victim, struggling with his bonds, assailed him with the most injurious expressions. It happened through these means, that when he was in course of time persuaded to trot up and rend the mur- derer limb from limb, he made it (for dramatic purposes) a little too obvious that he worked out that awful retribution by licking butter off his blood-stained hands. In a shy street, behind Long-acre, two honest dogs live, who perform in Punch’s shows. I may venture to say that I am on terms of intimacy with both, and that I never saw either guilty of the falsehood of failing to look down at the man inside the show, during the whole performance. The difficulty other dogs have in satis- fying their minds about these dogs, appears to be never overcome by time. The same dogs must encounter them over and Over again, as they trudge along in their off-minutes behind the legs of the show and beside the drum; but all dogs seem to suspect their frills and jackets, and to Sniff at them as if they thought those articles of personal adornment, an eruption—a some- thing in the nature of mange, perhaps. From this Covent-garden of mine I noticed a country dog, only the other day, who had come up to Covent-garden Market under a cart, and had broken his cord, an end of which he still trailed along with him. He loitered about the corners of the four streets commanded by my window; and bad London dogs came up, and told him lies that he didn’t believe; and worse London dogs came up, and made proposals to him to go and steal in the market, which his principles rejected; and the ways of SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS. 99 the town confused him, and he crept aside and lay down in a doorway. He had scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes Punch with Toby. . He was darting to Toby for consolation and advice, when he saw the frill, and stopped, in the middle of the street, appalled. The show was pitched, Toby retired behind the drapery, the audience formed, the drum and pipes struck up. My coun- try dog remained immovable, intently staring at these strange appearances, until Toby opened the drama by appearing on his ledge, and to him entered Punch, who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby’s mouth. At this spectacle, the country dog threw up his head, gave One terrible howl, and fled due west. We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more expressively of dogs keeping men. I know a bull-dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith who keeps a man. He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to public-houses and lay wagers on him, and obliges him to lean against posts and look at him, and forces him to neglect work for him, and keeps him under rigid coercion. I once knew a fancy terrier who kept a gen- tleman—a gentleman who had been brought up at Oxford, too. The dog kept the gentleman entirely for his glorification, and the gentleman never talked about anything but the terrier. This, however, was not in a shy neighbourhood, and is a digression consequently. There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods, who keep boys. I have my eye on a mongrel in Somerstown who keeps three boys. He feigns that he can bring down sparrows, and unburrow rats (he can do neither), and he takes the boys out on sporting pre- tences into all sorts of suburban fields. He has likewise made them believe that he possesses some mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing, and they consider them- selves incompletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and a wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them and barking tremendously. There is a dog residing in the Borough of Southwark who keeps a blind man. He may be seen, most days, in Oxford- street, haling the blind man away on expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and unintelligible to, the man: wholly of the dog’s conception and execution. Con- trariwise, when the man has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded thoroughfare and meditate. I saw 100 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. him yesterday, wearing the money-tray like an easy collar, instead of offering it to the public, taking the man against his will, on the invitation of a disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog at Harrow—he was so intent on that direction. The north wall of Burlington House Gardens, between the Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy spot for appointment among blind men at about two or three o’clock in the afternoon. They sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone there, and compare notes. Their dogs may always be observed at the same time, openly disparaging the men they keep, to one another, and settling where they shall respec- tively take their men when they begin to move again. At a small butcher's, in a shy neighbourhood (there is no reason for suppressing the name; it is by Notting- hill, and gives upon the district called the Potteries), I know a shaggy black and white dog who keeps a drover. He is a dog of an easy disposition, and too frequently allows this drover to get drunk. On these occasions, it is the dog’s custom to sit outside the public- house, keeping his eye on a few sheep, and thinking. I have seen him with six sheep, plainly casting up in his mind how many he began with when he left the market, and at what places he has left the rest. I have seen him perplexed by not being able to account to himself for certain particular sheep. A light has gradu- ally broken on him, he has remembered at what butcher’s he left them, and in a burst of grave satisfac- tion has caught a fly off his nose, and shown himself much relieved. If I could at any time have doubted the fact that it was he who kept the drover, and not the drover who kept him, it would have been abundantly proved by his way of taking undivided charge of the six sheep, when the drover came out besmeared with red ochre and beer, and gave him wrong directions, which he calmly disregarded. He has taken the sheep entirely into his own hands, has merely remarked with respectful firmness, “That instruction would place them under an omnibus; you had better confine your attention to yourself—you will want it all; ” and has driven his charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a man very, very far behind. As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually betray a SHY NEIGHT3OURHOODS. 101 slinking consciousness of being in poor circumstances— for the most part manifested in an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their play, and a misgiving that somebody is going to harness them to something, to pick up a living—so the cats of shy neighbourhoods exhibit a strong tendency to relapse into barbarism. Not only are they made selfishly ferocious by ruminating on the surplus population around them, and on the densely crowded state of all the avenues to cat's meat; not only is there a moral and politico-economical hag- gardness in them, traceable to these reflections; but they evince a physical deterioration. Their linen is not clean, and is wretchedly got up; their black turns rusty, like old mourning; they wear very indifferent fur; and take to the shabbiest cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms of recognition with several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk in Saint George's Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell- green, and also in the back settlements of Drury-lane. In appearance, they are very like the women among whom they live. They seem to turn out of their unwholesome beds into the street, without any preparation. They leave their young families to stagger about the gutters, unassisted, while they frouzily quarrel and swear and scratch and spit, at street corners. In particular, I remark that when they are about to increase their families (an event of frequent occurrence) the resemb- lance is strongly expressed in a certain dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect, and general giving up of things. I cannot honestly report that I have ever seen a feline matron of this class washing her face when in an interesting condition. Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the lower animals of shy neighbourhoods, by dwelling at length upon the exasperated moodiness of the tom-cats, and their resemblance in many respects to a man and a brother, I will come to a close with a word on the fowls of the same localities. That anything born of an egg and invested with wings, should have got to the pass that it hops con- tentedly down a ladder into a cellar, and calls that going home, is a circumstance So amazing as to leave one nothing more in this connection to wonder at. Otherwise I might wonder at the completeness with 102 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. which these fowls have become separated from all the birds of the air—have taken to grovelling in bricks and mortar and mud—have forgotten all about live trees, and make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs bulk-heads, and door-scrapers. I wonder at nothing concerning them, and take º. as they are. I accept as products of Nature and things of course a reduced Bantam family of my acquaintance in the Hackney-road, who are incessantly at the pawnbroker’s. I cannot say that they enjoy themselves, for they are of a melancholy temperament; but what enjoyment they are capable of, they derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker's side-entry. Here, they are always to be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were newly come down in the world, and were afraid of being identified. I know a low fellow, originally of a good family from Dorking, who takes his whole establish- ment of wives, in single file, in at the door of the Jug Department of a disorderly tavern near the Haymarket, manoeuvres them among the company’s legs, emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his life, seldom in the season, going to bed before two in the morning. Over Waterloo-bridge, there is a shabby old speckled couple (they belong to the wooden French- bedstead, washing-stand, and towel-horsemaking trade), who are always trying to get in at the door of a chapel. Whether the Old j , under a delusion reminding one of Mrs. Southcott, has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular denomination, or merely under- stands that she has no business in the building and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot determine; but she is constantly endeavouring to undermine the principal door: while her partner, who is infirm upon his legs, walks up and down, encouraging her and de- fying the Universe. But, the family I have been best acquainted with, since the removal from this try- ing sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in the densest part of Bethnal-green. Their abstraction from the objects among which they live, or rather their con- viction that those objects have all come into existence in express subservience to fowls, has so enchanted me, that I have made them the subject of many journeys at divers hours. After careful observation of the two lords and the ten ladies of whom this family consists, TRAMPS. , - 103 I have come to the conclusion that their opinions are represented by the leading lord and leading lady: the latter, as I judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a aucity of feather and visibility of quill, that gives f i. the appearance of a bundle of office pens. When a railway º van that would crush an elephant comes round the corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge unharmed from under the horses, perfectly sat- isfied that the whole rush was a passing property in the air, which may have left something to eat behind it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and sauce- pans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge for fowls to peck at. Peg-tops and hoops they account, I think, as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain or dew. Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other light; and I have more than a suspicion that in the minds of the two lords, the early public- house at the corner has superseded the sun. I have established it as a certain fact, that they always begin to crow when the public house shutters begin to be taken down, and that they salute the potboy, the instant he appears to perform that duty, as if he were Phoebus in person. CHAPTER XI. TRAMPs. HE chance use of the word “Tramp” in my last - paper, brought that numerous fraternity so vividly before my mind’s eye, that I had no sooner laid down my pen than a compulsion was upon me to take it up again, and make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on all the summer roads in all directions. Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits with his legs in a dry ditch; and whenever he goes to sleep (which is very often indeed), he goes to sleep on his back. Yonder, by the high road, glaring white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit of turf under the bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the highway, the tramp of the order Savage, fast 104 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. asleep. He lies on the broad of his back, with his face turned up to the sky, and one of his ragged arms loosely thrown across his face. His bundle (what can be the contents of that mysterious bundle, to make it worth his while to carry it about?) is thrown down beside him, and the waking woman with him sits with her legs in the ditch, and her back to the road. She wears her bonnet rakishly perched on the front of her head, to shade her face from the sun in walking, and she ties her skirts round her in conventionally tight tramp-fashion with a sort of apron. , You can seldom catch sight of her, resting thus, without seeing her in a despondently defiant manner doing something to her hair or her bon- net, and glancing at you between her fingers. She does not often go to sleep herself in the daytime, but will sit for any length of time beside the man. And his slum- berous propensities would not seem to be referable to the fatigue of carrying the bundle, for she carries it much oftener and further than he. When they are afoot, you will mostly find him slouching on ahead, in a gruff temper, while she lags heavily behind with the burden. He is given to personally correcting her, too —which phase of his character develops itself oftenest, on benches outside alehouse doors—and she appears to become strongly attached to him for these reasons; it may usually be noticed that when the poor creature has a bruised face, she is the most affectionate. He has no occupation whatever, this Order of tramp, and has no object whatever in going anywhere. He will some- times call himself a brick-maker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an imaginative flight. He generally represents himself, in a vague way, as looking out for a job of work; but he never, did work, he never does, and he never will. It is a favourite fiction with him, however (as if he were the most industrious character on earth), that you never work; and as he goes past your garden and sees you looking at your flowers, you will overhear him growl with a strong sense of contrast, “You are a lucky hidle devil, you are!” - The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless Order, and has the same injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you possess, and never did anything to get it: but he is of a less audacious disposition. He will stop before your gate, and say to his female com- Wilsº g|TFT || º-s | # \ i | |||| | ſ i * W º V - * * *. Nº. ºSR ºf Wº “THIS IS A swer.T spot, AIN'T IT & A LOVELY SPOT I’’ Uncommercial Traveller. TRAMPS. 105 panion with an air of constitutional humility and pro- pitiation—to edify any one who may be within hearing behind a blind or a bush—“This is a sweet spot, ain’t it? A lovelly spot! And I wonder if they’d give two poor footsore travellers like me and you, a drop of fresh water out of such a pretty gen-teel crib? We’d take it koind on 'em, wouldn’t us? Wery koind, upon my word, us would?” He has a quick sense of a dog in the vicinity, and will extend his modestly-injured pro- pitiation to the dog chained up in your yard; remarking, as he slinks at the yard gate, “Ah! You are a foine breed o' dog, too, and you ain’t kep for nothink! I’d take it wery koind o' your master if he’d elp a traveller and his woife as envies no gentlefolk their good fortun, wi' a bit o' your broken wittles. He’d never know the want of it, nor more would you. Don’t bark like that, at poor persons as never done you no 'arm; the poor is down-trodden and broke enough without that; O DON'T!” He generally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving away, and always looks up the lane and down the lane, and up the road and down the road, before going on. Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; let the hard-working labourer at whose cottage- door they prowl and beg, have the ague never so badly, these tramps are sure to be in good health. There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter thi, bright Summer day—say, on a road with the sea- breeze making its dust lively, and sails of ships in the blue distance beyond the slope of down. As you walk enjoyingly on, you descry in the perspective at the bottom of a steep hill up which your way lies, a figure that appears to be sitting airly on a gate, whistling in a cheerful and disengaged manner. As you approach nearer to it, you observe the figure to slide down from the gate, to desist from whistling, to uncock its hat, to become tender of foot, to depress its head and elevate its shoulders, and to present all the characteristics of profound despondency. Arriving at the bottom of the hill and coming to the figure, you observe it to be the figure of a shabby young man. He is moving pain- fully forward, in the direction in which you are going, and his mind is so preoccupied with his misfortunes that he is not aware of your approach until you are close upon him at the hill-foot. When he is aware of 106 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. you, you discover him to be a remarkably well-behaved young man, and a remarkably well-spoken young man. You know him to be well-behaved, by his respectful manner of touching his hat; you know him to be well- spoken, by his smooth manner of expressing himself. He says in a flowing confidential voice, and without punctuation, “I ask your pardon sir but if you would excuse the liberty of being so addressed upon the public Iway by one who is almost reduced to rags though it as not always been so and by no fault of his own but through ill elth in his family and many unmerited sufferings it would be a great obligation sir to know the time.” You give the well-spoken young man the time. The well-spoken young man, keeping well up with you, resumes: “I am aware sir that it is a liberty to intrude a further question on a gentleman walking for his entertainment but might I make so bold as ask the favour of the way to Dover sir and about the distance P” You inform the well-spoken young man that the way to Dover is straight on, and the distance some eighteen miles. The well-spoken young man be- comes greatly agitated. “In the condition to which I am reduced,” says he “I could not ope to reach Dover before dark even if my shoes were in a state to take me there or my feet were in a state to old out over the flinty road and were not on the bare ground of which any gentleman has the means to satisfy himself by looking Sir may I take the liberty of speaking to you?” As the well-spoken young man keeps so well up with you that you can’t prevent his taking the liberty of speaking to you, he goes on, with fluency: “Sir it is not begging that is my intention for I was brought up by the best of mothers and begging is not my trade I should not know sir how to follow it as a trade if such were my shameful wishes for the best of mothers long taught otherwise and in the best of omes though now reduced to take the present liberty on the Iway Sir my business was the law-stationering and I was favourably known to the Solicitor-General the Attorney-General the majority of the Judges and the ole of the legal profession but through ill elth in my family and the treachery of a friend for whom I became security and he no other than my own wife’s brother the brother of my own wife I was cast forth with my tender partner TRAMPS. - 107 and three young children not to beg for I will sooner die of deprivation but to make my way to the seaport town of Dover where I have a relative i in respect not only that will assist me but that would trust me with untold gold Sir in appier times and hare this calamity fell upon me I made for my amusement when I little thought that I should ever need it excepting for my air this * – here the well-spoken young man put his hand into his breast—“this comb! Sir I implore you in the name of charity to purchase a tortoiseshell comb which is a genuine article at any price that your humanity may put upon it and may the blessings of a ouseless family awaiting with beating arts the return of a hus- band and a father from Dover upon the cold stone seats of London-bridge ever attend you Sir may I take the liberty of speaking to you I implore you to . buy this comb!” By this time, being a reasonably good walker, you will have been too much for the well-spoken young man, who will stop short and express his disgust and his want of breath, in a long expectoration, as you leave him behind. Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright summer day, at the corner of the next little town or village, you may find another kind of tramp, em- bodied in the persons of a most exemplary couple whose only improvidence appears to have been, that they spent the last of their little All on soap. They are a man and woman, spotless to behold—John Anderson, with the frost on his short smock-frock instead of his “pow,” attended by Mrs. Anderson. John is over- Ostentatious of the frost upon his raiment, and wears a Curious and, you would say, an almost unnecessary demonstration of girdle of white linen wound about his waist—a girdle, snowy as Mrs. Anderson’s apron. This cleanliness was the expiring effort of the respectable couple, and nothing then remained to Mr. Anderson but to get chalked upon his spade in snow-white copy- book characters, HUNGRY 1 and to sit down here. Yes; One thing more remained to Mr. Anderson—his char- acter; Monarchs could not deprive him of his hard- earned character. Accordingly, as you come up with this spectacle of virtue in distress, Mrs. Anderson rises, and with a decent curtsey presents for your con- sideration a certificate from a Doctor of Divinity, the 108 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. reverend the Vicar of Upper Dodgington, who informs his Christian friends and all whom it may concern that the bearers, John Anderson and lawful wife, are per- sons to whom you cannot be too liberal. This benevo- lent pastor omitted no work of his hands to fit the good couple out, for with half an eye you can recognise his autograph on the Spade. Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable part of whose stock-in-trade is a highly perplexed de- meanour. He is got up like a countryman, and you will often come upon the poor fellow, while he is endeavour- ing to decipher the inscription on a milestone—quite a fruitless endeavour, for he cannot read. He asks your pardon, he truly does (he is very slow of speech, this tramp, and he looks in a bewildered way all round the prospect while he talks to you), but all of us shold do as we wold be done by, and he’ll take it kind, if you’ll put a power man in the right road fur to jine his eldest son as has broke his leg bad in the masoning, and is in this heere Orspit’l as is wrote down by Squire Pouncerby's own hand as wold not tell a lie fur no man. He then produces from under his dark frock (being always very slow and perplexed) a neat but worn old leathern purse, from which he takes a scrap of paper. On this scrap of paper is written, by Squire Pouncerby, of the Grove, “Please to direct the Bearer, a poor but very worthy man, to the Sussex County Hospital, near Brighton”— a matter of some difficulty at the moment, seeing that the request comes suddenly upon you in the depths of Hertfordshire. The more you endeavour to indicate where Brighton is—when you have with the greatest difficulty remembered—the less the devoted father can be made to comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at the prospect; whereby, being reduced to extremity, you recommend the faithful parent to begin by going to St. Albans, and present him with half-a-crown. It does him good, no doubt, but scarcely helps him for- ward, since you find him lying drunk that same even- ing in the wheelwright's saw pit under the shed where the felled trees are, opposite the sign of the Three Jolly Hedgers. But, the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps, is the tramp who pretends to have been a gentleman. “Educated,” he writes, from the village beer-shop in TRAMPS. 109 pale ink of a ferruginous complexion; “educated at Trin. Coll. Cam.—nursed in the lap of affluence—once in my small way the pattron of the Muses,” &c. &c. &c. —surely a sympathetic mind will not withhold a trifle, to help him on to the market-town where he thinks of iving a Lecture to the fruges consumere nati, on things in general? This shameful creature lolling about hedge tap-rooms in his ragged clothes, now so far from being black that they look as if they never can have been black, is more selfish and insolent than even the savage tramp. He would sponge on the poorest boy for a farthing, and spurn him when he had got it; he would interpose (if he could get anything by it) between the baby and the mother's breast. So much lower than the company he keeps, for his maudlin assumption of being higher, this pitiless rascal blights the Summer road as he maunders on between the luxuriant hedges: where (to my thinking) even the wild convolvulus and rose and sweetbriar, are the worse for his going by, and need time to recover from the taint of him in the air. The young fellows who trudge along barefoot, five or six together, their boots slung over their shoulders, their shabby bundles under their arms, their sticks newly cut from some roadside wood, are not eminently prepossessing, but are much less objectionable. There is a tramp-fellowship among them. They pick one another up at resting stations, and go on in companies. They al- ways go at a fast Swing—though they generally limp too —and there is invariably one of the company who has much ado to keep up with the rest. They generally talk about horses, and any other means of locomotion than walking; or, one of the company relates some re- cent experiences of the road—which are always dis- putes and difficulties. As for example. “So as I’m a standing at the pump in the market, blest if there don’t come up a Beadle, and he ses, “ Mustn't stand here,” he ses. ‘Why not?' I ses. “No beggars allowed in this town,” he ses. “Who’s a beggar?' I ses. “You are,” he ses. ‘Who ever see me beg P Did you?' I ses. ‘Then you’re a tramp,” he ses. ‘I’d rather be that than a Beadle,” I ses.” (The company express great approval.) “‘Would you,” he ses to me. “Yes I would,” I ses to him. “Well,” he ses ‘anyhow, get out of this town.” ‘Why, blow your little town! I ses, ‘who wants to be in 110 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. it? Wot does your dirty little town mean by comin' and stickin’ itself in the road to anywhere? Why don’t you get a shovel and a barrer, and clear your town out o' people's way?’” (The company expressing the highest approval and laughing aloud, they all go down the hill.) Then, there are the tramp handicraft men. Are they not all over England in this Midsummer time? Where does the lark sing, the corn grow, the mill turn, the river run, and they are not among the lights and shadows, tinkering, chair-mending, umbrella-mending, clock- mending, knife-grinding? Surely, a pleasant thing, if we were in that condition of life, to grind our way through Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. For the first six weeks, or so, we should see the sparks we ground off fiery bright against a background of green wheat and green leaves. A little later, and the ripe harvest would pale out sparks from red to yellow, until we got the dark newly-turned land for a background again, and they were red once more. By that time, we should have ground our way to the sea cliffs, and the whirr of our wheel would be lost in the breaking of the waves. Our next variety in sparks would be derived from contrast with the gorgeous medley of colours in the autumn woods, and, by the time we had ground our way round to the heathy lands between Reigate and Croydon, doing a prosperous stroke of business all along, we should show like a little firework in the light frosty air, and be the next best thing to the blacksmith’s forge. Very agreeable, too, to go On , a chair-mending tour. What judges we should be of rushes, and how knowingly (with a sheaf and a bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge on bridges, looking over at Osier-beds. Among all the innumerable occupations that cannot possibly be transacted without the assistance of lookers- on chair-mending may take a station in the first rank. When we sat down with our backs against the barn or the public-house, and began to mend, what a sense of popularity would grow upon us. When all the children came to look at us, and the tailor, and the general dealer, and the farmer who had been giving a small Order at the little saddler's, and the groom from the great house and the publican, and even the two skittle- players (and here note that, howsoever busy all the rest TRAMPS. 111 of village human kind may be, there will always be two people with leisure to play at skittles, wherever village skittles are), what encouragement would be on us to plait and weave! No one looks at us while we plait and weave these words. . Clock-mending again. Except for the slight inconvenience of carrying a clock under our arm, and the monotony of making the bell go, whenever we came to a human habitation, what a pleasant privilege to give a voice to the dumb cottage clock, and set it talking to the cottage family again. Likewise we foresee great interest in going round by the park plantations, under the overhanging boughs (hares, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants, scudding like mad across and across the chequered ground be- fore us), and so over the park ladder, and through the wood, until we came to the Keeper's lodge. Then, would the keeper be discoverable at his door, in a deep nest of leaves, smoking his pipe. Then, on our accosting him in the way of our trade, would he call to Mrs. Keeper, respecting “t'ould clock ’’ in the kitchen. Then, would Mrs. Keeper ask us into the lodge, and on due examination we should offer to make a good job of it for eighteenpence; which offer, being accepted, would set us tinkling and clinking among the chubby awe-struck little Keepers for an hour and more. So completely to the family’s satisfaction would we achieve our work, that the Keeper would mention how that there was something wrong with the bell of the turret stable-clock up at the Hall, and that if we thought good of going up to the housekeeper on the chance of that job, too, why he would take us. Then, should we go, among the branching oaks and the deep fern, by silent ways of mystery known to the Keeper, seeing the herd glancing here and there as we went along, until we came to the old Hall, solemn and grand. Under the Terrace Flower Garden, and round by the stables, would the Keeper take usin, and as we passed we should observe how spacious and stately the stables, and how fine the painting of the horses’ names over their stalls, and how solitary all: the family being in London. Then, should we find ourselves presented to the house- keeper, sitting, in hushed state, at needlework, in a bay-window looking out upon a mighty grim red-brick quadrangle, guarded by stone lions disrespectfully 112 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. throwing somersaults over the escutcheons of the noble family. Then, our services accepted and we insinu- ated with a candle into the stable-turret, we should find it to be a mere question of pendulum, but one that would hold us until dark. Then, should we fall to work, with a general impression of Ghosts being about, and of pictures indoors that of a certainty came out of their frames and “walked,” if the family would only own it. Then, should we work and work, until the day gradually turned to dusk, and even until the dusk gradually turned to dark. Our task at length accomplished, we should be taken into an enormous servants’ hall, and there re- galed with beef and bread and powerful ale. Then, aid freely, we should be at liberty to go, and should É. told by a pointing helper to keep round over yonder by the blasted ash, and so straight through the woods, till we should see the town-lights right afore us. Then, feeling lonesome, should we desire upon the whole that the ash had not been blasted, or that the helper had had the manners not to mention it. However, we should keep on, all right, till suddenly the stable bell would strike ten in the dolefullest way, quite chilling our blood, though we had so lately taught him how to acquit himself. Then, as we went on, should we recal old stories, and dimly consider what it would be most advisable to do, in the event of a tall figure, all in white, with saucer eyes, coming up and saying, "I want you to come to a churchyard and mend a church clock. Follow me!” Then should we make a burst to get clear of the trees, and should soon find ourselves in the open, with the town lights bright ahead of us. So should we lie that night at the ancient sign of the Cris- in and Crispanus, and rise early next morning to be É.i. On tramp again. Bricklayers often tramp, in twos and threes, lying by night at their “lodges,” which are scattered all over the country. Bricklaying is another of the occupations that can by no means be transacted in rural parts, with- out the assistance of spectators—of as many as can be convened. In thinly-peopled spots, I have known brick- layers on tramp, coming up with bricklayers at work, to be so sensible of the indispensability of lookers-on, that they themselves have set up in that capacity, and have been unable to subside into the acceptance of a TRAMPS. 113 proffered share in the job, for two or three days to- gether. Sometimes, the “navvy,” on tramp, with an extra pair of half-boots over his shoulder, a bag, a bot- tle, and a can, will take a similar part in a job of exca- vation, and will look at it without engaging in it, until all his money is gone. The current of my uncommer- cial pursuits caused me only last summer to want a lit- tle body of workmen for a certain spell of work in a pleasant part of the country; and I was at One time honoured with the attendance of as many as Seven- and-twenty, who were looking at six. Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in sum- mertime, without storing up knowledge of the many tramps who go from one oasis of town or village to another, to sell a stock in trade, apparently not worth a shilling when sold? Shrimps are a favourite com- modity for this kind of speculation, and so are cakes of a soft and spongy character, coupled with Spanish nuts and brandy balls. The stock is carried on the head in a basket, and, between the head and the basket, are the trestles on which the stock is displayed at trading times. Fleet of foot, but a careworn class of tramp this, mostly; with a certain stiffness of neck, occa- sioned by much anxious balancing of baskets; and also with a long Chinese sort of eye, which an overweighted ſºlead would seem to have squeezed into that Ol’IY). On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns and great rivers, behold the tramping Soldier. And if you should happen never to have asked yourself whether his uni- form is suited to his work, perhaps the poor fellow’s appearance as he comes distressfully towards you, with his absurdly tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear in lais hand, and his legs well chafed by his trousers of baize, may suggest the personal inquiry, how you think uſou would like it. Much better the tramping Sailor, although his cloth is somewhat too thick for land ser- vice. But, why the tramping merchant-mate should put on a black velvet waistcoat, for a chalky country in the dog-days, is one of the great secrets of nature that will never be discovered. I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bor- dered on either side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and the trees, a skirting patch of WOL. I. S 114 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. grass. Wild flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man’s life. To gain the milestone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells, and wild roses, would soon render illegible but for peering travellers pushing them aside with their sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way you may. So, all the tramps with carts or caravans— the Gipsy-tramp, the Show-tramp, the Cheap Jack— find it impossible to resist the temptations of the place and all turn the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the pot. Bless the place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have scorched its grass! What tramp children do I see here, attired in a handful of rags, making a gymnasium of the shafts of the cart, making a feather-bed of the flints and brambles, making a toy of the hobbled old horse who is not much more like a horse than any cheap toy would be! Here, do I encoun- ter the cart of mats and brooms and baskets—with all thoughts of business given to the evening wind—with the stew made and being served out—with Cheap Jack and Dear Gill striking soft music out of the plates that are rattled like warlike cymbals when put up for auc- tion at fairs and markets—their minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of the nightingales as they begin to sing in the woods behind them, that if I were to pro- pose to deal, they would sell me anything at cost price. On this hallowed ground has it been my happy privilege (let me whisper it), to behold the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes, eating meat-pie with the Giant: while, by the hedge-side, on the box of blankets which I knew con- tained the snakes, were set forth the cups and saucers and the teapot. It was on an evening in August, that I chanced upon this ravishing spectacle, and I noticed that, whereas the Giant reclined half concealed beneath the overhanging boughs, and seemed indifferent to Mature, the white hair of the gracious Lady streamed free in the breath of evening, and her pink eyes found pleasure in the landscape. I heard only a single sen- tence of her uttering, yet it bespoke a talent for modest repartee. The ill-mannered Giant—accursed be his evil race!——had interrupted the Lady in some remark, and, as I passed that enchanted corner of the wood, she gently reproved him, with the words, “Now, TRAMPS. 115 Cobby;”—Cobby! so short a name!—“ain’t one fool enough to talk at a time?” Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, though not so near it as that the song trolled from tap or bench at door, can invade its woodland silence, is a little hostelry which no man possessed of a penny was ever known to pass in warm weather. Before its entrance, are certain pleasant trimmed limes; likewise, a cool well, with so musical a bucket-handle that its fall upon the bucket rim will make a horse prick up his ears and neigh, upon the droughty road half a mile off. This is a house of great resort for haymaking tramps and harvest tramps, insomuch that as they sit within, drink- ing their mugs of beer, their relinquished scythes and reaping-hooks glare out of the open windows, as if the whole establishment were a family war-coach of An- cient Britons. Dater in the season, the whole country- side, for miles and miles, will swarm, with hopping tramps. They come in families, men, women, and children, every family provided with a bundle of bed- ding, an iron pot, a number of babies, and too often with some poor sick creature quite unfit for the rough life, for whom they suppose the smell of the fresh hop to be a sovereign remedy. Many of these hoppers are Irish, but many come from London. They crowd all the roads, and camp under all the hedges and on all the scraps of common-land, and live among and upon the hops until they are all picked, and the hop-gardens, so beautiful through the summer, look as if they had been laid waste by an invading army. Then, there is a vast exodus of tramps out of the country; and if you ride or drive round any turn of any road, at more than a foot pace, you will be bewildered to find that you have charged into the bosom of fifty families, and that there are splashing up all around you, in the utmost prodigal- ity of confusion, bundles of bedding, babies, iron pots, and a good-humoured multitude of both sexes and all ages, equally divided between perspiration and intoxication, 116 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, CHAPTER XII. T) ULLBOROUGH TOWN. IT lately happened that I found myself rambling about the scenes among which my earliest days were passed; scenes from which I departed when I was a child, and which I did not revisit until I was a man. This is no uncommon chance, but one that befals some of us any day; perhaps it may not be quite uninteresting to com- pare notes with the reader respecting an experience so familiar and a journey so uncommercial. I call my boyhood’s home (and I feel like a Tenor in an English Opera when I mention it) Dullborough. Most of us come from Dullborough who come from a country town. As I left Dullborough in the days when there were no railroads in the land, I left it in a stage-coach. Through all the years that have since j. have I ever lost the smell of the damp Straw in which I was packed— like game—and forwarded, carriage paid, to the Cross Eeys, Wood-street, Cheapside, London? There was no other inside passenger, and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I had expected to find it. ... --~~ * With this tender remembrance upon me, I was cava-, lierly shunted back into Dullborough the other day, by train. My ticket had been previously collected, like my taxes, and my shining new portmanteau had had a great plaster stuck upon it, and I had been defied by Act of Parliament to offer an objection to anything that was done to it, or me, under a penalty of not less than forty shillings or more than five pounds, compoundable for a term º imprisonment. When I had sent my dis- figured property on to the hotel, I began to look about DULLBOROUGH TOWN. 11? ** me: and the first discovery I made, was, that the Sta- tion had swallowed up the playing-field. It was gone. . The two beautiful hawthorn-trees, the hedge, the turf, and all those buttercups and daisies, had given place to the stoniest of jolting roads: while, beyond the Station, an ugly dark monster of a tunnel kept its jaws open, as if it had swallowed them and were ravenous for more destruction. The coach that had carried me away, was melodiously called Timpson's Blue-Eyed Maid, and belonged to Timpson, at the coach-office up-street; the locomotive engine that had brought me back, was called severely No. 97, and belonged to S.E.R., and was spitting ashes and hot- water over the blighted ground. º When I had been let out at the platform-door, like a prisoner whom his turnkey grudgingly released, I looked in again over the low wall, at the scene of de- arted glories. Here, in the haymaking time, had I §. delivered from the dungeons of Seringapatam, an immense pile (of haycock), by my countrymen, the vic- torious British (boy next door and his two cousins), and had been recognised with ecstasy by my affianced One (Miss Green), who had come all the way from England (second house in the terrace) to ransom me, and marry me. Here, had I first heard in confidence, from one whose father was greatly connected, being under Government, of the existence of a terrible banditti, called “The Radicals,” whose principles were, that the Prince Regent wore stays, and that nobody had a right to any salary, and that the army and navy ought to be put down—horrors at which I trembled in my bed, after supplicating that the Radicals might be speedily taken and hanged. Here too, had we, the small boys of Boles’s, had that cricket match against the small boys of Coles's, when Boles and Coles had actually met upon the ground, and when, instead of instantly hitting out at one another with the utmost fury, as we had all hoped and expected, those sneaks had said respectively, “I hope Mrs. Boles is well,” and “I hope Mrs. Coles and the baby are doing charmingly.” Could it be that, after all this, and much more, the playing-field was a Station, and No. 97 expectorated boiling water and red- hot cinders on it, and the whole belonged by Act of Parliament to S.E.R., P - 118 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. As it could be, and was, I left the place with a heavy heart for a walk all over the town. And first of Timp- son’s up-street. When I departed from Dullborough in the strawy arms of Timpson’s Blue-Eyed Maid, Timpson’s was a moderate-sized coach-office (in fact, a little coach-office), with an oval transparency in the window, which looked beautiful by night, representing one of Timpson’s coaches in the act of passing a mile- stone on the London road with great velocity, com- pletely full inside and out, and all the passengers dressed in the first style of fashion, and enjoying them- selves tremendously. I found no such place as Timp- son’s now—no such bricks and rafters, not to mention the name—no such edifice on the teeming earth Pick- ford had come and knocked Timpson’s down. Pickford had not only knocked Timpson’s down, but had knocked two or three houses down on each side of Timpson’s, and then had knocked the whole into one great estab- lishment with a pair of big gates, in and out of which, his (Pickford’s) waggons are, in these days, always rat- tling, with their drivers sitting up so high, that they look in at the second-floor windows of the old-fashioned houses in the High-street as they shake the town. I have not the honour of Pickford’s acquaintance, but I felt that he had done me an injury, not to say committed an act of boyslaughter, in running over my childhood in this rough manner; and if ever I meet Pickford driving one of his own monsters, and smoking a pipe the while (which is the custom of his men), he shall know by the expression of my eye, if it catches his, that there is something wrong between us. Moreovor, I felt that Pickford had no right to come rushing into Dullborough and deprive the town of a º: picture. He is not Napoleon Bonaparte. When e took down the transparent stage-coach, he ought to have given the town a transparent van. With a gloomy conviction that Pickford is wholly utilitarian and unimaginative, I proceeded on my way. It is a mercy I have not a red and green lamp and a night-bell at my door, for in my very young days I was taken to so many lyings-in that I wonder I escaped becoming a professional martyr to them in after-life. I suppose I had a very sympathetic nurse, with a large circle of married acquaintance. However that was, DULLBOROUGH TOWN. . 119 as I continued my walk through Dullborough, I found many houses to be solely associated in my mind with this particular interest. At one little greengrocer's shop, down certain steps from the street, I remember to have waited on a lady who had had four children (I am afraid to write five, though I fully believe it was five) at a birth. This meritorious woman held quite a recep- tion in her room on the morning when I was introduced there, and the sight of the house brought vividly to my mind how the four (five) deceased young people lay, side by side, on a clean cloth on a chest of drawers; reminding me by a homely association, which I suspect their complexion to have assisted, of pig's feet as they are usually displayed at a neat tripe-shop. Hot Caudle was handed round on the occasion, and I further re- membered as I stood contemplating the greengrocer’s, that a subscription was entered into among the com- pany, which became extremely alarming to my con- sciousness of having pocket-money on my person. This fact being known to my conductress, whoever she was, I was earnestly exhorted to contribute, but resolutely declined: therein disgusting the company, who gave me to understand that I must dismiss all expectations of going to Heaven. - , How does it happen that when all else is change wherever one goes, there yet seem, in every place, to be some few people who never alter? As the sight of the greengrocer's house recalled these trivial incidents of long ago, the identical greengrocer appeared on the steps, with his hands in his pockets, and leaning his shoulder against the door-post, as my childish eyes had seen him many a time; indeed, there was his old mark On the door-post yet, as if his shadow had become a fixture there. It was he himself; he might formerly have been an old-looking young man, or he might now be a young-looking old man, §: there he was. In walking along the street, I had as yet looked in vain for a familiar face, or even a transmitted face; here was the very greengrocer who had been weighing and handling baskets on the morning of the reception. As he brought with him a dawning remembrance that he had no proprietary interest in those babies, I crossed the road, and accosted him on the subject. He was not in the least excited or gratified, or in any way roused, by 120 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. the accuracy of my recollection, but said, Yes, sum- mut out of the common—he didn’t remember how many it was (as if half-a-dozen babies either way made no difference)—had happened to a Mrs. What's-her- name, as once lodged there—but he didn’t call it to mind, particular. Nettled by this phlegmatic conduct, I informed him that I had left the town when I was a child. He slowly returned, quite unsoftened, and not without a sarcastic kind of complacency, Had I? Ah! And did I find it had got on tolerably well without me? Such is the difference (I thought, when I had left him a few hundred yards behind, and was by so much in a better temper) between going away from a place and remaining in it. I had no right, I reflected, to be angry with the greengrocer for his want of interest, I was nothing to him: whereas he was the town, the cathedral, the bridge, the river, my childhood, and a large slice of my life, to me. . Of course the town had shrunk fearfully, since I was a child there. I had entertained the impression that the High-street was at least as wide as Regent-street, London, or the Italian Boulevard at Paris. I found it little better than a lane. There was a public clock in it, which I had supposed to be the finest clock in the world: whereas it now turned out to be as inexpressive, moon-faced, and weak a clock as ever I saw. It be- longed to a Town Hall, where I had seen an Indian (who I now suppose wasn’t an Indian) swallow a sword (which I now suppose he didn’t). The edifice had ap- peared to me in those days so glorious a structure, that I had set it up in my mind as the model on which the Genie of the Lamp built the palace for Aladdin. A mean little brick heap, like a demented chapel, with a few yawning persons in leather gaiters, and in the last extremity for something to do, lounging at the door with their hands in their pockets, and calling them- selves a Corn Exchange! - The Theatre was in existence, I found, on asking the fishmonger, who had a compact show of stock in his window, consisting of a sole and a quart of shrimps— and I resolved to comfort my mind by going to look at it. Richard the Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak, had first appeared to me there, and had made my heart leap with terror by backing up against the stage-box DULLBOROUGH TOWN. 121 in which I was posted, while struggling for life against the virtuous Richmond. It was within those walls that I had learnt as from a page of English history, how that wicked King slept in war-time on a sofa much too short for him, and how fearfully his conscience troubled his boots. There, too, had I first seen the funny coun- tryman, but countryman of noble principles, in a flowered waistcoat, crunch up his little hat and throw it on the ground, and pull off his coat, saying, “Dom thee, squire, coom on with thy fistes then!” At which the lovely young woman who kept company with him (and who went out gleaning, in a narrow white muslin apron with five beautiful bars of five different coloured ribbons across it) was so frightened for his sake, that she fainted away. Many wondrous secrets of Nature had I come to the knowledge of in that sanctuary: of which not the least terrific were, that the witches in Macbeth bore an awful resemblance to the Thames and other proper inhabitants of Scotland; and that the good King Duncan couldn’t rest in his grave, but was constantly coming out of it and calling himself somebody else. To the Theatre, therefore, I repaired for consolation. But I found very little, for it was in a bad and de- clining way. A dealer in wine and bottled beer had already squeezed his trade into the box-office, and the theatrical money was taken—when it came—in a kind of meat-safe in the passage. The dealer in wine and bottled beer must have insinuated himself under the stage too; for he announced that he had various de- scriptions of alcoholic drinks “in the wood,” and there was no possible stowage for the wood any- where else. Evidently, he was by degrees eating the establishment away to the core, and would soon have Sole possession of it. It was . To Let, and hopelessly So, for its old purposes; and there had been no enter- tainment within its walls for a long time except a Panorama; and even that had been announced as “pleasingly instructive,” and I know too well the fatal meaning and the leaden import of those terrible ex- ressions. No, there was no comfort in the Theatre. it was mysteriously gone, like my own youth. Unlike my own youth, it might be coming back some day; but there was little promise of it. As the town was placarded with references to the Dull- 122 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. borough Mechanics’ Institution, I thought I would go and look at that establishment next. There had been no such thing in the town, in my young day, and it occurred to me that its extreme prosperity might have brought adversity upon the Drama. I found the Insti- tution, with some difficulty, and should scarcely have known that I had found it if I had judged from its ex- ternal appearance only; but this was attributable to its never having been finished, and having no front: con- sequently, it led a modest and retired existence up a stable-yard. It was (as I learnt, on inquiry), a most flourishing Institution, and of the highest benefit to the town: two triumphs which I was glad to understand were not at all impaired by the seeming drawbacks that no mechanics belonged to it, and that it was steeped in debt to the chimney-pots. It had a large room, which was approached by an infirm step-ladder: the builder having declined to construct the intended staircase, without a present payment in cash, which Dullborough (though profoundly appreciative of the Institution) seemed unaccountably bashful about subscribing. The large room had cost—or would, when paid for—five hundred pounds; and it had more mortar in it and more echoes, than one might have expected to get for the money. It was fitted up with a platform, and the usual lecturing tools, including a large black board of a men- acing appearance. On referring to lists of the courses of lectures that had been given in this thriving Hall, I fancied I detected a shyness in admitting that human nature when at leisure has any desire whatever to be relieved and diverted; and a furtive sliding in of any poor make-weight piece of amusement, shamefacedly and edgewise. Thus, I observed that it was necessary for the members to be knocked on the head with Gas, Air, Water, Food, the Solar System, the Geological periods, Criticism on Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and Arrow-headed Inscriptions, before they might be tickled by those unaccountable choristers, the negro singers in the court costume of the reign of George the Second. Likewise, that they must be stunned by a weighty inquiry whether there was internal evidence in Shakespeare’s works, to prove that his uncle by the mother’s side lived for some years at Stoke Newington, before they were brought-to by a Miscellaneous Concert, T) ULLBOROUGH TOWN. 123 But, indeed, the masking of entertainment, and pre- tending it was something else—as people mask bed- steads when they are obliged to have them in sitting- rooms, and make believe that they are book-cases, sofas, chests of drawers, anything rather than bedsteads—was manifest even in the pretence of dreariness that the un- fortunate entertainers themselves felt obliged in decency to put forth when they came here. One very agreeable professional singer who travelled with two professional ladies, knew better than to introduce either of those ladies to sing the ballad “Comin’ through the Rye.” without prefacing it himself, with some general remarks On wheat and clover; and even then, he dared not for his life call the song, a song, but disguised it in the bill as an “Illustration.” In the library also—fitted with shelves for three thousand books, and containing up- wards of one hundred and seventy (presented copies mostly), seething their edges in damp plaster—there was such a painfully apologetic, return of 62 offenders who had read Travels, Popular Biography, and mere Fiction descriptive of the aspirations of the hearts and Souls of mere human creatures like themselves; and such an elaborate parade of 2 bright examples who had had down Euclid after the day’s occupation and confine- ment; and 3 who had had down Metaphysics after ditto: and 1 who had had down Theology after ditto; and 4 who had worried Grammar, Political Economy, Botany, and Logarithms all at once after ditto; that I suspected º boasted class to be one man, who had been hired to O it. - Emerging from the Mechanics’ Institution and con- tinuing my walk about the town, I still noticed every- where the prevalence, to an extraordinary degree, of this custom of putting the natural demand for amuse- ment Out of sight, as some untidy housekeepers put dust, and pretending that it was swept away. And yet it was ministered to, in a dull and abortive manner, by all who made this feint. Looking in at what is called in Dullborough “the serious bookseller's,” where, in my childhood, I had studied the faces of numbers of gen- tlemen depicted in rostrums with a gaslight on each side of them, and casting my eyes over the open pages of certain printed discourses there, I found a vast deal of aiming at jocosity and dramatic effect, even in them 124 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. —yes, verily, even on the part of one very wrathful ex- gº who bitterly anathematised a poor little Circus. imilarly, in the reading provided for the young people enrolled in the Lasso of Love, and other excellent unions, I found the writers generally under a distress- ing sense that they must start (at all events) like story- tellers, and delude the young persons into the belief that they were going to be interesting. As I looked in at this window for twenty minutes by the clock, I am in a position to offer a friendly remonstrance—not bear- ing on this particular point—to the designers and en- gravers of the pictures in those publications. Have they considered the awful consequences likely to flow from their representations of Virtue? Have they asked themselves the question, whether the terrific prospect of acquiring that fearful chubbiness of head, unwieldi- ness of arm, feeble dislocation of leg, crispiness of hair, and enormity of shirt-collar, which they represent as inseparable from Goodness, may not tend to confirm sensitive waverers, in Evil? A most impressive example (if I had believed it) of what a Dustman and a Sailor may come to, when they mend their ways, was pre- sented to me in this same shop-window. When they were leaning (they were intimate friends) against a post, drunk and reckless, with surpassingly bad hats on, and their hair over their foreheads, they were rather picturesque, and looked as if they might be agree- able men, if they would not be beasts. . But, when they had got over their bad propensities, and when, as a con- sequence, their heads had swelled alarmingly, their hair had got so curly that it lifted their blown-out cheeks up, their coat-cuffs were so long that they never could do any work, and their eyes were so wide open that they never could do any sleep, they presented a spec- tacle calculated to plunge a timid nature into the depths of Infamy. But, the clock that had so degenerated since I saw it last, admonished me that I had stayed here long enough; and I resumed my walk. I had not gone fifty paces along the street when I was suddenly brought up by the sight of a man who got out of a little phaeton at the doctor's door, and went into the doctor's house. Immediately, the air was filled with the scent of trodden grass, and the perspective of T) ULLBOROUGH TOWN. 125 years opened, and at the end of it was a little likeness of this man keeping a wicket, and I said, “God bless my soul! Joe Specks!” - Through many changes and much work, I had pre- served a tenderness for the memory of Joe, forasmuch as we had made the acquaintance of Roderick Random together, and had believed him to be no ruffian, but an ingenuous and engaging hero. Scorning to ask the boy left in the phaeton whether it was really Joe, and scorning even to read the brass plate on the door—so sure was I–I rang the bell and informed the servant maid that a stranger sought audience of Mr. Specks. Into a room, half surgery, half study, I was shown to await his coming, and I found it, by a series of elaborate accidents, bestrewn with testimonies to Joe. Portrait of Mr. Specks, bust of Mr. Specks, silver cup from grateful patient to Mr. Specks, presentation sermon from local clergyman, dedication poem from local poet, dinner- card from local nobleman, tract on balance of power from local refugee, inscribed Hommage de l'auteur à Specks. When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed him with a smile that I was not a patient, he seemed rather at a loss to perceive any reason for smiling in connection with that fact, and inquired to what was he to attribute the honour? I asked him, with another Smile, could he remember me at all? He had not (he said) that pleasure. I was beginning to have but a poor opinion of Mr. Specks, when he said reflectively, “And yet there’s a something too.” Upon that I saw a boyish light in his eyes that looked well, and I asked him if he could inform me, as a stranger who desired to know and had not the means of reference at hand, what the name of the young lady was, who married Mr. Random? Upon that, he said, “Narcissa,” and, after staring for a moment, called me by my name, shook me by the hand, and melted into a roar of laughter. “Why, of course, you’ll remember Lucy Green,” he said, after we had talked a little. “Of course,” said I. “Whom do you think she married?” said he. “You?” I hazarded. “Me,” said Specks, “and you shall see her.”. So I saw her, and she was fat, and if all the hay in the world had been heaped upon her, it could scarcely have altered her face more than Time 126 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. had altered it from my remembrance of the face that had. once looked down upon me into the fragrant dungeons of Seringapatam. But when her youngest child came in after dinner (for I dined with them, and we had no other company than Specks, Junior, Barrister-at-law, who went away as soon as the cloth was removed, to look after the young lady to whom he was going to be married next week), I saw again in that little daughter, the little face of the hayfield, unchanged, and it quite touched my foolish heart. . We talked immensely, Specks and Mrs. Specks, and I, and we spoke of our old selves as though our old selves were dead and gone, and indeed they were—dead and gone as the playing- field that had become a wilderness of rusty iron, and the property of S. E. R. Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough with the rays of interest that I wanted and should otherwise have missed in it, and linked its present to its past, with a highly agreeable chain. And in Specks's Society I had new occasion to observe what I had before noticed in similar communications among other men. All the schoolfellows and others of old, whom I inquired about, had either done superlatively well or superlatively ill— had either become uncertificated bankrupts, or been felonious, and got themselves transported; or had made great hits in life, and done wonders. And this is so commonly the case, that I never can imagine what be- comes of all the mediocre people of people's youth— especially considering that we find no lack of the species in our maturity. But, I did not propound this difficulty to Specks, for no pause in the conversation ave me an occasion. Nor, could I discover one single aw in the good doctor—when he reads this, he will receive in a friendly spirit the pleasantly meant record —except that he had forgotten his Roderick Random, and that he confounded Strap with Lieutenant Hatch- way; who never knew Random, howsoever intimate with Pickle. When I went alone to the Railway to catch my train at night (Specks had meant to go with me, but was in- opportunely called out), I was in a more charitable mood with Dullborough than I had been all day; and yet in my heart I had loved it all day too. Ah! who was I that I should quarrel with the town for being NIGHT WALKS. 12? changed to me, when I myself had come back, so changed to it! All my early readings and early imagi- nations dated from this place, and I took them away so full of innocent construction and guileless belief, and I brought them back so worn and torn, so much the wiser and so much the worse! - C H A P T E R XIII. NIGHT WALKS. Sº years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, ref- erable to a distressing impression, caused me to walk about the streets all night, for a series of several nights. The disorder might have taken a long time to conquer, if it had been faintly experimented on in bed; but, it was soon defeated by the brisk treatment of getting up directly after lying down, and going out, and coming home tired at sunrise. In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a fair amateur experience of houselessness. My principal object being to get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into sympathetic relations with people who have no other object every night in the year. . The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and cold. The sun not rising before half-past five, the night perspective looked sufficiently long at half-past twelve: which was about my time for con- fronting it. The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first entertainments offered to the contempla- tion of us houseless people. It lasted about two hours. We lost a great deal of companionship when the late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the pot- men thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street; but stray vehicles and stray people were left us, after that. If we were very lucky, a policeman’s rattle sprang and a fray turned up; but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion was provided. Except in the Haymar- ket, which is the worst kept part of London, and about 128 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Kent-street in the Borough, and along a portion of the line of the Old Kent-road, the peace was seldom vio- lently broken. But, it was always the case that London, as if in imitation of individual citizens belonging to it, had expiring fits and starts of restlessness. After all seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half-a-dozen would surely follow; and Houselessness even observed that intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically attract- ed towards .# other; so that we knew when we saw one drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were out, to fraternise or fight with . it. When we made a divergence from the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced, leaden- lipped gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of a more decent appearance, fifty to one but that speci- men was dressed in soiled mourning. As the street experience in the night, so the street experience in the day; the common folk who come unexpectedly into a little property, come unexpectedly into a deal of liquor. At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out—the last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some late pieman or hot-potato man—and London would sink to rest. And then the yearning of the houseless mind would be for any sign of company, any lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one being up—nay, even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked out for lights in windows. Walking the streets under the pattering rain, House- lessness would walk and walk and walk, Seeing nothing but the interminable tangle of streets, save at a corner, here and there, two policemen in conversation, or the sergeant or inspector looking after his men. Now and then in the night—but rarely—Houselessness would be- come aware of a furtive head peering Out of a doorwa a few yards before him, and, coming up with the head, would find a man standing bolt upright to keep within the doorway’s shadow, and evidently intent upon no particular service to society. Under a kind of fascina- tion, and in a ghostly silence suitable to the time, Houselessness and this gentleman would eye one another from head to foot, and so, without exchange of speech, part, mutually suspicious, Drip, drip, drip, TNIGHT WALKS. 129 from ledge and coping, splash from pipes and water- spouts, and by-and-by the houseless shadow would fall upon the stones that pave the way to Waterloo-bridge; it being in the houseless mind to have a halfpenny worth of excuse for saying “Good-night ° to the toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse of his fire. A good fire and a good great-coat and a good woollen neck-shawl, were comfortable things to see in conjunction with the toll- keeper, also his brisk wakefulness was excellent com- pany when he rattled the change of halfpence down upon that metal table of his, like a man who defied the night, with all its sorrowful thoughts, and didn’t care for the coming of dawn. There was need of encourage- ment on the threshold of the bridge, for the bridge was dreary. The chopped-up murdered man had not been lowered with a rope over the parapet when those nights were; he was alive, and slept then quietly enough most likely, and undisturbed by any dream of where he was to come. But the rivér had an awful look, the build- ings on the banks were muffled in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went down. The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river. Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was but the distance of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came next. Grim and black within, at night, those great dry Wells, and lonesome to imagine, with the rows of faces faded out, the lights extinguished, and the seats all empty. One would think that nothing in them knew itself at such a time but Yorick’s skull. In one of my night walks, as the church steeples were shaking the March winds and rain with the strokes of Four, I passed the outer boundary of one of these great deserts, and entered it. With a dim lantern in my hand, I groped my well-known way to the stage and looked over the orchestra—which was like a great grave dug for a time of pestilence—into the void beyond. A dismal cavern of an immense aspect, with the chan- delier gone dead like everything else, and nothing visi- ble through mist and fog and space, but tiers of wind. ing-sheets. The ground at my feet where, when last VOL, I. 9 - 130 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. there, I had seen the peasantry of Naples dancing among the vines, reckless of the burning mountain which threatened to overwhelm them, was now in ossession of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watch- ully lying in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed its forked tongue. A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint corpse candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted away. Retiring within the proscenium, and holding my light above my head towards the rôlled-up curtain—green no more, but black as ebony—my sight lost itself in a gloomy Vault, showing faint indications in it of a shipwreck of canvas and cordage. Methought I felt much as a diver might, at the bottom of the sea. In those small hours when there was no movement in the streets, it afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in the way, and, touching its rough stone, to think of the prisoners in their sleep, and then to glance in at the lodge over the spiked wicket, and see the fire and light of the watching turnkeys, on the white wall. Not an inappropriate time either, to linger by that wicked little Debtor's Door—shutting tighter than any other door one ever saw—which has been Death’s Door to so many. In the days of the uttering of forged one- º notes by people tempted up from the country, ow many hundreds of wretched creatures of both sexes—many quite innocent—swung out of a pitiless and inconsistent world, with the tower of yonder Christian church of Saint Sepulchre monstrously before their eyes! Is there any haunting of the Bank Par- lour, by the remorseless souls of old directors, in the nights of these later days, I wonder, or is it as quiet as this degenerate Aceldama of an Old Bailey? To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times and bemoaning the present evil period, would be an easy next step, so I would take it, and would make my houseless circuit of the Bank, and give a thought to the treasure within, likewise to the guard of soldiers Fºg the night there, and nodding over the fire. Next, went to Billingsgate, in some hope of market-people, but it proving as yet too early, crossed London-bridge and got down by the water-side on the Surrey shore among the buildings of the great brewery. There was plenty going on at the brewery; and the reek, and the NIGHT WALKS. 131 smell of grains, and the rattling of the plump dray horses at their mangers, were capital company. Quite refreshed by having mingled with this good society, I made a new start with a new heart, setting the old King’s Bench prison before me for my next object, and resolving, when I should come to the wall, to think of poor Horace Kinch, and the Dry Rot in men. A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and dif- ficult to detect the beginning of. It had carried Horace Kinch inside the wall of the old King’s Bench prison, and it had carried him out with his feet foremost. He was a likely man to look at, in the prime of life, well to do, as clever as he needed to be, and popular among many friends. He was suitably married, and had healthy and pretty children. But, like some fair-looking houses or fair-looking ships, he took the Dry Rot. The first strong external revelation of the Dry Rot in men, is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street-corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than at any; to do nothing tangible, but to have an intention of perform- ing a variety of intangible duties to-morrow or the day after. When this manifestation of the disease is observed, the observer will usually connect it with a vague impression once formed or received, that the atient was living a little too hard. He will scarcely have had leisure to turn it over in his mind and form the terrible suspicion “Dry Rot,” when he will notice a change for the worse in the patient's appearance: a cer- tain slovenliness and deterioration, which is not poverty nor dirt, nor intoxication, nor ill-health, but simply Dry Rot. To this succeeds a smell as of strong waters, in the morning; to that, a looseness respecting money; to that, a stronger Smell as of strong waters, at all times; to that, a looseness respecting everything; to that, a trembling of the limbs, somnolency, misery, and crum- bling to pieces. As it is in wood, so it is in men. Dry Rot advances at a compound usury quite incalculable. A plank is found infected with it, and the whole structure is devoted. Thus it had been with the un- happy Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small sub- scription. ... Those who knew him had not nigh done .."; “So well off, so comfortably established, with such hope before him—and yet, it is feared, with a 132 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. slight touch of Dry Rot!” when lo! the man was all Dry Rot and dust. - From the dead wall associated on those houseless nights with this too common story, I chose next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital; partly, because it lay on my road round to Westminster; partly, because I had a night fancy in my head which could be best pur- sued within sight of its walls and dome. And the fancy was this: Are not the same and insane equal at night as the sane lie a dreaming? Are not all of us outside this hospital, who dream more or less in the condition of those inside it, every night of our lives? Are we not nightly persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate preposterously with kings and queens, emperors and empresses, and notabilities of all sorts? Do we not nightly jumble events and personages and times and places, as these do daily P Are we not sometimes troubled by our own sleeping inconsisten- cies, and do we not vexedly try to account for them or excuse them, just as these do sometimes in respect of their waking delusions? Said an afflicted man to me, when I was last in a hospital like this, “Sir, I can frequently fly.” I was half ashamed to reflect that so could I–by night. Said a woman to me .On the same occasion, “Queen Victoria frequently comes to dine with me, and her Majesty and I dine off peaches and macaroni in our night-gowns, and his Royal High- ness the Prince Consort does us the honour to make a third on horseback in a Field-Marshal’s uniform.” Could Irefrain from reddening with consciousness when I remembered the amazing royal parties I myself had given (at night), the unaccountable viands I had put on table, and my extraordinary manner of conducting myself on those distinguished occasions? I wonder that the great master who knew everything, when he called Sleep the death of each day’s life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each day’s sanity. - By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and was again setting towards the river; and in a short breathing space I was on Westminster-bridge, regaling my houseless eyes with the external walls of the British Parliament—the perfection of a stupendous institution, I know, and the admiration of all surrounding nations and succeeding ages, I do not doubt, but perhaps a little NIGHT WALKS. 133 the better now and then, for being pricked up to its work. Turning off into Old Palace-yard, the Courts of Ilaw kept me company for a quarter of an hour; hinting in low Yºº what numbers of people they were keeping awake, and how intensely wretched and hor- rible they were rendering the small hours to unfortunate suitors. Westminster Abbey was fine gloomy society for another quarter of an hour; suggesting a wonderful procession of its dead among the dark arches and pillars, each century more amazed by the century following it than by all the centuries going before. And indeed in those houseless night walks—which even included ceme- teries where watchmen went round among the graves at stated times, and moved the tell-tale handle of an index which recorded that they had touched it at such an hour—it was a solemn consideration what enormous hosts of dead belong to one old great city, and how, if they were raised while the living slept, there would not be space of a pin's point in all the streets and ways for the living to come out into. Not only that, but the vast armies of dead would overflow the hills and valleys beyond the city, and would stretch away all round it, God knows how far. - When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead of the night, it may be at first mistaken for com- pany and hailed as such. But, as the spreading circles of vibration, which you may perceive at such a time with great clearness, go opening out, for ever and ever afterwards widening perhaps (as the philosopher has suggested) in eternal space, the mistake is rectified and the sense of loneliness is profounder. Once—it was after leaving the Abbey and turning my face north—I came to the great steps of St. Martin’s Church as the clock was striking Three. Suddenly, a thing that in a moment more I should have trodden upon without seeing, rose up at my feet with a cry of loneliness and houselessness, struck out of it by the bell, the like of which I never heard. We then stood face to face looking at one another, frightened by one another. The creature was like a beetle-browed hair-lipped youth of twenty, and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which it held together with one of its hands. It shivered from head to foot, and its teeth chattered, and as it stared at me—perse- cutor, devil, ghost, whatever it thought me—it made 134 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. with its whining mouth as if it were snapping at me, like a worried dog. Intending to give this ugly object, money, I put out my hand to stay it—for it recoiled as it whined and snapped—and laid my hand upon its shoulder. Instantly, it twisted out of its garment, like the young man in the New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags in my hand. Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was wonderful company. The great waggons of cab- bages, with growers’ men and boys lying asleep under them, and with sharp dogs from market-garden neigh- bourhoods looking after the whole, were as good as a party. But one of the worst night sights I know in London, is to be found in the children who prowl about this place; who sleep in the baskets, fight for the Offal, dart at any object they think they can lay their thiev- ing hands on, dive under the carts and barrows, dodge the constables, and are perpetually making a blunt pattering on the pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their naked feet. A painful and unnatural result comes of the comparison one is forced to institute be- tween the growth of corruption as diplº, in the so much improved and cared for fruits of the earth, and the growth of corruption as displayed in these all un- cared for (except inasmuch as ever-hunted) savages. There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden Market, and that was more company—warm company, too, which was better. Toast of a very substantial quality, was likewise procurable: though the towzled- headed man who made it, in an inner chamber within the coffee-room, hadn’t got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with sleep that in every interval of toast and coffee he went off anew behind the partition into com- plicated cross-roads of choke and snore, and lost his way directly. Into one of these establishments (among the earliest) near Bow-street, there came one morning as I sat over my houseless cup, pondering where to go next, a man in a high and long snuff-coloured coat, and shoes, and, to the best of my belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out of his hat a large cold meat pudding; a meat pudding SO large that it was a very tight fit, and brought the lining of the hat out with it. This myste- rious man was known by his pudding, for on his enter- ing, the man of sleep brought him a pint of hot tea, a NIGHT WALKS. 135 small loaf, and a large knife and fork and plate. Left to himself in his box, he stood the pudding on the bare table, and, instead of cutting it, stabbed it, Overhand, with the knife, like a mortal enemy; then took the knife out, wiped it on his sleeve, tore the pudding asunder with his fingers, and ate it all up. The re- membrance of this man with the pudding remains with me as the remembrance of the most spectral per- son my houselessness encountered. Twice only was I in that establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in (as I should say, just out of bed, and presently going back to bed), take out his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the dagger, and eat his pudding all up. He was a man whose figure promised cadaverousness, but who had an excessively red faco, though shaped like a horse’s. On the second occasion of my seeing him, he said, huskily to tho man of sleep, “Am I red to-night?” “You are,” he uncompromisingly answered. “My mother,” said the spectre, “ was a red-faced woman that liked drink, and I looked at her hard when she laid in her coffin, and I took the complexion.” Somehow, the pud- ding seemed an unwholesome pudding after that, and I put myself in its way no more. When there was no market, or when I wanted vari- ety, a railway terminus with the morning mails coming in, was remunorative company. But like most of the company to be had in this world, it lasted only a very short time. The station lamps would burst out ablaze, the porters would emerge from places of concealment, the cabs and trucks would rattle to their places (the post- office carts were already in theirs), and, finally, the bell would strike up, and the train would come banging in. But there were few passengers and little luggage, and everything scuttled away with the greatest expedition. The locomotive post-offices, with their great nets—as if they had been dragging the country for bodies— would fly open as to their doors, and would disgorge a smell of lamp, an exhausted clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their bags of letters; the engine would blow and heave and perspire, like an engine wiping its fore- head and saying what a run it had had; and within ten minutes the lamps were Out, and I was houseless and alone again. But now, there were driven cattle on the high road 136 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. near, wanting (as cattle always do) to turn into the midst of stone walls, and squeeze themselves through six inches' width of iron railing, and getting their heads down (also as cattle always do) for tossing-purchase at quite imaginary dogs, and giving themselves and every devoted creature associated with them a most extraordinary amount of unnecessary trouble. Now, too, the conscious gas began to grow pale with the knowledge that daylight was coming, and straggling workpeople were already in the streets, and, as waking life had become extinguished with the last pieman’s sparks, so it began to be rekindled with the fires of the first street corner breakfast-sellers. And so by faster and faster degrees, until the last degrees were very fast, the day came, and I was tired and could sleep. And it is not, as I used. to think, going home at such times, the least wonderful thing in London, that in the real desert region of the night, the houseless wanderer is alone there. I knew well enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of all kinds, if I had chosen; but they were put out of sight, and my houselessness had many miles upon miles of streets in which it could, and did, have its own solitary way. CHAPTER XIV. CHAMBERS. AVING Occasion to transact some business with a solicitor who occupies a highly suicidal set of chambers in Gray’s Inn, I afterwards took a turn in the large square of that stronghold of Melancholy, reviewing, with congenial Surroundings, my experi- ences of Chambers. I began, as was natural, with the Chambers I had just left. They were an upper set on a rotten stair- case, with a mysterious bunk or bulkhead on the landing outside them, of a rather nautical and Screw Collier-like appearance than otherwise, and painted an intense black. Many dusty years have passed since the appropriation of this Davy Jones's locker to any purpose, and during the whole period within CHAMBERS. t 13? the memory of living man, it has been hasped and padlocked. I cannot quite satisfy my mind whether it was originally meant for the reception of coals, or bodies, or as a place of temporary security for the plun- der “ looted" by laundresses; but I incline to the last opinion. It is about breast high, and usually serves as a bulk for defendants in reduced circumstances to lean against and ponder at, when they come on the hopeful errand of trying to make an arrangement without money—under which auspicious circumstances it mostly happens that the legal gentleman they want to see is much engaged, and they pervade the stair- case for a considerable period. Against this opposing bulk, in the absurdest manner, the tomb-like outer door of the solicitor's chambers (which is also of an intense black) stands in dark ambush, half open, and half shut, all day. The solicitor's apartments are three in number; consisting of a slice, a cell, and a wedge. The slice is assigned to the two clerks, the cell is occupied by the principal, and the wedge is devoted to stray papers, old game baskets from the country, a washing-stand, and a model of a patent Ship’s Caboose which was exhibited in Chancery at the commencement of the present century on an application for an injunction to restrain infringe- ment. At about half-past nine on every week-day morning, the younger of the two clerks (who, I have reason to believe, leads the fashion at Pentonville in the articles of pipes and shirts) may be found knock- ing the dust out of his official door-key on the bunk or locker before mentioned; and so exceedingly sub- ject to dust is his key, and so very retentive of that superfluity, that in exceptional summer weather when a ray of sunlight has fallen on the locker in my pres- ence, I have noticed its inexpressive countenance to be deeply marked by a kind of Bramah erysipelas or Small-pox. This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered, when I have had restless occasion to make inquiries or leave messages, after office hours) is under the charge of a lady named Sweeney, in figure extremely like an old family umbrella: whose dwelling confronts a dead wall in a court off Gray's Inn-lane, and who is usually fetched into the passage of that bower, when wanted, 138 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. from some neighbouring home of industry, which has the curious property of imparting an inflammatory appearance to her visage. Mrs. Sweeney is one of the race of professed laundresses, and is the compiler of a remarkable manuscript volume entitled “Mrs. Sweeney’s Book,” from which much curious statistical information may be gathered respecting the high prices and small uses of soda, soap, sand, firewood, and other such articles. I have created a legend in my mind—and consequently I believe it with the utmost pertinacity—that the late Mr. Sweeney was a ticket-porter under the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn, and that, in consideration of his long and valuable services, Mrs. Sweeney was appointed to her present post. For though devoid of personal charms, I have observed this lady to exercise a fascination over the elderly ticket-porters mind (particularly under the gateway, and in corners and entries), which I can only refer to her being one of the fraternity, yet not com- peting with it. All that need be said concerning this set of chambers, is said, when I have added that it is in a large double house in Gray’s Inn-Square, very much out of repair, and that the outer portal is ornamented in a hideous manner with certain stone remains, which have the appearance of the dismembered bust, torso, and limbs of a petrified bencher. Indeed, I look upon Gray’s Inn generally as one of the most depressing institutions in brick and mortar, known to the children of men. Can anything be more dreary than its arid Square, Sahara. Desert of the law, with the ugly old tile-topped tenements, the dirty win- dows, the bills To Let To Let, the door-posts inscribed like gravestones, the crazy gateway giving upon the filthy Lane, the Scowling iron-barred prison-like pas- sage into Verulam-buildings, the mouldy red-nosed ticket-porters with little coffin plates and why with aprons, the dry hard atomy-like appearance of the whole dust-heap? When my uncommercial travels tend to this dismal spot, my comfort is its rickety state. Imagination gloats over the fulness of time when the staircases shall have quite tumbled down—they are daily wearing into an ill-savoured powder, but have not quite tumbled down yet—when the last old prolix bencher all of the olden time, shall have been got out CHAMBERS. 139 of an Fº window by means of a Fire Ladder, and carried off to the Holborn Union; when the last clerk shall have engrossed the last parchment behind the last splash on the last of the mud-stained windows, which, all through the miry year, are pilloried out of recog- nition in Gray’s Inn-lane. Then, shall a squalid little trench with rank grass and a pump in it, lying between the coffee-house and South-square, be wholly given up to cats and rats, and not, as now, have its empire divided between those animals and a few briefless bipeds—surely called to the Bar by voices of deceiving spirits, seeing that they are wanted there by no mortal —who glance down, with eyes better glazed than their casements, from their dreary and lack-lustre rooms. Then shall the way Nor'Westward, now lying under a short grim colonnade where in summer time pounce flies from law stationering windows into the eyes of laymen, be choked with rubbish and happily become impassable. Then shall the gardens where turf, trees, and gravel wear a legal livery of black, run rank, and Fº go to Gorhambury to see Bacon’s effigy as e sat, and not come here º hich in truth they seldom do) to see where he walked. Then, in a word, shall the old-established vendor of periodicals sit alone in his little crib of a shop behind the Holborn Gate, like that lumbering Marius among the ruins of Carthage, who has sat heavy on a thousand million of similes. * At One Pºiº of my uncommercial career I much frequented another set of chambers in Gray’s Inn- square. They were what is familiarly called “a top set,” and all the eatables and drinkables introduced into them acquired a flavour of Cockloft. I have known an unopened Strasbourg pâté fresh from Fort- num and Mason's, to draw in this cockloft tone through its crockery dish, and become penetrated with cockloft to the core of its inmost truffle in three-quarters of an hour. This, however, was not the most curious feature of those chambers; that, consisted in the profound con- viction entertained by my esteemed friend Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean. Whether it was an in- born hallucination, or whether it was imparted to him by Mrs. Miggott the laundress, I never could ascertain. But, I believe he would have gone to the stake upon the question. Now, they were so dirty that I could take off 140 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. the distinctest impression of my figure on any article of furniture by merely lounging upon it for a few mo- ments; and it used to be a private amusement of mine to print myself off—if I may use the expression—all over the rooms. It was the first large circulation I had. At other times I have accidentally shaken a win- dow curtain while in animated conversation with Parkle, and struggling insects which were certainly red, and were certainly not ladybirds, have dropped on the back of my hand. Yet Parkle lived in that top set years, bound body and soul to the superstition that they were clean. He used to say, when congratulated upon them, “Well, they are not like chambers in one respect, you know; they are clean.” Concurrently, he had an idea which he could never explain, that Mrs. Miggot was in some way connected with the Church. When he was in particularly good spirits, he used to believe that a deceased uncle of hers had been a Dean; when he was poorly and low, he believed that her brother had been a Curate. I and Mrs. Miggot (she was a genteel woman) were on confidential terms, but I never knew her to commit herself to any distinct as- sertion on the subject; she merely claimed a pro- prietorship in the Church, by looking when it was men- tioned, as if the reference awakened the slumbering Past, and were personal. It may have been his amiable confidence in Mrs. Miggot's better days that inspired my friend with his delusion respecting the chambers, but he never wavered in his fidelity to it for a moment, though he wallowed in dirt seven years. Two of the windows of these chambers looked down into the garden; and we have sat up there together many a summer evening, saying how pleasant it was, and talking of many things. To my intimacy with that top set, I am indebted for three of my liveliest ersonal impressions of the loneliness of life in cham- ers. They shall follow here, in order; first, second, Sand third. First. My Gray’s Inn friend, on a time, hurt one of his legs, and it became seriously inflamed. Not know- ing of his indisposition, I was on my way to visit him as usual, one summer evening, when I was much sur- prised by meeting a lively leech in Field-court, Gray’s Inn, seemingly on his way to the West End of London. CHAMBERS. 141 As the leech was alone, and was of course unable to explain his position, even if he had been inclined to do so (which he had not the appearance of being), I passed him and went on, Turning the corner of Gray’s Inn- square, I was beyond expression amazed by meeting another leech—also entirely alone, and also proceeding in a westerly direction, though with less decision of purpose. Ruminating on this extraordinary circum- stance, and endeavouring to remember whether I had ever read, in the Philosophical Transactions or any work on Natural History, of a migration of Leeches, I ascended to the top set, past the dreary series of closed outer doors of offices and an empty set or two, which intervened between that lofty region and the surface. Entering my friend’s rooms, I found him stretched upon his back, like Prometheus Bound, with a perfectly demented ticket-porter in attendance on him instead of the Vulture: which helpless individual who was feeble and frightened, and had (my friend explained to me, in great choler) been endeavouring for some hours to apply leeches to his leg, and as yet had only got on two out of twenty. To this Unfortunate’s distraction be- tween a damp cloth on which he had placed the leeches to freshen them, and the wrathful adjurations of my friend to “Stick 'em on, sir!” I referred the phe- nomenon I had encountered: the rather as two fine specimens were at that moment going out at the door, while a general insurrection of the rest was in progress on the table. After a while our united efforts prevailed, and, when the leeches came off and had recovered their spirits, we carefully tied them up in a decanter. But I never heard more of them than that they were all gone next morning, and that the Out-of-door young man of Bickle Bush and Bodger, on the ground floor, had been bitten and blooded by some creature not identified. They never “took '' on Mrs. Miggot, the laundress; but, I have always preserved fresh, the belief that she un- consciously carried several about her, until they gradually found openings in life. Second. On the same staircase with my friend Parkle, and on the same floor, there lived a man of law who pursued his business elsewhere, and used those chambers as his place of residence. For three or four years, Parkle rather knew of him than knew him, 142 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. but after that—for Englishmen—short pause of con- sideration, they began to speak. Parkle exchanged words with him in his private character only, and knew nothing of his business ways, or means. He was a man a good deal about town, but always alone. We used to remark to one another, that although we often encountered him in theatres, concert-rooms, and similar public places, he was always alone. Yet he was not a gloomy man, and was of a decidedly conver- sational turn; insomuch that he would sometimes of an evening lounge with a cigar in his mouth, half in and half out of Parkle's rooms and discuss the topics of the day by the hour. He used to hint on these occasions that he had four faults to find with life; firstly, that it obliged a man to be always winding up his watch; secondly, that London was too small; thirdly, that it therefore wanted variety; fourthly, that there was too much dust in it. There was so much dust in his own faded chambers, certainly, that they reminded me of a sepulchre, furnished in prophetic anticipation of the present time, which had newly been brought to light, after having remained buried a few thousand years. One dry hot autumn evening at twilight, this man, being then five years turned of fifty, looked in upon Parkle in his usual lounging way, with his cigar in his mouth as usual, and Said, “I am going out of town.” As he never went out of town, Parkle said, “Oh indeed! At last?” “Yes,” says he, “at last. For what is a man to do? London is so small! If you go West, you come to Hounslow. If you go East, you come to Bow. If you go South, there's Brixton or Norwood. If you go North, you can’t get rid of Barnet. Then, the mo- notony of all the Streets, streets, streets—and of all the roads, roads, roads—and the dust, dust, dust!” When he had said this, he wished Parkle a good evening, but came back again and said, with his watch in his hand, “Oh, I really cannot go on winding up this watch over and over again; I wish you would take care of it.” So, Parkle laughed and consented, and the man went out of town. The man remained out of town so long, that his letter-box became choked, and no more letters could be got into it, and they began to be left at the lodge and to accumulate there. At last the head-por- ter decided, on conference with the steward, to use his CHAMBERS. 143 master-key and look into the chambers, and give them the benefit of a whiff of air. Then, it was found that he hanged himself to his bedstead, and had left this written memorandum: “I should prefer to be cut down by my neighbour and friend (if he will allow meto call him so), H. Parkle, Esq.” This was an end of Par- kle's occupancy of chambers. He went into lodg- ings immediately. Third. While Parkle lived in Gray’s Inn, and I my- self was uncommercially preparing for the Bar—which is done, as everybody knows, by having a frayed old gown put on in a pantry by an old woman in a chronic state of Saint Anthony’s fire and dropsy, and, so decor- ated, bolting a bad dinner in a party of four, whereof each individual mistrusts the other three—I say, while these #º were, there was a certain elderly gentleman who lived in a court of the Temple, and was a great judge and lover of port wine. Every day he dined at his club and drank his bottle or two of port wine, and every night came home to the Temple and went to bed in his lonely chambers. This had gone on many years with- out variation, when one night he had a fit on coming home, and fell and cut his head deep, but partly recov- ered and groped about in the dark to find the door. When he was afterwards discovered, dead, it was clearly established by the marks of his hands about the room that he must have done so. Now, this chanced on the night of Christmas Eve, and over him lived a young fellow who had sisters and young country- friends, and who gave them a little party that night, in the course of which they played at Blindman’s Buff. They played that game, for their greater sport, by the light of the fire only; and once, when they were all quietly rustling and stealing about, and the blindman was trying to pick out the prettiest sister (for which I am far from blaming him), somebody cried, Hark! The man below must be playing Blindman's Buff by himself to-night! They listened, and they heard sounds of Some one falling about and stumbling against furni- ture, and they all laughed at the conceit, and went on with their play, more light-hearted and merry than ever. Thus, those two so different games of life and death were played out together, blindfolded, in the two sets of chambers. --- 144 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Such are the occurrences, which coming to my knowledge, imbued me long ago with a strong sense of the lonliness of chambers. There was a fantastic illustra- tion to much the same purpose implicitly believed by a strange sort of man now dead, whom I knew when I had not quite arrived at legal years of discretion, though I was already in the uncommercial line. This was a man who, though not more than thirty, had seen the world in divers irreconcilable capacities— had been an officer in a South American regiment among other odd things—but had not achieved much in any way of life, and was in debt, and in hiding. He occupied chambers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn; his name, however, was not up on the door, or door-post, but in lieu of it stood the name of a friend who had died in the chambers, and had given him the furniture. The story arose out of the furniture, and was to this effect:-Let the former holder of the cham- bers, whose name was still up on the door and door-post, be Mr. Testator. Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons Inn when he had but very scanty furniture for his bedroom, and none for his sitting-room. He had lived some wintry months in this condition, and had found it very bare and cold. One night, past midnight, when he sat writing, and still had writing to do that must be done before he went to bed, he found himself out of coals. |He had coals down-stairs, but had never been to his cellar; however the cellar-key was on his mantelshelf, and if he went down and opened the cellar it fitted, he might fairly assume the coals in that cellar to be his. As to his laundress, she lived among the coal-waggons and Thames watermen—for there were Thames water- men at that time—in some unknown rat-hole by the river, down lanes and alleys on the other side of the Strand. As to any other person to meet him or ob- struct him, Lyons Inn was dreaming, drunk, maudlin, moody, betting, brooding over bill-discounting or re- newing—asleep or awake, minding its own affairs. Mr. Testator took his coal-scuttle in one hand, his candle and key in the other, and descended to the dismallest underground dens of Lyons Inn, where the late vehicles in the streets became thunderous, and all the water- pipes in the neighbourhood seemed to have Macbeth's CHAMBERS. 145 Amen sticking in their throats, and to be trying to get it out. After groping here and there among low doors to no purpose, Mr. Testator at length came to a door with a rusty padlock which his key fitted. Getting the door open with much trouble, and looking in, he found no coals, but a confused pile of furniture. Alarmed by this intrusion on another man’s property, he locked the door again, found his own cellar, filled his scuttle, and returned up-stairs. But the furniture he had seen ran on castors across and across Mr. Testator's mind incessantly, when, in the chill hour of five in the morning he got to bed. |He particularly wanted a table to write at, and a table expressly made to be written at, had been the piece of furniture in the foreground of the heap. When his laundress emerged from her burrow in the morning to make his kettle boil, he artfully led up to the subject of cellars and furniture; but the two ideas had evidently no connection in her mind. When she left him, and he sat at his breakfast, thinking about the furniture, he recalled the rusty state of the padlock, and Inferred that the furniture must have been stored in the cellars for a long time—was perhaps forgotten—owner dead, perhaps? After thinking it over, a few days, in the course of which he could pump nothing out of Lyons Inn about the furniture, he became desperate, and re- solved to borrow that table. He did so, that night. He had not had the table long, when he determined to borrow an easy-chair; he had not had. that long, when he made up his mind to borrow a bookcase, then, a couch; then, a carpet and rug. By that time, he felt he was “in furniture stepped in so far,” as that it could be no worse to borrow it all. Consequently, he bor- rowed it all, and locked up the cellar for good. IHe had always locked it, after every visit. He had carried up every separate article in the dead of the night, and at the best, had felt as wicked as a Resurrection Man. Every article was blue and furry when brought into his rooms, and he had had, in a murderous and guilty sort of way, to polish it up while London slept. Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers two or three years, or more, and gradually lulled himself into the opinion that the furniture was his own. This was his convenient State of mind when, late one night, a WOL. I. 10 146 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. step came up the stairs, and a hand passed over his door, feeling for his knocker, and then one deep and solemn rap was rapped that might have been a spring in Mr. Testator's easy-chair to shoot him out of it, so promptly was it attended with that effect. - With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went to the door, and found there, a very pale and very tall man; a man who stooped; a man with very high shoulders, a very narrow chest, and a very red nose; a shabby- genteel man. He was wrapped in a long threadbare black coat, fastened up the front with more pins than buttons, and under his arm he squeezed an umbrella without a handle, as if he were playing bagpipes. He said, “I ask your pardon, but can you tell me—” and stopped; his eyes resting on some object within the chambers. - “Can I tell you what?” asked Mr. Testator, noting his stoppage with quick alarm. - “I ask your pardon,” said the stranger, “but—this is not the inquiry I was going to make—do I see in there, any Small article of property belonging to ºne 2 ° •,• Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that he was not aware—when the visitor slipped past him, into the chambers. There, in a goblin way which froze Mr. Testator to the marrow, he examined, first, the writing- table, and said, “ Mine;” then, the easy-chair, and said, “Mine;” then, the bookcase, and said, “Mine;” then, turned up a corner of the carpet, and said, “Mine!” in a word, inspected every item of furniture from the cellar, in succession, and said, “Mine!” Towards the end of this investigation, Mr. Testator erceived that he was sodden with liquor, and that the #. was gin. He was not unsteady with gin, either in his speech or carriage; but he was stiff with gin in both particulars. * * Mr. Testator was in a dreadful state, for (according to his making out of the story), the possible conse- quences of what he had done in recklessness and hardihood, flashed upon him in their fulness for the first time. When they had stood gazing at one another for a little while, he tremulously began. “Sir, I am conscious that the fullest explanation, compensation, and restitution, are your due. They CHAMBERS. 14? shall be yours. Allow me to entreat that, without temper, without even natural irritation on your part, We may have a little—” “Drop of something to drink,” interposed the Stranger. “I am agreeable.” Mr. Testator had intended to say, “a little quiet con- versation,” but with great relief of mind adopted the amendment. He produced a decanter of gin, and was bustling about for hot water and sugar, when he found that his visitor had already drunk half the decanter’s Contents. With hot water and sugar the visitor drank the remainder before he had been an hour in the cham- bers by the chimes of the church’ of St. Mary in the Strand, and during the process he frequently whispered to himself, “Mine!” The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was to follow it, the visitor rose and said, with increased stiffness, “At what hour of the morning, sir, will it be convenient?” Mr.Testator hazarded, “At ten?” “Sir,” said the visitor, “at ten, to the moment, I shall be here.” He then contemplated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure, and said, “God bless you! How is your wife?” Mr. Testator (who never had a wife) replied with much feeling, “Deeply anxious, poor soul, but otherwise well.” The visitor thereupon turned and went away, and fell twice in going down-stairs. From that hour he was never heard of. Whether he was a ghost, or a spectral illusion of conscience, or a drunken man who had no business there, or the drunken rightful owner of the furniture, with a transitory gleam of memory; whether he got safe home, or had no home to get to; whether he died of liquor on the way, or lived in liquor ever afterwards; he never was heard of more. This was the story, received with the furniture and held to be as substantial, by its second possessor in an upper set of chambers in grim Lyons Inn. It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they must have been built for chambers, to have the right kind of loneliness. You may make a great dwell- ing-house very lonely, by isolating suites of rooms and calling them chambers, but you cannot make the true kind of loneliness. In dwelling-houses, there have been family festivals; children have grown in them, girls have bloomed into women in them, courtships and 148 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. marriages have taken place in them. True chambers never were young, childish, maidenly; never had dolls in them, or rocking-horses, or christenings, or betrothals, or little coffins. Let Gray’s Inn identify the child who first touched hands and hearts with Robinson Crusoe, in any one of its many “sets,” and that child’s little statue, in white marble with a golden inscription, shall be at its service, at my cost and charge, as a drinking fountain for the spirit, to freshen its thirsty square. Let Lincoln's produce from all its houses, a twentieth of the procession derivable from any dwelling-house one twen- tieth of its age, of fair young brides who married for love and hope, not settlements, and all the Vice-Chancel- lors shall thenceforward be kept in nosegays for nothing, On application to the writer hereof. It is not denied that On the terrace of the Adelphi, or in any of the streets of that subterranean-stable-haunted spot, or about Bed- ford-row, or James-street of that ilk (a gruesome place), or anywhere among the neighbourhoods that have done flowering and have run to seed, you may find Chambers replete with the accommodations of Solitude, Closeness, and Darkness, where you may be as low-spirited as in the genuine article, and might be as easily murdered, with the placid reputation of having merely gone down to the sea-side. But, the many waters of life did run musical in those dry channels once;—among the Inns, never. The only popular legend known in relation to any one of the dull family of Inns, is a dark Old Bailey whisper concerning Clement’s and importing how the black creature who holds the sun-dial there, was a Inegro who slew his master and built the dismal pile out of the contents of his strong box—for which architect- ural offence alone he ought to have been condemned to live in it. But, what populace would waste fancy upon such a place, or on New Inn, Staple Inn, Bar- nard’s Inn, or any of the shabby crew? - he genuine laundress, too, is an institution not to be had in its entirety and Out of and away from the gen- uine Chambers. Again, it is not denied that you may be robbed elsewhere. Elsewhere you may have—for money—dishonesty, drunkenness, dirt, laziness, and pro- found incapacity But the Veritable shining-red-faced shameless laundress; the true Mrs. Sweeney—in figure, colour, texture, and smell, like the old damp family- NURSE'S STORIES. 149 umbrella; the tip-top complicated abomination of stock- ings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, looseness, and larceny; is only to be drawn at the fountain-head. Mrs. Sweeney is beyond the reach of individual art. It requires the united efforts of several men to ensure that great result, and it is only developed in perfection under an Honour- able Society and in an Inn of Court. CHAPTER XV. N U R S E 'S STO RI E S. THERE are not many places that I find it more agree- able to revisit when I am in an idle mood, than some places to which I have never been. For, my acquaint- ance with those spots is of such long standing, and has: ripened into an intimacy of so affectionate a nature, that I take a particular interest in assuring myself that they are unchanged. I never was in Robinson Crusoe’s Island, yet I fre- quently return there. The colony he established on it soon faded away, and it is uninhabited by any descen- dants of the grave and courteous Spaniards, or of Will Atkins and the other mutineers, and has relapsed into its original condition. Not a twig of its wicker houses remains, its goats have long run wild again, its scream- ing parrots would darken the sun with a cloud of many flaming colours if a gun were fired there, no face is ever reflected in the waters of the little creek which Friday swam across when pursued by his two brother canni- bals with sharpened stomachs. After comparing uotes with other travellers who have similarly revisited the Island and conscientiously inspected it, I have satisfied myself that it contains no vestige of Mr. Atkin's domes- ticity or theology, though his track on the memorable evening of his landing to set his captain ashore, when he was decoyed about and round about until it was dark, and his boat was stove, and his strength and spirits failed him, is yet plainly to be traced. So is the hill-top on which Robinson was struck dumb with joy when the reinstated captain pointed to the ship, riding 150 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. within half a mile of the shore, that was to bear him away, in the nine-and-twentieth year of his seclusion in that lonely place. So is the sandy beach on which the memorable footstep was impressed, and where the savages hauled up their canoes when they came ashore for those dreadful public dinners, which led to a danc- ing worse than speech-making. So is the cave where the flaring eyes of the old goat made such a goblin ap- pearance in the dark. So is the site' of the hut where Robinson lived with the dog and the parrot and the cat, and where he endured those first agonies of solitude, which—strange to say—never involved any ghostly fancies; a circumstance so very remarkable, that perhaps he left out something in writing his record? Round hundreds of such objects, hidden in the dense tropical foliage, the tropical sea breaks evermore; and over them the tropical sky, saving in the short rainy season, shines bright and cloudless. Neither, was I ever belated among wolves, on the borders of France and Spain; nor, did I ever, when night was closing in and the ground was covered with snow, draw up my little company among some felled trees which served as a breastwork, and there fire a train of gunpowder so dexterously that suddenly we had three or four score blazing wolves illuminating the darkness around us. Nevertheless, T. Occasionally go back to that dismal region and perform, the feat again; when indeed to smell the singeing and the frying of the wolves afire, and to see them setting one another alight as they rush and tumble, and to behold them rolling. in the snow vainly attempting to put themselves out, and to hear their howlings taken up by all the echoes as well as by all the unseen wolves within the woods, makes me tremble. I was never in the robbers’ cave, where Gil Blas lived, but I often go back there and find the trap-door just as heavy to raise as it used to be, while that wicked old disabled Black lies everlastingly cursing in bed. I was never in Don Quixote’s study, where he read his books of chivalry until he rose and hacked at imaginary giants, and then refreshed himself with great draughts of water, yet you couldn’t move a book in it without my knowledge, or with my consent. I was never (thank Heaven) in company with the little old woman who NURSE'S STORIES. 151 hobbled out of the chest and told the merchant Abudah to go in search of the Talisman of Oromanes, yet Imake it my business to know that she is well preserved and as intolerable as ever. I was never at the school where the boy Horatio Nelson got out of bed to steal the pears: not because he wanted any, but because every other boy was afraid: yet I have several times been back to this Academy, to see him let down out of window with a sheet. So with Damascus, and Bagdad, and Brobding- nag (which has the curious fate of being usually mis- spelt when written), and Lilliput, and Laputa, and the Nile, and Abyssinia, and the Ganges, and the North Pole, and many hundreds of places—I was never at them, yet it is an affair of my life to keep them intact, and I am always going back to them. But, when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting the associations of my childhood as recorded in pre- vious pages of these notes, my experience in this wise was made quite inconsiderable and of no account, by the quantity of places and people—utterly impossible places and people, but none the less alarmingly real— that I found I had been introduced to by my nurse before I was six years old, and used to be forced to go back to at night without at all wanting to go. If we all knew our own minds (in a more enlarged sense than the popular acceptation of that phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses jºi. for most of the º corners we are forced to go back to, against our WIII.S. The first diabolical character who introduced himself on my peaceful youth (as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was a certain Captain Murderer. This wretch must have been an offshoot of the Blue Beard family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in those times. His warning name would seem to have awakened no general prejudice against him, for he was admitted into the best society and possessed immense wealth. Captain Murderer's mission was matrimony, and the gratification of a cannibal appetite with tender brides. On his marriage morning, he always caused both sides of the way to church to be planted with curious flowers; and when his bride said, “Dear Captain Murderer, I never saw flowers like these before: what are they called?” he answered, “They are called Garnish 152 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. for house-lamb,” and laughed at his ferocious practical joke in a horrid manner, disquieting the minds of the noble bridal company, with a very sharp show of teeth, then displayed for the first time. He made love in a coach and six, and married in a coach and twelve, and all his horses were milk-white horses with one red spot on the back which he caused to be hidden by the harness. For, the spot would come there, though every horse was milk-white when Captain Murderer bought him. And the spot was young bride's blood. (To this terrific point I am indebted for my first personal experience of a shudder and cold beads on the forehead.) When Cap- tain Murderer had made an end of feasting and revelry, and had dismissed the noble guests, and was alone with his wife on the day month after their marriage, it was his whimsical custom to produce a golden rolling-pin and a silver pie-board. Now, there was this special feature in the Captain’s courtships, that he always asked if the young lady could make pie-crust; and if she couldn’t by nature or education, she was taught. Well. When the bride saw Captain Murderer produce the golden rolling-pin and silver pie-board, she remem- bered this, and turned up her laced-silk sleeves to make a pie. The Captain brought out a silver pie-dish of immense capacity, and the Captain brought Out flour and butter and eggs and all things needful, except the inside of the pie; of materials for the Staple of the pie itself, the captain brought out none. Then said the lovely bride, “Dear Captain Murderer, what pie is this to be?” He replied, “A meat pie.” Then said the lovely bride, “Dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat.” The Captain humorously retorted, “Look in the glass.” She looked in the glass, but still she saw no meat, and then the Captain roared with laughter, and suddenly ... frowning and drawing his sword, bade her roll out the crust. So she rolled out the crust, dropping large tears upon it all the time because he was so cross, and when she had lined the dish with crust and had cut the crust all ready to fit the top, the Captain called Out, “I see the meat in the glass!” And the bride looked up at the glass, just in time to see the Captain cutting her head off; and he chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the Fº and sent it to the baker’s, and ate it all, and picked the bones. NURSE'S STORIES. * 153 Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering exceedingly, until he came to choose a bride from two twin sisters, and at first didn’t know which to choose. For, though one was fair and the other dark, they were both equally beautiful. But the fair twin loved him, and the dark twin hated him, so he chose the fair one. The dark twin would have prevented the marriage if she could, but she couldn’t; however, on the night before it, much suspecting Captain Murderer, she stole out and climbed his garden wall, and looked in at his window through a chink in the shutter, and saw him having his teeth filed sharp. Next day she listened all day, and heard him make his joke about the house-lamb. And that day month, he had the paste rolled out, and cut the fair twin’s head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's, and ate it all, and picked the bones. Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions much in- creased by the filing of the Captain’s teeth, and again by the house-lamb joke. Putting all things together when he gave out that her sister was dead, she divined the truth, and determined to be revenged. So, she went up to Captain Murderer's house, and knocked at the knocker and pulled at the bell, and when the Cap- tain came to the door, said: “Dear Captain Murderer, marry me next, for I always loved you and was jeal- ous of my sister.” The Captain took it as a compliment, and made a polite answer, and the marriage was quickly arranged. On the night before it, the bride again climbed to his window, and again saw him having his teeth filed sharp. At this sight she laughed such a ter- rible laugh at the chink in the shutter, that the Cap- tain's blood curdled, and he said: “I hope nothing has disagreed with me!” At that, she laughed again, a still more terrible laugh, and the shutter was opened and search made, but she was nimbly gone, and there was no one. Next day they went to church in a coach and twelve, and were married. And that day month, she rolled the pie-crust out, and Captain Murderer cut her head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's, and ate it all, and picked the bones. But before she began to roll out the paste she had 154 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. taken a deadly poison of a most awful character, dis- tilled from toads’ eyes and spiders' knees; and Captain Murderer had hardly picked her last bone, when he be- gan to swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over spots, and to scream. And he went on swelling and turning bluer, and being more all over spots and Screaming, until he reached from floor to ceiling, and from wall to wall; and then, at one o’clock in the morning, he blew up with a loud explosion. At the sound of it, all the milk-white horses in the stables broke their halters and went mad, and then they galloped over everybody in Captain Murderer's house §§ with the family blacksmith who had filed his teeth) until the whole were dead, and then they galloped away. Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain Murderer, in my early youth, and added hundreds of times was there a mental compulsion upon me in bed, to peep in at his window as the dark twin peeped, and to revisit his horrible house, and look at him in his blue and spotty and Screaming stage, as he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. The young woman who brought me acquainted with Captain Mur- derer had a fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember—as a sort of introductory overture —by clawing the air with both hands, and uttering a long low hollow groan. So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in combination with this infernal Cap- tain, that I sometimes used to plead I thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough to hear the story again just yet. But, she never spared me one word of it, and indeed commended the awful chalice to my lips as the only preservative known to science against “The Black Cat "-a weird and glaring-eyed supernatural Tom, who was reputed to prowl about the world by night, sucking the breath of infancy, and who was on- dowed with a special thirst (as I was given to under- stand) for mine. . This female bard—may she have been repaid my debt of obligation to her in the matter of nightmares and perspirations!—reappears in my memory as the daughter of a shipwright. Her name was Mercy, though she had none on me. There was something of a shipbuilding flavour in the following story. As it always recurs to me in a vague association with calonel pills, I believe NURSE'S STORIES. 155 it to have been reserved for dull nights when I was low with medicine. There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a Government Yard, and his name was Chips. And his father's name" before him was Chips, and his father's name before him was Chips, and they were all Chipses. And Chips the father had sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips the grandfather had sold himself to the Devil for an iron top and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips the great- grandfather had disposed of himself in the same direc- tion on the same terms; and the bargain had run in the family for a long long time. So, one day, when young Chips was at work in the Dock Slip all alone, down in the dark hold of an old Seventy-four that was haled up for repairs, the Devil presented himself, and remarked: “A Lemon has pips, And a Yard has ships, And I’ll have Chips!” (I don’t know why, but this fact of the Devil’s express- ing himself in rhyme was peculiarly trying to me). Chips looked up when he heard the words, and there he saw the Devil with saucer eyes that squinted on a terri- ble great scale, and that struck out sparks of blue fire continually. And whenever he winked his eyes, show- ers of blue sparks came out, and his eyelashes made a clattering like flints and steels striking lights. And hanging over one of his arms by the handle was an iron pot, and under that arm was a bushel of tenpenny nails, and under his other arm was half a ton of copper, and sitting on one of his shoulders was a rat that could speak. So, the Devil said again: “A Lemon has pips, And n Yard has ships, And I’ll have Chips l'' (The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the part of the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses for some moments.) So, Chips answered never a word, but went on with his work. “What are you doing, Chips?” said the rat that could speak. “I am putting in new planks where you and your gang have eaten old away,” said Chips. “But we’ll eat them too,” 156 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. said the rat that could speak;,” and we’ll let in the water and drown the crew, and we’ll eat them too.” Chips, being only a shipwright, and not a Man-of-war's man, said, “You are welcome to it.” But he couldn’t keep his eyes off the half a ton of copper or the bushel of ten- penny nails; for nails and copper are a shipwright's sweethearts, and shipwrights will run away with them whenever they can. So, the Devil said, “I see what you are looking at, Chips. You had better strike the bargain. You know the terms. Your father before you was well acquainted with them, and so were your gº and great-grandfather before him.” Says Ships, “I like the copper, and I like the nails, and I don’t mind the pot, but I don’t like the rat.” Says the Devil, fiercely, “You can’t have the metal without him—and he’s a curiosity. I’m going.” Chips, afraid of losing the half a ton of copper and the bushel of nails, then said, “Give us hold!” So, he got the copper and the nails and the pot and the rat that could speak, and the Devil vanished. Chips sold the copper, and he sold the nails, and he would have sold the pot; but whenever he offered it for sale, the rat was in it, and the dealers dropped it, and would have nothing to say to the bar- gain. So, Chips resolved to kill the rat, and, being at work in the Yard one day with a great kettle of hot pitch on one side of him and the iron pot with the rat in it on the other, he turned the scalding pitch into the pot and filled it full. Then, he kept his eye upon it till it cooled and hardened, and then he let it stand for twenty days, and then he heated the pitch again and turned it back into the kettle, and then he sank the pot in water for twenty days more, and then he got the smelters to put it in the furnace for twenty days more, and then they gave it him out, red-hot, and look- ing like red-hot glass instead of iron—yet there was the rat in it, just the same as ever! And the moment it caught his eye, it said with a jeer: - “A Lemon has pips, And a Yard has Ships, And I’ll have Chips!” (For this Refrain I had waited since its last appearance, with inexpressible horror, which now culminated.) Chips now felt certain in his own mind that the rat NURSE'S STORIES. 157 would stick to him; the rat answering his thought, said, “I will—like pitch!” Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had spoken, and made off, Chips began to hope that it wouldn’t keep its word. But, a terrible thing happened next day. For, when dinner-time came, and the Dock- bell rang to strike work, he put his rule into the long pocket at the side of his trousers, and there he found a rat—not that rat, but another rat. And in his hat, he found another; and in his pocket-handkerchief, another; and in the sleeves of his coat, when he pulled it on to go to dinner, two more. And from that time he found him- self so frightfully intimate with all the rats in the Yard, that they climbed up his legs when he was at work, and sat on his tools while he used them. And they could all speak to one another, and he understood what they said. And they got into his lodging, and into his bed, and into his teapot, and into his beer, and into his boots. And he was going to be married to a corn-chand- ler's daughter; and when he gave her a workbox he had himself made for her, a rat jumped out of it: and when he put his arm round her waist, a rat clung about her; so the marriage was broken off, though the banns were already twice put up—which the parish glerk well re- members, for, as he handed the book to the clergyman for the second time of asking, a large fat rat ran over the leaf. (By this time a special cascade of rats was rolling down my back, and the whole of my small listen- ing person was overrun with them. At intervals ever since, I have been morbidly afraid of my own pocket, lest my exploring hand should find a specimen or two of those vermin in it.) You may believe that all this was very terrible to Chips; but even all this was not the worst. He knew besides, what the rats were doing, wherever they were. So, sometimes he would cry aloud, when he was at his club at night, “Oh I Keep the rats out of the con- victs’ burying-ground ! Don’t let them do that l” Or, “There’s one of them at the cheese down-stairs!” Or, “There's two of them smelling at the baby in the garret !” Or, other things of that sort. At last, he was voted mad, and lost his work in the Yard, and could get no other work. But, King George wanted men, so before very long he got pressed for a sailor. 158 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. And so he was taken off in a boat one evening to his ship, lying at Spithead, ready to sail. And so the first thing he made out in her as he got near her, was the figure-head of the old Seventy-four, where he had seen the Devil. She was called the Argonaut, and they rowed right under the bowsprit where the figure-head of the Argonaut, with a sheepskin in his hand and a blue gown on, was looking out to sea; and sitting star- ing on his forehead was the rat who could speak, and his exact words were these: “ Chips ahoy! Old boy! We’ve pretty well eat them too, and we’ll drown the crew, and will eat them too!” (Here I always became exceedingly faint, and would have asked for water, but that I was speechless). The ship was bound for the Indies; and if you don’t lanow where that is, you ought to it, and angels will never love you. (Here I felt myself an outcast from a future state.) The ship set sail that very night, and she sailed, and sailed, and sailed. Chip’s feelings were dreadful. Nothing ever equalled his terrors. No wonder. At last, one day he asked leave to speak to the Admiral. The Admiral giv’ leave. Chips went down on his knees in the Great State Cabin. “Your Honour, unless your Honour, without a moment’s loss of time makes sail for the nearest shore, this is a doomed ship, and her name is the Coffin!” “Young man, your words are a madman’s words.” “Your Honour, no; they are nibbling us away.” “They?” “Your Honour, them dreadful rats. Dust and hollowness where solid oak ought to be! Rats nibbling a grave for every man on board Oh! Does your Honour love your Lady and your pretty children?” “Yes, my man, to be sure.” “Then, for God’s sake, make for the nearest shore, for at this present moment the rats are all stopping in their work, and are all looking straight towards you with bare teeth, and are all saying to one another that you shall never, never, never, never, see your Lady and your children more.” “My poor fellow, you are a case for the doctor. Sentry, take care of this man!” So, he was bled and he was blistered, and he was this and that, for six whole days and nights. So, then he again asked leave to speak to the Admiral. . The Admiral giv' leave. He went down on his knees in the Great State Cabin. “Now, Admiral, you must die! | - NURSE'S STORIES." 159 You took no warning; you must die! The rats are never wrong in their calculations, and they make out that they’ll be through, at twelve to-night. So, you must die!—With me and all the rest!” And so at twelve o’clock there was a great leak reported in the ship, and a torrent of water rushed in and nothing could stop it, and they all went down, every living soul. And what the rats—being water-rats—left of Chips, at last floated to shore, and sitting on him was an immense Overgrown rat, laughing, that dived when the corpse touched the beach and never came up. And there was a deal of seaweed on the remains. And if you get thirteen bits of seaweed, and dry them and burn them in the fire, they will go off like in these thirteen words as plain as plain can be: “A Lemon has pips, And a Yard has ships, And I’ve got Chips '' The same female bard—descended, possibly, from those terrible old scalds who seem to have existed for the express purpose of addling the brains of mankind when they begin to investigate languages—made a standing pretence which greatly assisted in forcing me back to a number of hideous places that I would by all means have avoided. This pretence was, that all her ghost stories had occurred to her own relations. Polite- ness towards a meritorious family, therefore, forbade my doubting them, and they acquired an air of authen- tication that impaired my digestive powers for life. There was a narrative concerning an unearthly animal foreboding death, which appeared in the open street to a parlour-maid who “went to fetch the beer” for sup- per: first (as I now recal it) assuming the likeness of a black dog, and gradually rising on its hind-legs and swelling into the semblance of some quadruped greatly surpassing a hippopotamus: which apparition—not be- cause I deemed it in the least improbable, but because I felt it to be really too large to bear—I feebly endeav- oured to explain away. But, on Mercy’s retorting with wounded dignity that the parlour-maid was her own sister-in-law, I perceived there was no hope, and re- signed myself to this zoological phenomenon as one of my many pursuers. There was another narrative 160 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. describing the apparition of a young woman who came out of a glass-case and haunted another young woman until the other young woman questioned it and elicited that its bones (Lord ' To think of its being so particu- lar about its bones 1) were buried under the glass-case, whereas she required them to be interred, with every Undertaking solemnity up to the twenty-four pound ten, in another particular place. This narrative I con- sidered I had a personal interest in disproving, because we had glass-cases at home, and how, otherwise, was I to be guaranteed from the intrusion of young women requiring me to bury them up to twenty-four pound ten, when I had only twopence a week? But my remorse- less nurse cut the ground from under my tender feet, by informing me that She was the other young woman; and I couldn’t say “I don’t believe you; ” it was not possible. - Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was forced to make, against my will, when I was very young and unreasoning. And really, as to the latter part of them, it is not so very long ago—now I come to think of it—that I was asked to undertake them. Once again, with a steady countenance. - CHAPTER XVI. A R C A D I A N L O N D O N . Bºº in a humour for complete solitude and uninter- rupted meditation this autumn, I have taken a lodging for six weeks in the most unfrequented part of England—in a word, in London. The retreat into which I have withdrawn myself is Bond-street. From this lonely spot I make pilgrimages into the surrounding wilderness, and traverse extensive tracts of the Great Desert. The first Solemn feeling of isolation overcome, the first oppresive consciousness of profound retirement conquered, I enjoy that sense of freedom, and feel reviving within me that latent wild- ness of the original savage, which has been (upon the whole somewhat frequently) noticed by Travellers, ARCADIAN LONDON. 161 My lodgings are at a hatter's—my own hatter's. After exhibiting no articles in his window for some weeks, but sea-side wide-awakes, shooting-caps, and a choice of rough water-proof head gear for the moors and mountains, he has put upon the heads of his family as much of this stock as they could carry, and has taken , them off to the Isle of Thanet. His young man alone remains—and remains alone—in the shop. The young man has let out the fire at which the irons are heated, and, saving his strong sense of duty, I see no reason why he should take the shutters down. - Happily for himself and for his country, the young man is a Volunteer; most happily for himself, or I think he would become the prey of a settled melancholy. For, to live surrounded by human hats, and alienated from human heads to fit them on, is surely a great endurance. But, the young man, sustained by practising his ex- ercise, and by constantly furbishing up his regulation plume (it is unnecessary to observe that, as a hatter, he is in a cock’s-feather corps) is resigned, and un- corhplaining. On a Saturday, when he closes early and gets his Knickerbockers on, he is even cheerful. I am gratefully particular in this reference to him, because he is my companion through many peaceful hours. My hatter has a desk up certain steps behind his counter, enclosed like the clerk’s desk at Church. I shut myself into this place of seclusion, after break- fast, and meditate. At such times, I observe the young man loading an imaginary rifle with the greatest pre- cision, and maintaining a most galling and destructive fire upon the national enemy. I thank him publicly for his companionship and his patriotism. The simple character of my life, and the calm nature of the scenes by which I am surrounded, occasion me to rise early. I go forth in my slippers, and promenade the pavement. It is pastoral to feel the freshness of the air in the uninhabited town, and to appreciate the shepherdess character of the few milkwomen who pur- vey so little milk that it would be worth nobody’s while to adulterate it, if anybody were left to undertake the task. On the crowded sea-shore, the great demand for milk, combined with the strong local temptation of chalk, would betray itself in the lowered quality of the article. In Arcadian London I derive it from the cow. WOI. I, 11 162 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis altogether, and the primitive ways into which it has fallen in this autumnal Golden Age, make it entirely new to me. Within a few hundred yards of my retreat, is the house of a friend who maintains a most sumptuous but- ler. I never, until yesterday, saw that butler out of superfine black broadcloth. Until yesterday, I never saw him off duty, never saw him (he is the best of butlers) with the appearance of having any mind for anything but the glory of his master and his master’s friends. Yesterday morning, walk- ing in my slippers near the house of which he is the prop and Ornament—a house now a waste of shutters —I encountered that butler, also in his slippers, and in a shooting suit of One colour, and in a low-crowned straw-hat, Smoking an early cigar. He felt that we had formerly met in another state of existence, and that we were translated into a new sphere. Wisely and well, he passed me without recognition. Under his arm he carried the morning paper, and shortly afterwards I saw him sitting on a rail in the pleasant open land- scape of Regent-street, perusing it at his ease under the ripening Sun. My landlord having taken his whole establishment to be salted down, I am waited upon by an elderly woman labouring under a chronic sniff, who at the shadowy hour of half-past nine O'clock of every evening, gives admittance at the street door to a meagre and mouldy old man whom I have never yet seen detached from a flat pint of beer in a pewter pot. The meagre and mouldy old man is her husband, and the pair have a dejected consciousness that they are not justified in ap- pearing upon the surface of the earth. They come out of some hole when London empties itself, and go in again when it fills. I saw them arrive on the evening when I myself took possession, and they arrived with the flat pint of beer, and their bed in a bundle. The old man is a weak old man, and appeared to me to get the bed down the kitchen stairs by tumbling down with and upon it. They make their bed in the lowest and re- motest corner of the basement, and they smell of bed, and have no possession but bed: unless it be (which I rather infer from an undercurrent of flavour in them) cheese. I know their name, through the chance of ARCADIAN LONDON. 163 having called the wife’s attention; at half-past nine on the second evening of our acquaintance, to the circum- stance of there being some one at the house door; when she apologetically explained, “Its only Mr. Klem.” What becomes of Mr. Klem all day, or when he goes out, or why, is a mystery I cannot penetrate; but at half-past nine he never fails to turn upon the doorstep with the flat pint of beer. And the pint of beer, flat as it is, is so much more im- ortant than himself, that it always seems to my fancy as if it had found him drivelling in the street and had humanely brought him home. In making his way below, Mr. Klem never goes down the middle of the passage, like another Christian, but shuffles against the wall as if entreating me to take notice that he is Occupying as little space as possible in the house; and whenever I come upon him face to face, he backs from me in a fascinated confusion. The most extraordinary circumstance I have traced in connection with this aged couple, is, that there is a Miss Klem, their daughter, ap- parently ten years older than either of them, who has also a bed, and smells of it, and carries it about the earth at dusk and hides it in deserted houses. I came into this piece of knowledge through Mrs. Klem's be- seeching me to sanction the sheltering of Miss Klem under that roof for a single night, ‘‘ between her takin’ care of the upper part in Pall Mall which the family of his back, and a 'ouse in Serjameses-street, which the family of leaves towng ter-morrer.” I gave my gracious consent (having nothing that I know of to do with it), and in the shadowy hours Miss Klem became percep- tible on the door-step, wrestling with a bed in a bundle. Where she made it up for the night I cannot positively state, but I think, in a sink. I know that with the in- stinct of a reptile or an insect, she stowed it and her- self away in deep obscurity. In the Klem family, I have noticed another remarkable gift of nature, and that is a power they possess of converting everything into flue. Such broken victuals as they take by stealth, appear (whatever the nature of the viands) invariably to generate flue; and even the nightly pint of beer, in- stead of assimilating naturally, strikes me as breaking out in that form, equally on the shabby gown of Mrs. Klem; and the threadbare coat of her husband. 164 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name—as to Mr. Klem he has no idea of anything—and only knows me as her good gentleman. Thus, if doubtful whether I am in my room or no, Mrs. Klem taps at the door and says, “Is my good gentleman here?” Or, if a mes- senger desiring to see me were consistent with my soli- tude, she would show him in with “Here is my good gentleman.” I find this to be a generic custom. For, I meant to have observed before now, that in its Arca- dian time all my part of London is indistinctly per- vaded by the Klem species. They creep about with beds, and go to bed in miles of deserted houses. They hold no companionship except that sometimes, after dark, two of them will emerge from opposite houses, and meet in the middle of the road as on neutral ground, or will peep from adjoining houses over an interposing barrier of area railings, and compare a few reserved mistrustful notes respecting their good ladies or good gentlemen. This I have discovered in the course of various solitary rambles I have taken Northward from my retirement, along the awful per- spectives of Wimpole-street, Harley-street, and simi- lar frowning regions. Their effect would be scarcely distinguishable from that of the primeval forests, but for the Klem stragglers; these may be dimly observed, when the heavy shadows fall, flitting to and fro, put- ting up the door-chain, taking in the pint of beer, lowering like phantoms at the dark parlour windows or secretly consorting underground with the dust-bin and the water-cistern. In the Burlington Arcade, I observe, with peculiar pleasure, a primitive state of manners to have super- seded the baneful influences of ultra civilisation. Nothing can surpass the innocence of the ladies’ shoe- shops, the artificial-flower repositories, and the head- dress depôts. They are in strange hands at this time of the year—hands of unaccustomed persons, who are imperfectly acquainted with the prices of the goods, and contemplate them with unsophisticated delight and wonder. The children of these virtuous people ex- change familiarities in the Arcade, and temper the asperity of the two tall beadles. Their youthful prattle blends in an unwonted manner with the harmonious shade of the Scene, and the general effect is, as of the ARCADIAN LONDON. 165 voices of birds in a grove. In this happy restoration of the golden time, it has been my privilege even to see the bigger beadle's wife. She brought him his din- ner in a basin, and he ate it in his arm-chair, and afterwards fell asleep like a satiated child. At Mr. Truefitt's the excellent hairdresser's, they are learning French to beguile the time; and even the few solitaries left 'on guard at Mr. Atkinson’s, the perfumer’s round the corner (generally the most inexorable gentleman in London, and the most scornful of three-and-six- pence), condescend a little, as they drowsily bide or recall their turn for chasing the ebbing Neptune on the ribbed sea-sand. From Messrs. Hunt and Roskell's, the jewellers, all things are absent but the precious stones, and the gold and silver, and the soldierly pen- sioner at the door with his decorated breast. I might stand night and day for a month to come, in Saville- row, with my tongue out, yet not find a doctor to look at it for love or money. The dentist’s instruments are rusting in their drawers, and their horrible cool par- lours, where people pretend to read the Every-Day Book and not to be afraid, are doing penance for their grimness in white sheets. The light-weight of shrewd appearance, with One eye always shut up, as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in all seasons, who usually stands at the gateway of the livery-stables on very little legs under a very large waistcoat, has gone to Don- Caster. Of such undesigning aspect is his guileless yard now, with its gravel and scarlet beans, and the yellow Brake housed under a glass roof in a corner, that I almost believe I could not be taken in there, if I tried. In the places of business of the great tailors, the cheval glasses are dim and dusty for lack of being looked into. Ranges of brown paper coat and waist- coat bodies look as funereal as if they were the hatch- ments of the customers with whose names they are inscribed; the measuring tapes hang idle on the wall; the order-taker, left on the hopeless chance of some One looking in, yawns in the last extremity over the book of patterns, as if he were trying to read that enter- taining library. The hotels in Brook-street have no One in them, and the staves of servants stare disconso- lately for next season out of all the windows. The very man who goes about like an erect turtle, between two i86 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. boards recommendatory of the Sixteen Shilling Trous- . ers, is aware of himself as a hollow mockery, and eats filberts while he leans his hinder shell against a wall. § Among these tranquillising objects, it is my delight to walk and meditate. j by the repose around me, I wander insensibly to considerable distances, and guide myself back by the stars. Thus, I enjoy the contrast of a few still partially inhabited and busy spots where all the lights are not fled, where all the garlands are not dead, whence all but I have not departed. Then, does it appear to me that in this age three things are clamorously required of Man in the miscellaneous thoroughfares of the metropolis. Firstly, that he have his boots cleaned. Secondly, that he eat a penny ice. Thirdly, that he get himself photographed. Then do I speculate, What have those seam-worn artists been who stand at the photograph doors in Greek caps, sample in hand, and mysteriously salute the public—the female public with a pressing tenderness—to come in and be “took "? What did they do with their greasy blan- dishments, before the era of cheap photography? Of what class were their previous victims, and how vic- timised? And how did they get, and how did they pay for, that large collection of likenesses, all purporting to have been taken inside, with the taking of none of which had that establishment any more to do than with the taking of Delhi? But, these are small oases, and I am soon back again in metropolitan Arcadia. It is my impression that much of its serene and peaceful character is attributa- ble to the absence of customary Talk. How do I know but there may be subtle influences in Talk, to vex the souls of men who don’t hear it? How do I know but that Talk, five, ten, twenty miles off, may get into the air and disagree with me? If I rise from my bed, vaguely troubled and wearied and sick of my life, in the session of Parliament, who shall say that my noble friend, my right reverend friend, my right honourable friend, my honourable friend, my honourable and learned friend, or my honourable and gallant friend, may not be responsible for that effect upon my nervous system? Too much Ozone in the air, I am informed and fully believe (though I have no idea what it is), would affect f ARCADIAN LONDON. 167 me in a marvellously disagreeable way; why may not too much Talk? I don’t see or hear the Ozone; I don’t see or hear the Talk. And there is so much Talk; so much too much; such loud cry, and such scant supply of wool; such a deal of fleecing, and so little fleece! Hence, in the Arcadian season, I find it a delicious tri- umph to walk down to deserted Westminster, and see the Courts shut up; to walk a little further and see the Two Houses shut up; to stand in the Abbey Yard, like the New Zealander of the grand English History (con- cerning which unfortunate man, a whole rookery of mares' nests is generally being discovered), and gloat upon the ruins of Talk. Returning to my primitive solitude and lying down to sleep, my grateful heart expands with the consciousness that there is no ad- journed Debate, no ministerial explanation, nobody to give notice of intention to ask the noble Lord at the head of her Majesty’s Government five-and-twenty bootless questions in one, no term time with legal argu- ment, no Nisi Prius with eloquent appeal to British Jury; that the air will to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, remain untroubled by this superabundant generating of Talk. In a minor degree it is a delicious triumph to me to go into the club, and see the carpets up, and the Bores and the other dust dispersed to the four winds. Again New Zealander-like, I stand on the cold hearth, and say in the solitude, “Here I watched Bore A 1, with voice always mysteriously low and head always mysteriously drooped, whispering political secrets into the ears of Adam’s confiding children. Accursed be his memory for ever and a day!” But, I have all this time been coming to the point, that the happy nature of my retirement is most sweetly expressed in its being the abode of Love. It is, as it were, an inexpensive Agapemone: nobody’s specula- tion: everybody’s profit. The one great result of the resumption of primitive habits, and (convertible terms) the not having much to do, is, the abounding of Love. The Klem species are incapable of the softer emotions; lº, in that low nomadic race, the softer emotions have all degenerated into flue. But, with this excep- tion, all the sharers of my retreat make love. I have mentioned Saville-row. We all know the DOC- tor's servant, We all know what a respectable man he 168 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. is, what a hard dry man, what a firm man, what a con- fidential man : how he lets us into the waiting-room, like a man who knows minutely what is the matter with us, but from whom the rack should not wring the secret. In the prosaic “season,” he has distinctly the appear- ance of a man conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking his stand on his respectability with both feet. At that time it is as impossible to associate him with relaxation, or any human weakness, as it is to meet his eye without feeling guilty of indisposition. In the blest Arcadian time, how changed! I have seen him in a pepper-and-Salt jacket—jacket—and drab trousers, with his arm round the waist of a bootmaker’s house- maid, Smiling in open day. I have seen him at the pump by the Albany, unsolicitedly pumping for two fair young creatures, whose figures as they bent over their cans, were—if I may be allowed an original expression . —a model for the sculptor. I have seen him trying the piano in the Doctor’s drawing-room with his forefinger, and have heard him humming tunes in praise of lovely woman. I have seen him seated on a fire-engine, and going (obviously in search of excitement) to a fire. I saw him one moonlight evening, when the peace and purity of our Arcadian west were at their height, polk with the lovely daughter of a cleaner of gloves, from the door-steps of his own residence, across Saville-row, round by Clifford-street and Old Burlington-street, back to Burlington-gardens. Is this the Golden Age revived, or Iron London? The Dentist’s servant. Is that man no mystery to us, no type of invisible power? The tremendous individual knows (who else does?) what is done with the extracted teeth; he knows what goes on in the little room where something is always being washed or filed; he knows what warm spicy infusion is put into the comfortable tumbler from which we rinse our wounded mouth, with a gap in it that feels a foot wide; he knows whether the thing we spit into is a fixture communicating with the Thames, or could be cleared away for a dance; he sees the horrible parlour when there are no patients in it, and he could reveal, if he would, what becomes of the Every-Day Book then. The conviction of my coward conscience when I see that man in a professional light, is, that he knows all the statistics of my teeth and ARCADIAN LONDON. 169 gums, my double teeth, my single teeth, my stopped teeth, and my sound. In this Arcadian rest, I am fear- less of him as of a harmless, powerless creature in a Scotch cap, who adores a young lady in a voluminous crinoline, at a neighbouring billiard-room, and whose passion would be uninfluenced if every one of her teeth were false. They may be. He takes them all on trust. In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion, there are little shops withdrawn from public curiosity, and never two together, where servants’ perquisites are bought. The cook may dispose of grease at these modest and convenient marts; the butler, of bottles; the valet and lady’s maid, of clothes; most servants, indeed, of most things they may happen to lay hold of. I have been told that in sterner times loving correspondence, otherwise interdicted, may be maintained by letter through the agency of some of these useful establish- ments. In the Arcadian autumn, no such device is necessary. Everybody loves, and openly and blame- lessly loves. My landlord's young man loves the whole of one side of the way of Old Bond-street, and is beloved several doors up New Bond-street besides. I never look out of window but I see kissing of hands going on all around me. It is the morning custom to glide from shop to shop and exchange tender sentiments; it is the evening custom for couples to stand hand in hand at house doors, or roam, linked in that flowery manner, through the unpeopled streets. There is nothing else to do but love; and what there is to do, is done. In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity obtains in the domestic habits of Arcadia. Its few scattered people dine early, live moderately, sup socially, and sleep soundly. It is rumoured that the Beadles of the Arcade, from being the mortal enemies of boys, have signed with tears an address to Lord Shaftesbury, and subscribed to a ragged school. No wonder | For, they might turn their heavy maces into crooks and tend sheep in the Arcade, to the purling of the water-carts as they give the thirsty streets much more to drink than they can carry. - - A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquillity. Charming picture, but it will fade. The iron age will return, London will come back to town, if I show my tongue then in Saville-row for half a minute I shall be 170 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. prescribed for, the Doctor's man and the Dentist's man . will then pretend that these days of unprofessional in- nocence never existed. Where Mr. and Mrs. Klem and their bed will be at that time, passes human knowl- edge; but my hatter hermitage will then know them no more, nor will it then know me. The desk at which I have written these meditations will retributively assist at the making out of my account, and the wheels of gorgeous carriages and the hoofs of high-stepping horses will crush the silence out of Bond-street—will grind Arcadia away, and give it to the elements in granite powder. CHAPTER XVII. THE CALAIS NIGHT-MAIL. IT is an unsetted question with me whether I shall leave Calais something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this subject. When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a maundering young wretch in a clammy perspira- tion and dripping saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one great extremity, sea-sick- ness—who was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid head- ache somewhere in its stomach—who had been put into a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of it on the French coast, or the Isle Man, or anywhere. Times have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational. I know where it is be- forehand, I keep a look out for it, I recognise its land- marks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways, and I know—and I can bear—its worst be- haviour. Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight and discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape Grinez com- ing frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and stomach; sneaking Calais, prone be- l THE CALAIS NIGHT-MAIL. 171 hind its bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the j and you think you are there—roll, roar, wash!—Calais has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to be especially commended to the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison- town, when it dives under the boat’s keel, and comes up a league or two to the right, with the packet shiver- ing and sputtering and staring about for it! Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed. It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much esteemed friends, but they are too conceited about the comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is starting. I know it is a good house to stay at, and I don’t want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour. I know the Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to in- sist upon that circumstance, and, as it were, to come Over me with it, when I am reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise, for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough, without the officious Warden’s interference? As I wait here on board the night packet, for the South Eastern Train to come down with the Mail, Dover appears to me to be illuminated for some in- tensely aggravating festivity in my personal dis- honour. All its noises Smack of taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I know they would rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady footing on this slippery deck. The many gas eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in an offensive manner, as if with derision. The distant dogs of Dover bark at me in my mis-shapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the Third. jº'2 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the heaving of the boat. The sea makes moises against the pier, as if several hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented by . circumstances over which they had no control from drinking peaceably. We, the boat, become violently agitated—rumble, hum, Scream, roar, and establish an immense family Washing-day at each paddle-box. Bright patches break out in the train as the doors of the post-office vans are opened, and instantly stooping figures with sacks upon their backs begin to be beheld among the piles, descending as it would seemin ghostly procession to Davy Jones's Locker. The passengers come on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen, with hat- boxes shaped like the stoppers of gigantic case-bottles; a few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and boots; a few shadowy Englishmen prepared for the worst and pretending not to expect it. I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind the miserable fact that we are a body of outcasts; that the attendants on us are as scant in number as may serve to get rid of us with the least possible delay; that there are no night-loungers interested in us; that the unwilling lamps shiver and shudder at us; that the sole object is to commit us to the deep and abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes glaring in increasing distance, and then the very train itself has gone to bed before we are off! What is the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs from an umbrella? Why do certain voyagers across the Channel always put up that article, and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity? A fellow-creature near me—whom I only know to be a fellow-creature, because of his umbrella: without which he might be a dark bit of cliff, pier, or bulkhead—clutches that in- strument with a desperate grasp, that will not relax until he lands at Calais. Is there any analogy, in certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up, and keeping the spirits up? A hawser thrown. On board with a flop replies “Stand by!” “Stand by, below.” “Half a turn a head!” “Half a turn a head!” “Half speed!” “Half speed!” “Port!” “Port!” “Steady!” “Steady!” “Go on!” “Go on!” A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple THE CALATS NIGHT-MAIL. 173 and out at my left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers, these are the personal sensations by which I know we are off, and by which I shall continue to know it until I am on the soil of IFrance. . My symptoms have scarcely established them- selves comfortably, when two or three skating shadows that have been trying to walk or stand, get flung together, and other two or three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover them up. Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at usin a way that bodes no good. - It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no bounds. Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will forgive that hated town. I have done so before, many times, but that is past. Let me register a vow. Implacable animosity towards Calais everm —that was an awkward sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives a complaining roar. The wind blows stiffly from the Nor’-East, the sea runs high, we ship a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the shapeless passengers lie about in mel- ancholy bundles, as if they were sorted out for the laundress; but for my own uncommercial part I cannot pretend that I am much inconvenienced by any of these things. A general howling whistling flopping gurgling and scooping, I am aware of, and a general knocking about of Nature; but the impressions I receive are very vague. In a sweet faint temper, something like the smell of damaged oranges, I think I should feel lan- guidly benevolent if I had time. I have not time, be- cause I am under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with the Irish melodies. “Rich and rare were the gems she wore,” is the particular melody to which I find myself devoted. I sing it to myself in the most charm- ing manner and with the greatest expression. Now and then, I raise my head (I am sitting on the hardest of wet seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but I don’t mind it,) and notice that I am a whirl- ing shuttlecock between a fiery battledore of a light- house on the French coast and a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the English coast; but I don’t notice it. particularly, except to feel envenomed in my hatred of Calais. Then I go on again, “Rich and rare were the I74. THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. ge-ems she-e-e-e wore, And a bright gold ring On her wa-and she bo-ore, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-r be- yond *—I am particularly proud of my execution here, when I become aware of another awkward shock from the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and a fel- low-creature at the paddle-box more audibly indisposed than I think he need be—“Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r beyond”—another awkward. One here, and the fellow- creature with the umbrella down and picked up, “Her spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or her Port! port! steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature at the paddle-box very sel- fishly audible, bump roar wash white wand.” As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on around me becomes something else than what it is. The stokers open the furnace doors below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the box of the old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the for ever extinguished coach-lamps, and the gleam On the hatches and paddle-boxes is their gleam on cot- tages and haystacks, and the monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the intermittent funnel roar of protest at every violent roll, becomes the regular blast of a high pressure engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive steam- er in which I ascended the Mississippi when the Amer- ican civil war was not, and when only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so, become suggestive of Franconi's Circus at Paris, where I shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance to the self-same time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven. What may be the spe- ciality of these waves as they come rushing On, I can- not desert the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she wore, to inquire, but they are charged with something about Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first went a seafaring and was near foundering (what a terrific sound that word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind. Still, through all this, I must ask her (who was she Iwon- der!) for the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to stray, So lone and lovely through THE CALAIS NIGHT-MAIL. 175 this bleak way, And are Erin's sons so goodſ or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellow-creatures at the paddle-box or gold? Šir Knight I feel not the least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they love fellow-creature with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir Knight they what a tremendous one love honour and virtue more: For though they love Stewards with a bull’s eye bright, they’ll trouble you for your ticket, sir—rough passage to-night! I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and inconsistency, but I no sooner become cmoscious of those last words from the steward than I begin to soften towards Calais. Whereas I have been vindictively wishing that those Calais burghers who came out of their town by a short cut into the History of England, with those fatal ropes round their necks by which they have since been towed into so many car- toons, had all been hanged on the spot, I now begin to regard them as highly respectable and virtuous trades- men. Looking about me, I see the light of Cape Grinez well astern of the boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and shining. Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to Calais, begin to expand my bosom. I have weak notions that I will stay there a day or two on my way back. A faded, and recumbent stranger pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin, asked me what kind of place Calais is? I tell him (Heaven forgive me!) a very agreeable place indeed—rather hilly than otherwise. So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so Quickly—though still I seem to have been on board a week—that I am bumped rolled gurgled washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before her maiden smile has finally lighted her through the Green Isle, When blest forever is she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of the tide. For we have not to land to-night down among those slimy timbers—covered with green hair as if it were the mermaids’ favourite combing- place—where one crawls to the surface of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but we go steaming up the har- bour to the Railway Station Quay. And as we go, the sea washes in and out among piles and planks, with dead heavy beats and in quite a furious manner 176 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. ~5 - (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake in the wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem to sénd their vibrations struggling agains' troubled air, as we have come struggling against troubled water! And now, in the sudden relief and wiping of faces, every- body on board seems to have had a prodigious double- tooth Out, and to be this very instant free of the Dentist’s hands. And now we all know for the first time how wet and cold we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais with my heart of hearts! “Hôtel Dessin!” (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative of that best of º ‘‘ Hôtel Meurice!” “Hôtel de France!” “Hôtel de Calais!” “The Royal Hôtel, Sir, Angaishe ouse!” “You going to Parry, Sir?” “Your baggage, registair froo, Sir?” Bless ye, my Touters, bless ye, my commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of a military form, who are always here, day or night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I never see you get! Bless ye, my Custom House officers in green and grey; permit me to grasp the welcome hands that de- scend into my travelling-bag, One on each side, and meet at the bottom to give my change of linen a pecu- liar shake up, as if it were a measure of chaff or grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Douanier, except that when I cease, to breathe, Calais will be found writ- ten on my heart. No article liable to local duty have I with me, Monsieur l’Officier de l’Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast devoted to your charming town should be in that wise chargeable. Ah! See at the gangway by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who col- lects the names! May he be for ever changeless in his buttoned black surtout, with his note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat, surmounting his round smiling patient face! Let us embrace, my dearest brother. I am yours à tout jamais—for the whole of ever. Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais down and dreaming in its bed; Calais with something of “an ancient and fish-like smell” about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais represented at the Buffet by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and Bordeaux; and Calais represented everywhere by flit- THE CALAIs NIGHT-MAIL. 17; ting persons with a monomania for changing money— though I never shall be able to understand in my pres- ent state of existence how they live by it, but I Sup- pose I should if I understood the currency question— Calais en gros, and Calais en détail, forgive one who has deeply wronged you. I was not fully aware of it on the other side, but I meant Dover. - _Ding, ding! To the carriages, gentlemen the travel- lers. Ascend then, gentlemen the travellers, for Haze- broucke, Lille Douai, Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and Paris! I, humble representative of the uncommercial interest, ascend with the rest. The train is light to- night, and I share my compartment with but two fel- low-travellers; one, a compatriot in an obsolete cravat, who thinks it, a quite unaccountable thing that they don’t keep “London time” on a French railway, and who is made angry by my modestly suggesting the possibility of Paris time being more in their way; the other, a young priest, with a very small bird in a very small cage, who feeds the small bird with a quill, and then puts him up in the network above his head, where he advances twittering, to his front wires, and seems to address me in an electioneering manner. The compatriot (who crossed in the boat, and whom I judge to be some person of distinction, as he was shut up, like a stately species of rabbit in a private hutch on deck) and the young priest (who joined us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then the bird and I have it all to Ourselves. A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the wires of the elecric telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night so very stormy, with the added storm of the train-progress through it, then when the Guard comes clambering round to mark the tickets while we are at full speed (a really horrible performance in an express train, though he holds on to the open window by his elbows in the most deliberate manner), he stands in such a whirlwind that I grip him fast by the collar, and feel it next to manslaughter to let him go. Still, when he is gone, the small small bird remains at his front wires feebly twittering to me—twittering and twittering, until, leaning back in my place and looking at him in drowsy fascination, I find that he seems to jog my memory as we rush along. VOL. I. - 12 178 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Uncommercial travels (thus the small small bird) have lain in their idle thriftless way through all this range of Swamp and dyke, as through many other odd places; and about here, as you very well know, are the Queer Old Stone farm-houses, approached by draw- bridges, and the windmills that you get at by boats. Here, are the lands where the women hoe and dig, paddling canoe-wise from field to field, and here are the cabarets and other peasant-houses where the stone dove-cotes in the littered yards are as strong as warders’ towers in old castles. Here, are the long monotonous miles of canal, with the great Dutch-built barges garishly painted, and the towing girls, sometimes harnessed by the forehead, sometimes by the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant sight to see. Scattered through this country are mighty works of WAUBAN, whom you know about, and regiments of such corporals as you heard of once upon a time, and many a blue- eyed Bebelle. Through these flat districts, in the shining summer days, walk those long grotesque files of young novices in enormous shovel hats, whom you remember blackening the ground checkered by the avenues of leafy trees. And now that Hazebroucke slumbers certain kilometres ahead, recall the summer evening when your dusty feet strolling up from the station tendered hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest inhabitants were circling round and round a bar- rel-organ on hobby-horses, with the greatest gravity, and where the principal show in the Fair was a Religious Richardson’s—literally, on its own announcement in great letters, THEATRE RELIGIEUX. In which improving Temple, the dramatic representation was of “all the in- teresting events in the life of our Lord, from the Manger to the Tomb; ” the principal female character, without any reservation or exception, being at the moment of your arrival, engaged in trimming the external Mod- erators (as it was growing dusk), while the next rincipal female character took the money, and the oung Saint John disported himself upside down on the platform. Looking up at this point to confirm the small bird in every particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased to twitter, and has put his head under his wing. There- fore, in my different way I follow the good example. SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY. 179 CHAPTER XVIII. SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY. T HAD parted from the small bird at somewhere about four o’clock in the morning, when he had got out at Arras, and had been received by two shovel-hats in waiting at the station, who presented an appropriately ornithological and crow-like appearance. My com- patriot and I had gone on to Paris; my compatriot enlightening me occasionally with a long list of the enormous grievances of French railway travelling: every one of which, as I am a sinner, was perfectly new to me, though I have as much experience of French rail- ways as most uncommercials. Ihad left him at the termi- nus (through his conviction, against all explanation and remonstrance, that his baggage-ticket was his pas- senger-ticket), insisting in a very high temper to the functionary on duty, that in his own personal identity he was four packages weighing so many kilogrammes —as if he had been Cassim Baba' I had bathed and breakfasted, and was strolling on the bright quays. The subject of my meditations was the question whether it is positively in the essence and nature of things, as a certain school of Britons would seem to think it, that a Capital must be ensnared and enslaved before it can be made beautiful: when I lifted up my eyes and found that my feet, straying like my mind, had brought me to Notre-Dame. That is to say, Notre-Dame was before me, but there was a large open space between us. A very little while gone, I had left that space covered with buildings densely crowded; and now it was cleared for some new wonder in the way of public Street, Place, Garden, Fountain, or all four. Only the obscene little Morgue, slinking on the brink of the river and soon to come down, was left there, looking mortally ashamed of 180 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. itself, and supremely wicked. I had but glanced at . this old acquaintance, when I beheld an airy procession coming round in front of Notre-Dame, past the great hospital. It had something of a Masaniello look, with fluttering striped curtains in the midst of it, and it came dancing round the cathedral in the liveliest Iſla, Ill] eI’. - - I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a Christening, or some other domestic festivity which I would see out, when I found, from the talk of a quick rush of Blouses past me that it was a Body coming to the Morgue. Having never before chanced upon this initiation, I constituted myself a Blouse likewise, and ran into the Morgue with the rest. It was a very muddy day, and we took in a quantity of mire with us, and the procession coming in upon Our heels, brought a quantity more. The procession was in the highest spirits, and consisted of idlers who had come with the curtained litter from its starting-place, and of all the reinforcemnts it had picked up by the way. It set the litter down in the midst of the Morgue, and then two Custodians proclaimed aloud that we were all “invited'’ to go out. This invitation was rendered the more pressing, if not the more flattering, by Our being shoved out, and the folding-gates being barred upon us. Those who have never seen the Morgue, may see it perfectly, by presenting to themselves an indifferently paved coach-house accessible from the street by a pair of folding-gates; on the left of the coach-house, occu- pying its width, any large London tailor’s or linen- draper's plate-glass window reaching to the ground; within the window, on two rows of inclined planes, what the coach-house has to show; hanging above like irregular stalactites from the roof of a cave, a quantity of clothes—the clothes of the dead and buried shows of the coach-house. - We had been excited in the highest degree by seeing the Custodians pull off their coats and tuck up their shirt-sleeves, as the procession came along. It looked so interestingly like business. Shut out in the muddy street, we now became quite ravenous to know all about it. Was it river, pistol, knife, love, gambling, robbery, hatred, how many stabs, how many bullets, fresh or decomposed, suicide or murder? All wedged SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY 181 together, and all staring at one another with our heads thrust forward, we propounded these inquiries and a hundred more such. Imperceptibly, it came to be known that Monsieur the tall and sallow mason yonder, was acquainted with the facts. Would Monsieur the tall and sallow mason, surged at by a new wave of us, have the goodness to impart? It was but a poor old man, passing along the street under one of the new buildings, on whom a stone had fallen, and who had tumbled dead. His age? Another wave surged up against the tall and sallow mason, and Our wave swept on and broke, and he was any age from sixty-five to ninety. An old man was not much.: moreover, we could have wished he had been killed by human agency—his own, or somebody else’s: the latter, preferable—but our com- fort was, that he had nothing about him to lead to his identification, and that his people must seek him here. Perhaps they were waiting dinner for him even now? We liked that. Such of us as had pocket-handkerchiefs took a slow intense protracted wipe at our noses, and then crammed our handkerchiefs into the breast of our blouses. Others of us who had no handkerchiefs ad- ministered a similar relief to our overwrought minds, by means of prolonged smears or wipes of our mouths On our sleeves. One man with a gloomy malformation of brow—a homicidal worker in white-lead, to judge from his blue tone of colour, and a certain flavour of paralysis pervading him—got his coat-collar between his teeth, and bit at it with an appetite. Several decent women arrived upon the outskirts of the crowd, and º to launch themselves into the dismal coach- house when opportunity should come; annong them, a pretty young mother, pretending to bite the forefinger of her baby-boy, kept it between her rosy lips that it might be handy for guiding to point at the show. Meantime, all faces were turned towards the building, and we men waited with a fixed and stern resolution:- for the most part with folded arms. Surely, it was the only public French sight these uncommercial eyes had seen, at which the expectant people did not form en queue. But there was no such order of arrangement here; nothing but a general determination to make a rush for it, and a disposition to object to some boys who 182 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. had mounted on the two stone posts by the hinges of the gates, with the design of swooping in when the hinges should turn. - Now, they turned, and we rushed! Great pressure, and a scream or two from the front. Then a laugh or two, some expressions of disappointment, and a slack- ing of the pressure and subsidence of the struggle.— Old man not there. “But what would you have?” the Custodian reason- ably argues, as he looks out at his little door. “Patience, atience! We make his toilette, gentlemen. He will e exposed presently. It is necessary to proceed accord- ing to rule. His toilette is not made all at a blow. He will be exposed in good time, gentlemen, in good time.” And so retires, Smoking, with a wave of his sleeveless arm towards the window, importing, “Entertain your- selves in the meanwhile with the other curiosities. Fortunately the Museum is not empty to-day.” Who would have thought of public fickleness even at the Morgue? But there it was, on that occasion. Three lately popular articles that had been attracting greatly when the litter was first descried coming dancing round the corner by the great cathedral, were so completely deposed now, that nobody save two little girls (one showing them to a doll) would look at them. Yet the chief of the three, the article in the front row, had re- ceived jagged injury of the left temple; and the other two in the back row, the drowned two lying side by side with their heads very slightly turned towards each other, seemed to be comparing notes about it. Indeed, those two of the back row were so furtive of appearance, and so (in their puffed way) assassinatingly knowing as to the one of the front, that it was hard to think the three had never come together in their lives, and were only chance companions after death. Whether or no this was the general, as it was the uncommercial, fancy, it is not to be disputed that the group had drawn ex- ceedingly within ten minutes. Yet now, the inconstant public turned its back upon them, and even leaned its elbows carelessly against the bar outside the window and shook off the mud from its shoes, and also lent and borrowed fire for pipes. Custodian re-enters from his door, “Again once, gentlemen, you are invited—” No further invitation SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY. 183 necessary. Ready dash into the street. Toilette finished. Old man coming out. This time, the interest was grown too hot to admit of toleration of the boys on the stone posts. The homicidal whitelead worker made a §. upon one boy who was hoisting himself up, and brought him to earth amidst general commendation. Closely stowed as we were, we yet formed into groups—groups of conversation, without separation from the mass—to discuss the old man. Rivals of the tall and sallow mason sprang into being, and here again was popular inconstancy. These rivals attracted audiences, and were greedily listened to; and whereas they had derived their information solely from the tall and sallow one, officious members of the crowd now sought to enlighten him on their authority. Changed by this social experience into an iron-visaged and inveterate misanthrope, the mason glared at mankind, and evidently cherished in his breast the wish that the whole of the present company could change places with the deceased old man. And now listeners became inattentive, and people made a start forward at a slight sound, and an unholy fire kindled in the public eye, and those next the gates beat at them impatiently, as if they were of the cannibal species and hungry. - Again the hinges creaked, and we rushed. Disor- derly pressure for some time ensued before the uncom- mercial unit got figured into the front row of the sum. It was strange to see so much heat and uproar seeth- ing about one poor spare white-haired old man, quiet for evermore. He was calm of feature and undisfig- ured, as he lay on his back—having been struck upon the hinder part of the head, and thrown forward—and something like a tear or two had started from the closed eyes, and lay wet upon the face. The uncom- mercial interest, sated at a glance, directed itself upon the striving crowd on either side and behind: wonder- ing whether one might have guessed, from the expres- sion of those faces merely, what kind of sight they were looking at. The differences of expression, were not many. There was a little pity, but not much, and that mostly with a selfish touch in it—as who would say, “Shall I, poor I, look like that, when the time comes l’” There was more of a secretly brooding con- 184 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. templation and curiosity, as “That man I don’t like, and have the grudge against; would such be his ap- pearance, if some one—not to mention names—by any chance gave him an ugly knock P” There was a wolf- ish stare at the object, in which the homicidal white- lead worker shone conspicuous. And there was a much more general, purposeless, vacant staring at it —like looking at wax-work without a catalogue, and not knowing what to make of it. But all these expres- sions concurred in possessing the one underlying ex- pression of looking at something that could not return a look. The uncommercial notice had established this as very remarkable, when a new pressure all at once coming up from the street pinioned him ignominiously, and hurried him into the arms (now sleeved again) of the Custodian smoking at his door, and answering questions, between-puffs, with a certain placid merito- rious air of not being proud, though high in office. And mentioning pride, it may be observed, by the way, that one could not well help investing the original sole occupant of the front row with an air depreciatory of the legitimate attraction of the poor old man: while the two in the second row seemed to exult at his superseded popularity. - Pacing presently round the garden of the Tower of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, and presently again in front of the Hôtel de Ville, I carried to mind a certain desolate open-air Morgue that I happened to light upon in London, one day in the hard winter of 1861, and which seemed as strange to me, at the time of seeing it, as if I had found it in China. Towards that hour of a winter's afternoon when the lamplighters are beginning to light the lamps in the streets a little before they are wanted, because the darkness thickens fast and soon, I was walking in from the country on the northern side of the Regent's Park—hard frozen and deserted—when . I saw an empty Hansom cab drive up to the lodge at Gloucester-gate, and the driver with great agitation call to the man there: who quickly reached a long pole from a tree, and, deftly collared by the driver, jumped to the step of his little seat, and so the Hansom rattled out at the gate, galloping over the iron-bound road. I followed running, though not so fast but that when I came to the jºi Canal Bridge, near the cross- SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY. 185 H. to Chalk Farm, the Hansom was stationary, the horse was smoking hot, the long pole was idle on the ground, and the driver and the park-keeper were looking over the bridge parapet. Looking Over too, I saw, lying on the towing-path with her face turned up towards us, a woman, dead a day or two, and under thirty, as I guessed, poorly dressed in black. The feet were lightly crossed at the ankles, and the dark hair, all pushed back from the face, as though that had been the last action of her desperate hands, streamed over the ground. Dabbled all about her, were the water and the broken ice that had dropped from her dress, and had splashed as she was got out. The policeman who had just got her out, and the passing costermonger who had helped him, were standing near the body; the lat- ter with that stare at it which I have likened to being at a wax-work exhibition without a catalogue; the former, looking over his stock, with a professional stiff- Iness and coolness, in the direction in which the bearers he had sent for were expected. So dreadfully forlorn, so dreadfully sad, so dreadfully mysterious, this spectacle of our dear sister here departed A barge came up, breaking the floating ice and the silence, and a woman steered it. The man with the horse that towed it, cared so little for the body, that the stumb- ling hoofs had been among the hair, and the tow-rope had caught and turned the head, before our cry of hor- ror took him to the bridle. At which sound the steer- ing woman looked up at us on the bridge, with con- tempt unutterable, and then looking down at the body with a similar expression—as if it were made in an- other likeness from herself, had been informed with other passions, had been lost by other chances, had had another nature dragged down to perdition—steered a spurning streak of mud at it, and passed on. A better experience, but also of the Morgue kind, in which chance happily made me useful in a slight de- gree, arose to my remembrance as I took my way by the Boulevard de Sebastopol to the brighter scenes of Paris. The thing happened, say five-and-twenty years ago. I was a modest young uncommercial then, and timid and inexperienced. Many suns and winds have browned me in the line, but those were my pale days. Having newly taken the lease of a house in a certain distin- 186 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. guished metropolitan parish—a house which then ap- peared to me to be a frightfully first-class Family Man- sion involving awful responsibilies—I became the prey of a Beadle. Ithink the Beadle must have seen me going in or coming out, and must have observed that I tot- tered under the weight of my grandeur. Or he may have been hiding under straw when I bought my first horse (in the desirable stable-yard attached to the first- class Family Mansion), and when the vendor remarked to me, in an Original manner, on bringing him for ap- gº; taking this cloth off and smacking him, “There, ir! There’s a Orse!’ And when I said gallantly, “How much do you want for him?” and when the vendor said, “No more than sixty guineas from you,” and when I said smartly, “Why not more than sixty from me?” And when he said crushingly, “Because upon my soul and body he’d be considered cheap at seventy, by one who understood the subject—but you don’t.”—I say, the Beadle may have been in hiding under straw, when this disgrace befell me, or he may have noted that I was too raw and young an Atlas to carry the first-class Family Mansion in a knowing manner. Be this as it may, the Beadle did what Melancholy did to the youth in Gray’s Elegy—he marked me for his own. And the way in which the Beadle did it, was this: he summoned me as a Juryman on his Coroner's Inquests. In my first feverish alarm I repaired “for safety and for succour”—like those sagacious Northern shepherds who, having had no previous reason whatever to be- lieve in young Norval, very prudently did not originate the hazardous idea of believing in him—to a deep householder. This profound man informed me that the Beadle counted on my buying him off; on my bribing him not to summon me; and that if I would attend an Inquest with a cheerful countenance, and profess alacrity in that branch of my country’s service, the Beadle would be disheartened, and would give up the game. I roused my energies, and the next time the wily Beadle summoned me, I went. The Beadle was the blankest Beadle I have ever looked on when I answered to my name, and his discomfiture gave me courage to go through with it, - - SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY, 18% We were impannelled to inquire concerning the death of a very little mite of a child. It was the old miser- able story. Whether the mother had committed the minor offence of concealing the birth, or whether she had committed the major offence of killing the child, was the question on which we were wanted. We must commit her on one of the two issues. - The Inquest came off in the parish workhouse, and I have yet a lively impression that I was unanimously received by my brother Jurymen as a brother of the utmost conceivable insignificance. Also, that before we began, a broker who had lately cheated me fear- fully in the matter of a pair of card-tables, was for the utmost rigour of the law. I remember that we sat in a sort of board-room, on such very large square horse- hair chairs that I wondered what race of Patagonians they were made for; and further, that an undertaker gave me his card when we were in the full moral fresh- ness of having just been sworn, as “an inhabitant that was newly come into the parish, and was likely to have a young family.” The case was then stated to us by the Coroner, and then we went down-stairs—led by the plotting Beadle—to view the body. . From that day to this the poor little figure, on which that sounding legal appellation was bestowed, has lain in the same place and with the same surroundings, to my thinking. In a kind of crypt devoted to the warehousing of the paro- chial coffins, and in the midst of a perfect º Of coffins of all sizes, it was stretched on a box; the mother had put it in her box—this box—almost as soon as it was born, and it had been presently found there. It had been opened, and neatly sewn up, and regarded from that point of view, it looked like a stuffed creature. It rested on a clean white cloth, with a surgical instru- ment or so at hand, and regarded from that point of view, it looked as if the cloth were “laid,” and the Giant were coming to dinner. There was nothing re- pellent about the poor piece of innocence, and it de- manded a mere form of looking at. So, we looked at an old pauper who was going about among the coffins with a foot rule, as if he were a case of Self-Measure- ment; and we looked at one another; and we said the place was well whitewashed anyhow; and then our conversational powers as a British Jury flagged, and 188 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. the foreman said, “All right, gentlemen? Back again, Mr. Beadle!” The miserable young creature who had given birth to this child within a very few days, and who had cleaned the cold wet door-steps immediately after- wards, was brought before us when we resumed our horse-hair chairs, and was present during the proceed- ings. She had a horse-hair chair herself, being very weak and ill; and I remember how she turned to the un- sympathetic nurse who attended her, and who might have been the figure-head of a pauper-ship, and how she hid her face and sobs and tears upon that wooden shoulder. I remember, too, how hard her mistress was upon her (she was a servant of-all-work), and with what a cruel pertinacity that piece of Virtue spun her thread of evidence double, by intertwisting it with the sternest thread of construction. Smitten hard by the terrible low wail from the utterly friendless orphan girl, which never ceased during the whole inquiry, I took heart to ask this witness a question or two, which hopefully admitted of an answer that might give a favourable turn to the case. She made the turn as little favourable as it could be, but it did some good, and the Coroner, who was nobly patient and humane (he was the late Mr. Wakeley), cast a look of strong encouragement in my direction. Then, we had the doctor who had made the examination, and the usual tests as to whether the child was born alive; but he was a timid muddle-headed doctor, and got confused and contradictory, and wouldn’t say this, and couldn’t answer for that, and the immaculate broker was too much for him, and our side slid back again. However, I tried again, and the Coroner backed me again, for which I ever afterwards felt grateful to him, as I do now to his memory; and we got another favourable turn, out of some other witness, some member of the family with a strong preposses- sion against the sinner; and I think we had the doctor back again; and I know that the Coroner summed up for our side, and that I and my British brothers turned round to discuss Our verdict, and get ourselves into great difficulties with our large chairs and the broker. At that stage of the case I tried hard again, being con- vinced that I had cause for it; and at last we found for the minor offence of only concealing the birth; and some RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY. 189 the poor desolate creature, who had been taken out during our deliberation, being brought in again to be told of the verdict, then dropped upon her knees before us, with protestations that we were right—protestations among the most affecting that I have ever heard in my life—and was carried away insensible. (In private conversation after this was all over, the Coroner showed me his reasons as a trained surgeon, for perceiving it to be impossible that the child could, under the most favourable circumstances, have drawn many breaths, in the very doubtful case of its having ever breathed at all; this, owing to the discovery of some foreign matter in the windpipe, quite irrecon- cilable with many moments of life). When the agonised girl had made those final protes- tations, I had seen her face, and it was in unison with her distracted heart-broken voice, and it was very moving. It certainly did not impress me by any beauty that it had, and if I ever see it again in another world I shall only know it by the help of some new sense or intelligence. But it came to me in my sleep that night, and I selfishly dismissed it in the most efficient way I could think of. I caused some extra care to be taken of her in the prison, and counsel to be retained for her defence when she was tried at the Old Bailey; and her sentence was lenient, and her history and conduct proved that it was right. In doing the little I did for her, I remember to have had the kind help of some gentle- hearted functionary to whom I addressed myself—but what functionary I have long forgotten—who I suppose was officially present at the Inquest. I regard this as a very notable uncommercial ex- perience, because this good came of a Beadle. And to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief, it is the only good that ever did come of a Beadle since the first Beadle put on his cocked hat. 190 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. CHAPTER XIX. BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS. IT came into my mind that I would recall in these notes a few of the many hostelries I have rested at in the course of my journeys; and, indeed, I had taken up my pen for the purpose, when I was baffled by an accidental circumstance. It was the having to leave off, to wish the owner of a certain bright face that looked in at my door, “ many happy returns of the day.” Thereupon a new thought came into my mind, driving its predecessor out, and I began to recall—instead of Inns—the birthdays that I had put up at, on my way to this present sheet of paper. I can very well remember being taken out to visit some peach-faced creature in a blue sash, and shoes to correspond, whose life I supposed to consist entirely of birthdays. Upon seed-cake, sweet wine, and shining resents, that glorified young person seemed to me to i. exclusively reared. At so early a stage of my travels did I assist at the anniversary of her nativity (and become enamoured of her), that I had not yet acquired the recondite knowledge that a birthday is the common property of all who are born, but supposed it to be a special º by the favouring Heavens on that one distinguished infant. There was no other company, and we sat in a shady bower—under a table, as my better (or worse) knowledge leads me to believe— and were regaled with saccharine substances and liq- uids, until it was time to part. A bitter powder was ad- ministered to me next morning, and I was wretched. On the whole, a pretty accurate foreshadowing of my more mature experiences in such wise! Then came the time when, inseparable from one’s own birthday, was a certain sense of merit, a con- sciousness of well earned distinction. When I regarded my birthday as a graceful achievement of my own, a i - 1 BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS. 191 monument of my perseverance, independence, and good sense, redounding greatly to my honour. This was at about the period when Olympia Squires became involved in the anniversary. Olympia was most beau- tiful (of course), and I loved her to that degree, that I used to be obliged to get out of my little bed in the night, expressly to exclaim to Solitude, “O, Olympia Squires!” Visions of Olympia, clothed entirely in sage- green, from which I infer a defectively educated taste On the part of her respected parents, who were neces- sarily unacquainted with the South Kensington Mu- seum, still arise before me. Truth is sacred, and the visions are crowned by a shining white beaver bonnet, impossibly suggestive of a little feminine post-boy. My memory presents a birthday when Olympia and I were taken by an unfeeling relative—some cruel uncle, or the like—to a slow torture called an Orrery. The terrible instrument was set up at the local Theatre, and I had expressed a profane wish in the morning that it was a Play: for which a serious aunt had probed my conscience deep, and my pocket deeper, by reclaiming a bestowed half-crown. It was a venerable and a shabby Orrery, at least one thousand stars and twenty-five comets behind the age. Nevertheless it was awful. When the low-spirited gentleman with a wand said, “Ladies and gentlemen” (meaning particularly Olympia and me), “the lights are about to be put out, but there is not the slightest cause for alarm,” it was very alarm- ing. Then the planets and stars began. Sometimes they wouldn’t come on, sometimes they wouldn’t go off, sometimes they had holes in them, and mostly they didn’t seem to be good likenesses. All this time the gentleman with the wand was going on in the dark (tapping away at the heavenly bodies between whiles, like a wearisome woodpecker), about a sphere revolving on its own axis eight hundred and ninety-seven thou- sand millions of times—or miles—in two hundred and sixty-three thousand five hundred and twenty-four mil- lions of something elses, until I thought if this was a birthday it were better never to have been born. Olym- ia, also, became much depressed, and we both slum- ered and woke cross, and still the gentleman was going on in the dark—whether up in the stars, or down on the stage, it would have been hard to make out, if it had 192 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. been worth trying—ciphering away about planes of orbits to such an infamous extent that Olympia, stung to madness, actually, kicked me. A pretty birthday Spectacle, when the lights were turned up again, and all the schools in the town (including the National, who had come in for nothing, and serve them right, for they were always throwing stones) were discovered with exhausted countenances, screwing their knuckles into their eyes, or clutching their heads of hair. A pretty birthday speech when Dr. Sleek of the City-Free bobbed up his powdered head in the stage-box, and said that before this assembly dispersed he really must beg to express his entire approval of a lecture as im- proving, as informing, as devoid of anything that could call a blush into the cheek of youth, as any it had ever been his lot to hear delivered. A pretty birth- day altogether, when Astronomy couldn’t leave poor Small Olympia Squires and me alone, but must put an end to our loves! For, we never got over it; the thread- bare Orrery outwore our mutual tenderness; the man with the wand was too much for the boy with the bow. When shall I disconnect the combined smells of oranges, brown paper, and straw, from those other birthdays at school, when the coming hamper casts its shadow before, and when a week of social harmony —shall I add of admiring and affectionate popularity —led up to that Institution? What noble sentiments were expressed to me in the days before the hamper, what vows of friendship were sworn to me, what ex- ceedingly old knives were given me, what generous avowals of having been in the wrong emanated from else obstinate spirits once enrolled among my enemies! The birthday of the potted game and guava jelly, is still made special to me by the noble conduct of Bully Globson. Letters from home had mysteriously inquired whether I should be much surprised and disappointed if among the treasures in the coming hamper I dis- covered potted game, and guava jelly from the West Indies. I had mentioned those hints in confidence to a few friends, and had promised to give away, as I now see reason to believe, a handsome covey of par- tridges potted, and about a hundred weight of guava jelly. It was now that Globson, Bully no more, sought me out in the playground. He was a big fat boy, with a BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS. 193 big fat head and a big fat fist, and at the beginning of that Half had raised such a bump on my forehead that I couldn’t get my hat of state on, to go to church. He said that after an interval of cool reflection (four months) he now felt this blow to have been an error of judgment, and that he wished to apologise for the same. Not only that, but holding down his big head - between his two big hands in order that I might reach it conveniently, he requested me, as an act of jus- tice which would appease his awakened conscience, to raise a retributive bump upon it in the presence of witnesses. This handsome proposal I modestly declined, and he then embraced me, and we walked away con- versing. We conversed respecting the West India islands, and, in the pursuit of knowledge, he asked me with much interest whether in the course of my read- ing I had met with any reliable description of the mode of manufacturing guava jelly; or whether I had ever happened to taste that conserve, which he had been given to understand was of rare excellence. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty; and then with the waning months came an ever augmenting sense of the dignity of twenty-one. Heaven knows I had nothing to “come-into,” save the bare birthday, and yet I esteemed it as a great possession. I now and then paved the way to my state of dignity, by begin- ning a proposition with the casual words, “say that a man of twenty-one,” or by the incidental assumption of a fact that could not sanely be disputed, as, “for when a fellow comes to be a man of twenty-one.” I gave a party on the occasion. She was there. It is unnecessary to name Her, more particularly; she was older than I, and had pervaded every chink and crevice of my mind for three or four years. I had held volumes of Imaginary Conversations with her mother on the subject of our union, and I had written letters more in number than Horace Walpole's, to that discreet woman, soliciting her daughter's hand in marriage. I had never had the remotest intention of sending any of those letters; but to write them, and after a few days tear them up, had been a sublime occupation. Sometimes I had begun ‘‘Honoured Madam. I think that a lady gifted with those powers of observation which I know you to possess, and endowed with those womanly sym- VOL, I, 13 194 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. pathies with the young and ardent which it were more than heresy to doubt, can scarcely have failed to dis- cover that I love your adorable daughter, deeply, de- votedly.” In less buoyant states of mind I had begun, “Bear with me, Dear Madam, bear with a daring wretch who is about to make a surprising confession to ou, wholly unanticipated by yourself, and which he §eº you to commit to the flames as soon as you have become aware to what a towering height his mad ambition soars.” At other times—periods of profound mental depression, when She had gone out to balls where I was not—the draft took the affecting form of a paper to be left on my table after my departure to the confines of the globe. As thus: “For Mrs. Onowen- ever, these lines when the hand that traces them shall be far away. I could not bear the daily torture of hopelessly loving the dear one whom I will not name. Broiling on the coast of Africa, or congealing on the shores of Greenland, I am far far better there than here.” (In this sentiment my cooler judgment per- ceives that the family of the beloved object would have most completely concurred.) “If I ever emerge from obscurity, and my name is ever heralded by Fame, it will be for her dear sake. If I ever amass Gold, it will be to pour it at her feet. Should I on the other hand become the prey of Ravens—” I doubt if I ever quite made up mind what was to be done in that affecting case; I tried “then it is better so; ” but not feeling con- vinced that it would be better so, I vacillated between leaving all else blank, which looked expressive and bleak, or winding up with “Farewell !” This fictitious correspondence of mine is to blame for the foregoing digression. I was about to pursue the statement that on my twenty-first birthday I gave a party, and She was there. . It was a beautiful party. There was not a single animate or inanimate object connected with it (except the company and myself) that I had ever seen before. Everything was hired, and the mercenaries in attendance were profound strangers to me. Behind a door, in the crumby part of the night when wine-glasses were to be found in unexpected spots, I spoke to Her—spoke out to Her. What passed, I cannot as a man of honour reveal. She was all an- gelical gentleness, but a word was mentioned—a short BIRTH DAY CELEBRATIONS. 195 and dreadful word of three letters, beginning with a B—which, as I remarked at the moment, ‘‘scorched my brain.” She went away soon afterwards, and when the hollow throng (though to be sure it was no fault of theirs) dispersed, I issued forth, with a dissipated scorner, and, as I mentioned expressly to him, “sought oblivion.” It was found, with a dreadful headache in it, but it didn’t last; for, in the shaming light of next day’s noon, I raised my heavy head in bed, looking back to the birthdays behind me, and tracking the circle by which I had got round, after all, to the bitter powder and the wretchedness again. This reactionary powder (taken so largely by the human race that I am inclined to regard it as the Universal Medicine once sought for in Laboratories) is capable of being made up in another form for birthday use. Anybody’s long-lost brother will do ill to turn up on a birthday. If I had a long-lost brother I should know beforehand that he would prove a tremendous fraternal failure if he appointed to rush into my arms on my birthday. The first Magic Lantern I ever saw, was secretly and elaborately planned to be the great effect of a very juvenile birthday; but it wouldn’t act, and its images were dim. My experience of adult birthday Magic Lanterns may possibly have been un- fortunate, but has certainly been similar. I have an illustrative birthday in my eye: a birthday of my friend Flipfield, whose birthdays had long been remarkable as social successes. There had been nothing set or formal about them; Flipfield having been accustomed merely to say, two or three days before, “Don’t forget to come and dine, old boy, according to custom ; ”—I don’t know what he said to the ladies he invited, but I may safely assume it not to have been “old girl.” Those were delightful gatherings, and were enjoyed by all participators. In an evil hour, a long-lost brother of Flipfield’s came to light in foreign parts. Where he had been hidden, or what he had been doing, I don’t know, for Flipfield vaguely informed me that he had turned up ‘‘ on the banks of the Ganges”—speak- ing of him as if he had been washed ashore. The Long-lost was coming home, and Flipfield made an unfortunate calculation, based on the well-known regu- larity of the P. and O. Steamers, that matters might 196 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. be so contrived as that the Long-lost should appear in the nick of time on his (Flipfield’s) birthday. Delicacy commanded that I should repress the gloomy anticipa- tions with whoh my soul became fraught when I heard of this plan. The fatal day arrived, and we assembled in force. Mrs. Flipfield senior formed an interesting feature in the group, with a blue-veined miniature of the late Mr. Flipfield round her neck, in an oval, resem- bling a tart from the pastrycook’s: his hair powdered, and the bright buttons on his coat, evidently very like. She was accompanied by Miss Flipfield, the eldest of her numerous family, who held her pocket-handker- chief to her bosom in a majestic manner, and spoke to all of us (none of us had ever seen her before), in pious and condoning tones, of all the quarrels that had taken place in the family, from her infancy, which must have been a long time ago—down to that hour. The Long- lost did not appear. Dinner, half an hour later than usual, was announced, and still no Long-lost. We sat down to table. The knife and fork of the Long-lost made a vacuum in Nature, and when the champagne came round for the first time, Flipfield gave him up for the day, and had them removed. It was then that the Long-lost gained the height of his popularity with the company; for my own part, I felt convinced that I loved him dearly. Flipfield’s dinners are perfect, and he is the easiest and best of entertainers. . Dinner went On brilliantly, and the more the Long-lost didn’t come, the more comfortable we grew, and the more highly we thought of him. Flipfield’s own man (who has a regard for me) was in the act of struggling with an igno- rant stipendiary, to wrest from him the wooden leg of a Guinea-fowl which he was pressing on my acceptance, and to substitute a slice of the breast, when a ringing at the door-bell suspended the strife. I looked round me, and perceived the sudden pallor which I knew my own visage revealed, reflected in the faces of the com- pany. Flipfield hurriedly excused himself, went out, was absent for about a minute or two, and then re- entered with the Long-lost. * I beg to say distinctly that if the stranger had brought Mont Blanc with him, or had come attended by a retinue of eternal snows, he could not have chilled the circle to the marrow in a more efficient manner. Embodied BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS. 19% failure sat enthroned upon the Long-lost's brow, and pervaded him to his Tong-lost boots. . In vain Mrs. Flip- field senior, opening her arms, exclaimed, “My Tom!” and pressed his nose against the counterfeit present- ment of his other parent. In vain Miss Flipfield, in the first transports of this re-tunion, showed him a dint upon her maidenly cheek, and asked him if he remembered when he did that with the bellows? We, the by-stand- ers, were overcome, but overcome by the palpable, undisguisable, utter, and total break-down of the Long- lost. Nothing he could have done would have set him right with us but his instant return to the Ganges. In the very same moments it became established that the feeling was reciprocal, and that the Long-lost detested us. When a friend of the family (not myself, upon my honour), wishing to set things going again, asked him, while he partook of soup—asked him with an amiability of intention beyond all praise, but with a weakness of execution open to defeat—what kind of river he con- sidered the Ganges, the Long-lost, scowling at the friend of the family over his spoon, as one of an abhor- rent race, replied, “Why a river of water, I suppose,” and spooned his soup into himself with a malignancy of hand and eye that blighted the amiable questioner. Not an opinion could be elicited from the Long-lost, in unison with the sentiments of any individual present. He contradicted Flipfield dead, before he had eaten his salmon. He had no idea—or affected to have no idea—that it was his brother's birthday, and on the communication of that interesting fact to him, merely wanted to make him out four years older than he was. He was an antipathetical being, with a peculiar power and gift of treading on everybody’s tenderest place. They talk in America of a man’s “Platform.” I should describe the Platform of the Long-lost as a Platform composed of other people's corns, on which he had stumped his way, with all his might and main, to his present position. It is needless to add that Flipfield’s great birthday went by the board, and that he was a wreck when I pretended at parting to wish him many happy returns of it. There is another class of birthdays at which I have so frequently assisted, that I may assume such birth- days to be pretty well known to the human race. My 4. 198 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. friend Mayday’s birthday is an example. The guests have no knowledge of one another except on that one day in the year, and are annually terrified for a week by the prospect of meeting one another again. There is a fiction among us that we have uncommon reason for being particularly lively and Spirited on the occasion, whereas deep despondency is no phrase for the expres- sion of our feelings. But the wonderful feature of the case is, that we are in tacit accordance to avoid the subject—to keep it as far off as possible, as long as pos- sible—and to talk about anything else, rather than the joyful event. I may even go so far as to assert that there is a dumb compact among us that we will pretend that it is NOT Mayday’s birthday. A mysterious and gloomy Being, who is said to have gone to school with Mayday, and who is so lank and lean that he seriously impugns the Dietary of the establishment at which they were jointly educated, always leads us, as I may say, to the block, by laying his grisly hand on a decanter and begging us to fill Our glasses. The devices and pretences that I have seen put in practice to defer the fatal moment, and to interpose between this man and his purpose, are innumerable. I have known desperate guests, when they saw the grisly hand approaching the decanter, wildly to begin, without any antecedent what- soever, “That reminds me—” and to plunge into long stories. When at last the hand and decanter come together, a shudder, a palpable, perceptible shudder, goes round the table. We receive the reminder that it is Mayday’s birthday, as if it were the anniversary of some profound disgrace he had undergone, and we sought to comfort him. And when we had drunk Mayday’s health, and wished him many happy returns, we are seized for some moments with a ghastly blitheness, an unnatural levity, as if we were in the first flushed reaction of having undergone a surgical operation. Birthdays of this species have a public as well as a private phase. My “ boyhood’s home,” Dullborough, presents a case in point. An Immortal Somebody was wanted in Dullborough, to dimple for a day the stagnant face of the waters; he was rather wanted by Dullborough generally, and much wanted by the Fº hotel- keeper. The County history was looked up for a locally Immortal Somebody, but the registered Dullborough | BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS. - 199 worthies were all Nobodies. In this state of things, it is hardly necessary to record that Dullborough did what every man does when he wants to write a book or deliver a lecture, and is provided with all the materials except a subject. It fell back upon Shakespeare. No sooner was it resolved to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday in Dullborough, than the popularity of the immortal bard became surprising. You might have supposed the first edition of his works to have been published last week, and enthusiastic Dullborough to have got half through them. (I doubt, by the way, whether it had ever done half that, but this is a private Opinion.) A young gentleman with a sonnet, the re- tention of which for two years had enfeebled his mind and undermined his knees, got the sonnet into the Dullborough Warden, and gained flesh. Portraits of Shakespeare broke out in the bookshop windows, and Our principal artist painted a large original portrait in oils for the decoration of the dining-room. It was not in the least like any of the other portraits, and was exceedingly admired, the head being much swollen. At the Institution, the Debating Society discussed the new question, Was there sufficient ground for suppos- ing that the Immortal Shakespeare ever stole deer? This was indignantly decided by an overwhelming majority in the negative; indeed, there was but one vote on the Poaching side, and that was the vote of the Orator who had undertaken to advocate it, and who became quite an obnoxious character—particularly to the Dullborough “roughs,” who were about as well in- formed on the matter as most other people. Distin- guished speakers were invited down, and very nearly came (but not quite). Subscriptions were opened, and committees sat, and it would have been far from a popular measure in the height of the excitement, to have told Dullborough that it wasn’t Stratford-upon-Avon. Yet, after all these preparations, when the great fes- tivity took place, and the portrait elevated aloft, sur- veyed the company as if it were in danger of springing a mine of intellect and blowing itself up, it did undoubtedly happen, according to the inscrutable mys- teries of things, that nobody could be induced, not to: say to touch upon Shakespeare, but . to come within a mile of him, until the crack speaker of Dullborough 200 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. rose to propose the immortal memory. Which he did with the perplexing and astonishing result that before he had repeated the great name half-a-dozen times, or had been upon his legs as many minutes, he was assailed with a general shout of “Question.” - CHAPTER XX. BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE. BEHººp me on my way to an Emigrant Ship, on a hot morning early in June. My road lies through that part of London generally known to the initiated as “Down by the Docks.” Down by the Docks, is home to a good many people—to too many, if I may judge from the overflow of local population in the streets—but my nose insinuates that the number to whom it is Sweet Home might be easily counted. Down by the Docks, is a region I would choose as my point of embarkation aboard ship if I were an emigrant. It would present my intention to me in such a sensible light; it would show me so many things to be run away from. Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters and scatter the roughest oyster shells, known to the descend- ants of Saint George and the Dragon. Down by the Docks, they consume the slimiest of shell-fish, which seem to have been scraped off the copper bottoms of ships. Down by the Docks, the vegetables at green- grocers' doors acquire a saline and a scaly look, as if they had been crossed with fish and seaweed. Down by the Docks, they “board seamen º’ at the eating- houses, the public-houses, the slop-shops, the coffee- shops, the tally-shops, all kinds of shops mentionable and unmentionable—board them, as it were in the pirat- ical sense, making them bleed terribly, and giving no quarter. Down by the Docks, the seamen roam in mid- street and mid-day, their pockets inside out, and their heads no better. Down by the Docks, the daughters of wave-ruling Britannia also rove, clad in silken attire, with uncovered tresses streaming in the breeze, ban- dana kerchiefs floating from their shoulders, and crin- oline not wanting. Down by the Docks, you may hear BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE. 201 the Incomparable Joe Jackson sing the Standard of England, with a hornpipe, any night; or any day may see at the wax-work, for a penny and no waiting, him as killed the policeman at Acton and suffered for it. Down by the Docks, you may buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage preparations various, if you are not partic- ular what they are made of besides seasoning. Down by the Docks, the children of Israel creep into any gloomy cribs and entries they can hire, and hang slops there— pewter watches, sou’-wester hats, waterproof overalls —‘‘ firtht rate articleth, Thjack.” Down by the Docks, such dealers exhibiting on a frame a complete nautical suit without the refinement of a waxen visage in the hat, present the imaginary wearer as drooping at the yard-arm, with his seafaring and earthfaring troubles over. Down by the Docks, the placards in the shops apostrophise the customer, knowing him familiarly be- forehand, as “Look here, Jack!” “Here’s your sort, my lad!” “Try our sea-going mixed, at two and nine!” “The right kit for the British tar!” “Ship ahoy!” “Splice the main-brace, brother!”, “Come, cheer up, my lads. We’ve the best liquors here, And you’ll find something new In our wonderful Beer!” Down by the Docks, the pawnbroker lends money on Union-Jack pocket-handkerchiefs, on watches with little ships pitching fore and aft on the dial, on telescopes, nauti- cal instruments in cases, and such like. Down by the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business on the wretch- edest scale—chiefly on lint and plaster for the strapping of wounds—and with no bright bottles, and with no little drawers. Down by the Docks, the shabby under- taker's shop will bury you for next to nothing, after the Malay or Chinaman has stabbed you for nothing at all; so you can hardly hope to make a cheaper end. Down by the Docks, anybody drunk will quarrel with amy- body drunk or sober, and everybody else will have a hand in it; and on the shortest notice you may revolve in a whirlpool of red shirts, shaggy beards, wild heads of hair, bare tattooed arms, Britannia’s daughters, malice, mud, maundering, and madness. Down by the Docks, scraping fiddles go in the public-houses all day long, and, shrill above their din and all the din, rises the screeching of innumerable parrots brought from for- eign parts, who appear to be very much astonished by 202 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. what they find on these native shores of ours. Possibly the parrots don’t know, possibly they do, that Down by the Docks is the road to the Pacific Ocean, with its lovely islands, where the savage girls plait flowers, and the savage boys carve cocoanut shells, and the grim blind idols muse in their shady groves to exactly the same purpose as the priests and chiefs. And possibly the parrots don’t know, possibly they do, that the noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever he is, and has five hundred thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no reason, to answer for. Shadwell church ! Pleasant whispers of there being a fresher air down the river than down by the Docks, go pursuing one another, playfully, in and out of the openings in its spire. Gigantic in the basin just beyond the church, looms my Emigrant Ship: her name, the Amazon. Her figure-head is not disfigured as those beauteous founders of the race of strong-minded women are fabled to have been, for the convenience of draw- ing the bow; but I sympathise with the carver: A flattering carver who made it his care To carve busts as they ought to be—not as they were. My Emigrant Ship lies broadside-on to the wharf. Two great gangways made of Spars and planks connect her with the wharf; and up and down these gangways, per- petually crowding to and fro and in and out, like ants, are the Emigrants who are going to sail in my Emigrant Ship. Some with cabbages, some with loaves of bread, some with cheese and butter, some with milk and beer, some with boxes beds and bundles, some with babies— nearly all with children—nearly all with bran-new tin cans for their daily allowance of water, uncomfortably suggestive of a tin flavour in the drink. To and fro, up and down, aboard and ashore, Swarming here and there and everywhere, my Emigrants. And still as the Dock- Gate swings upon its hinges, cabs appear, and carts appear, and Vans . bringing more of my Emi- grants, with more cabbages, more loaves, more cheese and butter, more milk and beer, more boxes beds and bundles, more tin cans, and on those shipping invest- ments accumulated compound interest of children. I go aboard my Emigrant Ship. I go first to the DOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE. 203 great cabin, and find it in the usual condition of a Cabin at that pass. Perspiring landsmen, with loose papers, and with pens and inkstands, pervade it; and the gen- eral appearance of things is as if the late Mr. Amazon’s funeral had just come home from the cemetery, and the disconsolate Mrs. Amazon’s trustees found the affairs in great disorder, and were looking high and low for the will. I go out on the poop-deck, for air, and sur- veying the emigrants on the deck below (indeed they are crowded all about me, up there too), find more pens and inkstands in action, and more papers, and intermi- nable complication respecting accounts with individu- als for tin cans and what not. But nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the deck in every corner where it is possible to find a few square feet to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people, in every unsuitable attitude for writing, are writing letters. Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June. And these people are so strikingly different from all other people in like circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I wonder aloud, “What would a stranger sº these emigrants to be l’ The vigilant bright face of the weather-browned cap- tain of the Amazon is at my shoulder, and he says, “What, indeed The most of these came aboard yes- terday evening. They came from various parts of England in small parties that had never seen one another before. Yet they had not been a couple of hours on board, when they established their own police, made their own regulations, and set their own watches at all the hatchways. Before nine o'clock, the ship was as orderly and as quiet as a man-of-war.” I looked about me again, and saw the letter-writing going on with the most curious composure. Perfectly abstracted in the midst of the crowd; while great casks were swinging aloft, and being lowered into the hold; while hot agents were hurrying up and down, adjusting the interminable accounts; while two hundred strangers were searching everywhere for two hundred other strangers, and were asking questions about them of two hundred more; while the children played up and down all the steps, and in and out among all the people’s legs, 204 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. and were beheld, to the general dismay, toppling over all the dangerous places; the letter-writers wrote on calmly. On the starboard side of the ship, a grizzled: man dictated a long letter to another grizzled man in an immense fur cap : which letter was of so profound a Quality, that it became necessary for the amanuensis at intervals to take off his fur cap in both his hands, for the ventilation of his brain, and stare at him who dictated, as a man of many mysteries who was worth looking at. On the larboard side, a woman had covered a belaying-pin with a white cloth to make a neat desk of it, and was sitting on a little box, writing with the deliberation of a bookkeeper. Down upon her breast on the planks of the deck at this woman’s feet, with her head diving in under a beam of the bulwarks on that side, as an eligible place of refuge for her sheet of paper, a neat and pretty girl wrote for a good hour (she fainted at last), only rising to the surface Occasionally for a dip of ink. Alongside the boat, close to me on the poop- deck, another girl, a fresh well-grown country girl, was writing another letter on the bare deck. Later in the day, when this self-same boat was filled with a choir who sang glees and catches for a long time, one of the singers, a girl, sang her part mechanically all the while, and wrote a letter in the bottom of the boat while doing so. “A stranger would be puzzled to guess the right name for these people, Mr. Uncommercial,” says the captain. “Indeed he would.” - “If you hadn’t known, could you ever have sup- posed—?” “How could I | I should have said they were in their degree, the pick and flower of England.” “So should I,” says the captain. “How many are they?” “Eight hundred in round numbers.” - I went between-decks, where the families with chil- dren swarmed in the dark, where unavoidable confusion. had been caused by the last arrivals, and where the confusion was increased by the little preparations for . dinner that were going on in each group. A few women here and there, had got lost, and were laughing at it, and asking their way to their own people, or Out on deck again. A few of the poor children were crying; but otherwise the universal cheerfulness was amazing. BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE. 205 “We shall shake down by to-morrow.” “We shall come all right in a day or so.” “We shall have more light at sea.” Such phrases I heard everywhere, as I groped my way among chests and barrels and beams and unstowed cargo and ring-bolts and Emigrants, down to the lower-deck, and thence up to the light of day again, and to my former station. Surely, an extraordinary people in their power of self- abstraction! All the former letter-writers were still writ- ing calmly, and many more letter-writers had broken out in my absence. A boy with a bag of books in his hand and a slate under his arm, emerged frong below, concentrated himself in my neighbourhood (espying a convenient skylight for his purpose), and went to work at a sum as if he were stone deaf. A father and mother and several young children, on the main-deck below me, had formed a family circle close to the foot of the crowded restléss gangway, where the children made a nest for themselves in a coil of rope, and the father and mother, she suckling the youngest, discussed family affairs as peaceably as if they were in perfect retire- ment. I think the most noticeable characteristic in the eight hundred as a mass, was their exemption from hurry. *:. Eight hundred what? “Geese, villain?” EIGHT HUNDRED MORMONS. I, Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human Interest Brothers, had come aboard this Emigrant Ship to see what Eight hundred Latter-Day Saints were like, and I found them . the rout and overthrow of all my expectations) like what I now describe with scrupulous exactness. The Mormon Agent who had been active in getting them together, and in making the contract with my friends the owners of the ship to take them as far as 'New York on their way to the Great Salt Lake, was pointed out to me. A compactly-made handsome man in black, rather short, with rich brown hair and beard, and clear bright eyes. From his speech, I should set him down as American. Probably a man who had “knocked about the world” pretty much. A man with a frank open manner, and unshrinking look; withal a man of great quickness. I believe he was wholly ignorant of my Uncommercial individuality, and con- sequently of my immense Uncommercial importance. 206 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. UNCOMMERCIAL. These are a very fine set of people you have brought together here. - MORMON AGENT. Yes, sir, they are a very fine set of people. . UNCOMMERCIAL (looking about). Indeed, I think it would be difficult to find Eight hundred people together anywhere else, and find so much beauty and so much strength and capacity for work among them. MORMON AGENT (not looking about, but looking steadily at Uncommercial). I think so. —We sent out about a thousand more, yes’day, from Liverpool. UNCOMMERCIAL. You are not going with these emi- grants? MORMON AGENT. No, sir. I remain. : UNCOMMERCIAL. But you have been in the Mormon Territory? - , ſº MoRMON AGENT. Yes; I left Utah about three years a,0ſ.O. . © *iscovercial. It is surprising to me that these people are all so cheery, and make so little of the im- mense distance before them. MORMON AGENT. Well, you see; many of 'em have friends out at Utah, and many of 'em look forward to meeting friends on the way. 'r UNCOMMERCIAL. On the way? - MoRMON AGENT. This way ’tis. This ship lands 'em in New York City. Then they go on by rail right away beyond St. Louis, to that part of the Banks of the Mis- souri where they strike the Plains. There, waggons from the settlement meet ’em to bear ’em company on their journey 'cross—twelve hundred miles about. In- dustrious people who come out to the settlement soon get waggons of their own, and so the friends of some of these will come down in their own waggons to meet 'em. They look forward to that, greatly. * UNCOMMERCIAL. On their long journey across the Desert, do you arm them? MoRMON AGENT. Mostly you would find they have arms of some kind or another already with them. Such as had not arms we should arm across the Plains, for the general protection and defence. UNCOMMERCIAL. Will these waggons bring down any produce to the Missouri’ • MORMON AGENT. Well, since the war broke out, we've 18OUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE. 207 taken to growing cotton, and they’ll likely bring down cotton to be exchanged for machinery. We want ma- chinery. Also we have taken to growing indigo, which is a fine commodity for profit. It has been found that the climate on the further side of the Great Salt Lake suits well for raising indigo. UNCOMMERCIAL. I am told that these people now on board are principally from the South of England? MORMON AGENT. And from Wales. That’s true. . UNCOMMERCIAL. Do you get many Scotch? MORMON AGENT. Not many. UNCOMMERCIAL. Highlanders, for instance. MORMON AGENT. No, not Highlanders. They ain’t interested enough in universal brotherhood and peace and good will. . ºracial. The old fighting blood is strong in them? - MORMON AGENT. Well, yes. And besides; they’ve no faith. UNCOMMERCIAL (who has been burning to get at the Prophet Joe Smith, and seems to discover an opening). Faith in-l MORMON AGENT (far too many for Uncommercial). Well. —In anything! Similarly on this same head, the Uncommercial under- went discomfiture from a Wiltshire labourer: a simple fresh-coloured farm labouro., of eight-and-thirty, who at one time stood beside him looking on at new arrivals, and with whom he held this dialogue : UNCOMMERCIAL. Would you mind my asking you what part of the country you come from? WILTSHIRE. Not a bit. Theer 1 (exultingly) I’ve worked all my life o' Salisbury Plain, right under the shadder o' Stonehenge. You mightn’t think it, but I haive. • UNCOMMERCIAL. And a pleasant country too. WILTSHIRE. Ah 'Tis a pleasant country. UNCOMMERCIAL. Have you any family on board? WILTSHIRE. Two children, boy and gal. I am a wid- derer, I am, and I’m going out alonger my boy and gal. That’s my gal, and she's a fine gal o' sixteen (pointing out the girl who is writing by the boat). I’ll go and fetch my boy. I’d like to show you my boy. (Here Wiltshire disappears, and presently comes back with a 208 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. big shy boy of twelve, in a superabundance of boots, who is not at all glad to be presented.) He is a fine boy too, and a boy fur to work (Boy having unduti- fully bolted, Wiltshire drops him.) - UNCOMMERCIAL. It must cost you a great deal of money to go so far, three strong. - WILTSHIRE. A power of money. Theer | Eight shil- len a week, eight shillen a week, eight shillen a week, put by Out of the week’s wages for ever so long. UNCOMMERCIAL. I wonder how you did it. . WILTSHIRE }. in this a kindred spirit). Se theer now ! I wonder how I done it ! But what with a bit o' subscription heer, and what with a bit o’ help theer, it were done at last, though I don’t hardly know how. Then it were unfort’net for us, you see, as we got kep' in Bristol So long—nigh a fortnight, it were—on accounts of a mistake wi' Brother Halliday. Swaller'd up money, it did, when we might have come straight on. UNCOMMERCIAL (delicately approaching Joe Smith). You are of the Mormon religion, of course? WILTSHIRE (confidently). Oyes, I’m a Mormon. (Then reflectively.) I’m a Mormon. (Then, looking round the ship, feigns to descry a particular friend in an empty spot, and evades the Uncommercial for º, After a noontide pause for dinner, during which my Emigrants were nearly all between-decks, and the Amazon looked deserted, a general muster took place. The muster was for the ceremony of passing the Govern- ment Inspector and the Doctor. Those authorities held their temporary state amid-ships, by a cask or two; and, knowing that the whole Eight hundred emigrants must come face to face with them, I took my station behind the two. They knew nothing whatever of me, I believe, and my testimony to the unpretending gentleness and good nature with which they discharged their duty, may be of the greater worth. There was not the slight- est, flavour of the Circumlocution Office about their proceedings. The emigrants were now all on deck. They were densely crowded aft, and swarmed upon the º, like bees. Two or three Mormon agents stood ready to hand them on to the Inspector, and to hand them for- ward when they had passed. By what successful means, a special aptitude for organisation had been infused BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE. 209 into these people, I am, of course, unable to report. But I know that, even now, there was no disorder, hurry, or difficulty. - - All being ready, the first group are handed on. That member of the party who is, entrusted with the assenger-ticket for the whole, has been warned § one of the agents to have it ready, and here it is in his hand. In every instance through the whole eight hundred, without an exception, this paper is always ready. INSPECTOR (reading the ticket). Jessie Jobson, So- hronia Jobson, Jessie Jobson again, Matilda Jobson, ºft. Jobson, Jane Jobson, Matilda Jobson again, Brigham Jobson, Leonardo Jobson and Orson Jobson. Are you all here P (glancing at the party, over his spectacles). JESSIE JOBSON NUMBER TWO. All here, sir. This group is composed of an old grandfather and randmother, their married son and his wife, and their amily of children. Orson Jobson is a little child asleep in his mother's arms. The Doctor with a kind word or so, lifts up the corner of the mother's shawl, looks at the child’s face, and touches the little clenched hand. If we were all as well as Orson Jobson, doctoring would be a poor profession. INSPECTOR. Quite right, Jessie Jobson. Take your ticket, Jessie, and pass On. And away they go. Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands them on. Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands next party up. INSPECTOR (reading ticket again). Susannah Cleverly and William Cleverly. Brother and sister, eh? SISTER (young woman of business, hustling slow brother). Yes, sir. INSPECTOR. Very good, Susannah Cleverly. Take your ticket, Susannah, and take care of it. º And away they go. INSPECTOR (taking ticket again). Sampson Dibble and T)orothy Dibble (surveying a very old couple over his spectacles, with some surprise). Your husband quite blind, Mrs. Dibble? MRS. DIBBLE. Yes, sir, he be stone blind. MR. DIBBLE (addressing the mast). Yes, sir, I be stone blind. - WOL. I. 14 210 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. INSPECTOR. That’s a bad job. Take your ticket, Mrs. Dibble, and don’t lose it, and pass on. Doctor taps Mr. Dibble on the eyebrow with his fore- finger, and away they go. INSPECTOR (taking ticket again). Anastatia Weedle. ANASTATIA (a pretty girl in a bright Garibaldi, this morning elected by universal suffrage the Beauty of the Ship). That is me, sir. . INSPECTOR. Going alone, Anastatia? ANASTATIA (shaking her curls). I am with Mrs. Job- son, sir, but I’ve got separated for the moment. INSPECTOR. Oh! you are with the Jobsons? Quite right. That’ll do. Miss Weedle. Don’t lose your ticket. Away she goes, and joins the Jobsons who are wait- ing for her, and stoops and kisses Brigham Jobson— who appears to be considered too young for the purpose, by several Mormons rising twenty, who are looking on. Before her extensive skirts have departed from the casks a decent widow stands there with four children, and so the roll goes. The faces of some of the Welsh people, among whom there were many old persons, were certainly the least intelligent. Some of these emigrants would have bungled sorely, but for the directing hand that was always ready. The intelligence here was unquestion- ably of a low order, and the heads were of a poor type. Generally the case was the reverse. There were many worn faces bearing traces of patient poverty and hard work, and there was great steadiness of purpose and much undemonstrative self-respect among this class. A few young men were going singly. Several girls were going, two or three together. These latter I found it very difficult to refer back, in my mind, to their relin- quished homes and pursuits. Perhaps they were more like country milliners, and pupil teachers rather taw- drily dressed, than any other classes of young women. Inoticed, among many little ornaments worn, more than one photograph-brooch of the Princess of Wales, and also of the late Prince Consort. Some single women of from thirty to forty, whom One might suppose to be embroiderers, or straw-bonnet-makers, were obviously going out in quest of husbands, as finer ladies go to India. That they had any distinct notions of a plural- BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE, 211 ity of husbands or wives, I do not believe. To suppose the family groups of ‘whom the majority of emigrants were composed, polygamically possessed, would be to suppose an absurdity, manifest to any one who saw the fathers and mothers. g I should say (I had no means of ascertaining the fact) that most familiar kinds of handicraft trades were represented here. Farm-labourers, shepherds, and the like, had their full share of representation, but I doubt if they preponderated. It was interesting to see how the leading spirit in the family circle never failed to show itself, even in the simple process of answering to the names as they were j. and checking off the Owners of the names. Sometimes it was the father, much oftener the mother, sometimes a quick little girl second or third in order of seniority. It seemed to occur for the first time to some heavy fathers, what large families they had; and their eyes rolled about, during the calling of the list, as if they half-misdoubted some other family to have been smuggled into their own: Among all the fine handsome children, I observed but two with marks upon their necks that were probably scrofulous. Out of the whole number of emigrants, but one old woman was temporarily set aside by the doctor, on suspicion of fever; but even she afterwards obtained a clean bill of health. When all had “passed,” and the afternoon began to wear on, a black box became visible on deck, which box was in charge of certain personages also in black, of whom Only one had the conventional air of an itiner- ant preacher. This box contained a supply of hymn- books, neatly printed and got up, published at Liverpool, and also in London at the “Latter-Day Saints' Book Depôt, 30, Florence-street.” Some copies were hand- somely bound; the plainer were the more in request, and many were bought. The title ran: “Sacred Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.” The Preface, dated Manchester, 1840, ran thus:—“The Saints in this country have been very desirous for a Hymn Book adapted to their faith and worship, that they might sing the truth with an understanding heart and express their praise joy and gratitude in songs adapted to the New and Everlasting Covenant. In accordance with their wishes, we have 212 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. selected the following volume, which we hope will rove acceptable until a greater variety can be added. ith sentiments of high consideration and esteem, we subscribe ourselves your brethren in the New and Ever- lasting Covenant, BRIGHAM YOUNG, PARLEY P. PRATT, JOHN TAYLOR.” From this book—by no means expla- natory to myself of the New and Everlasting Covenant, and not at all making my heart an understanding one On the subject of that mystery—a hymn was sung, which did not attract any great amount of attention, and was supported by a rather select circle. But the choir in the boat was very popular and pleasant; and there was to have been a Band, only the Cornet was late in coming on board. In the course of the after- noon, a mother appeared from shore, in search of her daughter, “who had run away with the Mormons.” She received every assistance from the Inspector, but her daughter was not found to be on board. The saints ; not seem to me, particularly interested in finding €I’. - Towards five o’clock, the galley became full of tea- kettles, and an agreeable fragrance of tea pervaded the ship. There was no scrambling or jostling for the hot water, no ill-humour, no quarrelling. As the Amazon was to sail with the next tide, and as it would not be high water before two o'clock in the morning, I left her with her tea in full action, and her idle Steam Tug lying by, deputing steam and smoke for the time being to the Tea-kettles. I afterwards learned that a Despatch was sent home by the captain before he struck out into the wide Atlantic, highly extolling the behaviour of these Emi- grants, and the perfect order and propriety of all their sqcial arrangements. What is in store for the poor people on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, what happy delusions they are labouring under now, on what miser- able blindness their eyes may be opened then, I do not pretend to say. But I wont on board their ship to bear testimony against them if they deserved it, as I fully believed they would; to my great astonishment they did not deserve it; and my predispositions and tend- encies must not affect me as an honest witness. I went over the Amazon's side, feeling it impossible to deny that, so far, some remarkable influence had produced a THE CITY OF THE ABSENT. 213 remarkable result, which better known influences have often missed.* CHAPTER XXI. THE CITY OF THE ABSENT. Whº I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and have earned the right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from Covent-garden into the City of London, after business-hours there, on a Saturday, or—better yet—on a Sunday, and roam about its deserted nooks and corners. It is necessary to the full enjoyment of these journeys that they should be made in summer- time, for then the retired spots that I love to haunt, are at their idlest and dullest. A gentle fall of rain is not objectionable, and a warm mist sets off my favourite retreats to decided advantage. Among these, City Churchyards hold a high place. Such strange churchyards hide in the City of London; churchyards sometimes so entirely detached, from churches, always so pressed upon by houses; so small, so rank, so silent, so forgotten, except by the few people who ever look down into them from their smoky windows. As I stand peeping in through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off, like bark from an old tree. The illegible tombstones are all lop- sided, the grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane- Tree that was once a drysalter's daughter and several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust beneath it. , Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the place. The discoloured tiled roofs of the environing buildings stand so awry, that * After this Uncommercial Journey was printed, I happened to mention the experience it describes to LOrd Houghton. That gentleman then showed me an article of his writing, in The Iºdinburgh Review for January, 1862, which is highly remarkable for its philosophical and literary research concerning these Latter-Day Saints. I find in it, the following sentences : — ‘‘ The Select Committee of the House of Commons on onigrant ships for 1854 Summoned the Mormon agent and pas- senger-broker beforo it, and came to the conclusion that no ships under the pro- visions of the “Passengers Act could be depended upon for comfort and security in the same degree as those under his administration. The Mormon ship is a Family under Strong and accepted discipline, with every provision for comfort, decorum, and internal peace.” - $º: 214 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. they can hardly be proof against any stress of weather. Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as they overhang, dubiously calculating how far they will have to fall. In an angle of the walls, what was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots away, encrusted with toadstools. Pipes and spouts for carry- ing off the rain from the encompassing gables, broken or feloniously cut for old lead long ago, now let the rain drip and splash as it list, upon the weedy earth. Sometimes there is a rusty pump somewhere near, and, as I look in at the rails and meditate, I hear it working under an unknown hand with a creaking protest: as though the departed in the churchyard urged, “Let us lie here in peace; don’t suck us up and drink us!” e One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the church- yard of Saint Ghastly Grim; touching what men in gen- eral call it, I have no information. It lies at the heart of the City, and the Blackwall Railway shrieks at it daily. It is a small small churchyard, with a ferocious 'strong spiked iron gate, like a jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, larger than the life, wrought in stone; but it likewise came into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that fo stick iron spikes a-top of the stone skulls, as hº they were impaled, would be a pleasant device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, thrust through and through with iron spears. Hence, there is attraction of repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and, having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I once felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight. “Why not ” I said, in self-excuse. “I have been to see the Colosseum by the light of the moon; is it worse to go to see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the lightning?” I repaired to the Saint in a hackney cab, and found the skulls most effective, having the air of a public execu- tion, and seeming, as the lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the pain of the spikes. Having no other person to whom to impart my satisfaction, I communi- cated it to the driver. So far from being responsive, he surveyed me—he was naturally a bottle-nosed red- faced man—with a blanched countenance. And as he drove me back, he ever and again glanced in over his shoulder through the little front window of his carriage, as mistrusting that I was a fare originally from a grave ### º: || ſ | | - % § 5 # ºffſ. ; º | § | * | º §§ w º W. § TIME AND HIS WIFE. Uncommercial Traveller. THE CITY OF THE ABSENT. 215 in the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim, who might have flitted home again without paying. Sometimes, the queer Hall of some queer Company gives upon a churchyard such as this, and when the Livery dine, you may hear them (if you are looking in through the iron rails, which you never are when I am) toasting their own Worshipful prosperity. Sometimes, a wholesale house of business, requiring much room for stowage, will occupy one or two or even all three sides of the enclosing space, and the backs of bales of goods will lumber up the windows, as if they were holding some crowded trade-meeting of themselves within. Sometimes, the commanding windows are all blank, and show no more sign of life than the graves below —not so much, for they tell of what once upon a time was life undoubtedly. Such was the surrounding of one City church-yard that I saw last summer, on a Vol- unteering Saturday evening towards eight of the clock, when with astonishment I beheld an old old man and an old old woman in it, making hay. Yes, of all Occupations in this world, making hay ! It was a very confined patch of churchyard lying between Grace- church-street and the Tower, capable of yielding, say an apronful of hay. By what means the old old man and woman had got into it, with an almost toothless hay-making rake, I could not fathom. No open window was within view; no window at all was within view, sufficiently near the ground to have enabled their old legs to descend from it; the rusty churchyard-gate was locked, the mouldy church was locked. Gravely among the graves they made hay, all alone by themselves. They looked like Time and his wife. There was but the one rake between them, and they both had hold of it in a pastorally-loving manner, and there was hay on the old woman’s black bonnet, as if the old man had re- cently been playful. The old man was quite an obsolete old man, in knee-breeches and coarse grey stockings, and the old woman wore mittens like unto his stock- ings in texture and in colour. They took no heed of me as I looked on, unable to account for them. The old woman was much too bright for a pew-opener, the old man much too meek for a beadle. On an old tombstone in the foreground between me and them, were two cherubims; but for those celestial embellish- 2iG THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. ments being represented as having no possible use for knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have compared them with the haymakers, and sought a like- ness. I coughed and awoke the echoes, but the hay- makers never looked at me. They used the rake with a measured action, drawing the scanty crop towards them; and so I was fain to leave them under three yards and a half of darkening sky, gravely making hay among the graves, all alone by themselves. Per- haps they were Spectres, and I wanted a Medium. In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimensions, I saw that self-same summer, two comfortable charity children. They were making love—tremendous proof of the vigour of that im- mortal article, for they were in the graceful uni- form under which English Charity delights to hide herself—and they were overgrown, and their legs (his legs at least, for I am modestly incompetent to speak of hers) were as much in the wrong as mere passive weak- ness of character can render legs. O it was a leaden churchyard, but no doubt a golden ground to those young persons! I first saw them on a Saturday evening and, perceiving from their occupation that Saturday evening was their trysting-time, I returned that evening se’nnight, and renewed the contemplation of them. They came there to shake the bits of matting which were spread in the church aisles, and they afterwards rolled them up, he rolling his end, she rolling hers, until they met, and over the two once divided now united rolls—sweet emblem!— gave and received a chaste salute. It was so refreshing to find one of my faded churchyards blooming into flower thus, that I returned a second time, and a third, and ultimately this befell: —They had left the church door open, in their dustin and arranging. Walking in to look at the church, became aware, by the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of her in the reading-desk, of him looking down, of her looking up, exchanging tender discourse. Immedi- ately both dived, and became as it were non-existent on this sphere. With an assumption of innocence I turned to leave the sacred edifice, when an obese form stood in the portal, puffily demanding Joseph, or in default of Joseph, Celia. Taking this monster by the sleeve, and luring him forth on pretence of showing him ! THE CITY OF THE ABSENT. 21? whom ne sought, I gave time for the emergence of . Joseph and Celia, who presently came towards us in the churchyard, bending under dusty matting, a pict- ure of thriving and unconscious industry. It would be superfluous to hint that I have ever since deemed this the proudest passage in my life. - But such instances, or any tokens of vitality, are rare indeed in my City churchyards. A few sparrows occasionally try to raise a lively chirrup in their soli- tary tree—perhaps, as taking a different view of worms from that entertained by humanity—but they are flat and hoarse of voice, like the clerk, the organ, the bell, the `clergyman, and all the rest of the Church-works when they are wound up for Sunday. Caged larks, thrushes, or blackbirds, hanging in neigbhouring courts, pour forth their strains passionately, as scenting the tree, trying to break out, and see leaves again before they die, but their song is Willow, Willow—of a churchyard cast. So little light lives inside the churches of my church- yards, when the two are co-existent, that it is often Only by an accident and after long acquaintance that I discover their having stained glass in some odd win- dow. The westeriug sun slants into the churchyard by Some unwonted entry, a few prismatic tears drop on an old tombstone, and a window that I thought was only dirty, is for the moment all bejewelled. Then the light passes and the colours die. Though even then, if there be room enough for me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to the top of the Church Tower, I See the rusty vane new burnished, and seeming to look Out with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at the dis- tant shore of country. Blinking old men who are let out of workhouses by the hour, have a tendency to sit on bits of coping stone in these churchyards, leaning with both hands on their Sticks and asthmatically gasping. The more depressed class of beggars too, bring hither broken meats, and munch. I am on nodding terms with a meditative turncock who lingers in one of them, and whom I sus- pect of a turn for poetry; the rather, as he looks out of temper when he gives the fire-plug a disparaging wrench with that large tuning-fork of his which would wear out the shoulder of his coat, but for a precau- tionary piece of inlaid leather. Fire-ladders, which I 218 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. am satisfied nobody knows anything about, and the keys of which were lost in ancient times, moulder away in the larger churchyards, under eaves like wooden eyebrows; and so removed are those corners from the haunts of men and boys, that once on a fifth of November I found a “Guy’ trusted to take care of himself there, while his proprietors had gone to dinner. Of the expression of his face I cannot report, because it was turned to the wall; but his shrugged shoulders and his ten extended fingers, appeared to denote that he had moralised in his little straw chair on the mys- tery of mortality until he gave it up as a bad job. You do not come upon these churchyards violently; there are shades of transition in the neighbourhood. An antiquated news shop, or barber’s shop, apparently bereft of customers in the earlier days of George the Third, would warn me to look out for one, if any dis- coveries in this respect were left for me to make. A very quiet court, in combination with an unaccountable dyer's and scourer's, would prepare me for a church- yard. An exceedingly retiring public-house, with a bagatelle-board shadily visible in a sawdusty parlour shaped like an omnibus, and with a shelf of punch- bowls in the bar, would apprise me that I stood near consecrated ground. A “Dairy,” exhibiting in its modest window one very little milk-can and three eggs, would suggest to me the certainty of finding the poul- try hard by, pecking at my forefathers. I first inferred the vicinity of Saint Ghastly Grim, from a certain air of extra repose and gloom pervading a vast stack of warehouses. From the hush of the places, it is congenial to pass into the hushed resorts of business. Down the lanes I like to see the carts and waggons huddled together in repose, the cranes idle, and the warehouses shut. Pausing in the alleys behind the closed Banks of mighty Lombard-street, it gives one as good as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters with a rim along the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales for weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, above all, the bright copper shovels for shovelling gold. When I draw money, it never seems so much money as when it is shovelled at me out of a bright copper shovel. I like to say, “In gold,” and to see Seven pounds musi- THE CITY OF THE ABSENT. 219 cally pouring out of the shovel, like seventy; the Bank appearing to remark to me—I italicise appearing—“if you want more of this yellow earth, we keep it in bar- rows at your service.” To think of the banker's clerk with his deft finger turning the crisp edges of the Hun- dred-Pound Notes he has taken in a fat roll out of a drawer, is again to hear the rustling of that delicious south-cash wind. “How will you have it?” I once heard this usual question asked at a Bank Counter of an elderly female, habited in mourning and steeped in simplicity, who answered, open-eyed, crooked-fingered, laughing with expectation, “Anyhow!” Calling these things to mind as I stroll among the Banks, I wonder whether the other solitary Sunday man I pass, has de- signs upon the Banks. For the interest and mystery of the matter, I almost hope he may have, and that his confederate may be at this moment taking impres- sions of the keys of the iron closets in wax, and that a delightful robbery may be in course of transaction. About College-hill, Mark-lane, and so on towards the Tower, and Dockward, the deserted wine merchants’ cellars are fine subjects for consideration; but the deserted money-cellars of the Bankers, and their plate- cellars, and their jewel-cellars, what subterranean regions of the Wonderful Lamp are these! And again: possibly some shoeless boy in rags, passed through this street yesterday, for whom it is reserved to be a Banker in the fulness of time, and to be surpassing rich. Such reverses have been, since the days of Whittington; and were, long before. I want to know whether the boy has any foreglittering of that glittering fortune now, when he treads these stones, hungry. Much as I also want to know whether the next man to be hanged at Newgate yonder, had any suspicion upon him that he was moving steadily towards that fate, when he talked So much about the last man who paid the same great debt at the same small Debtors’ Door. - Where are all the people who on busy working-days pervade these scenes P. The locomotive banker's clerk, who carries a black portfolio chained to him by a chain of steel, where is he Does he go to bed with his chain on—to church with his chain on—or does he lay it by ? And if he lays it º what becomes of his portfolio when he is unchained for a holiday? The waste-paper 220 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. baskets of these closed counting-houses would let me . into many hints of business matters if I had the explo- ration of them ; and what secrets of the heart should I discover on the ‘‘pads” of the young clerks—the sheets of cartridge-paper and blotting-paper interposed be- tween their writing and their desks! Pads are taken into confidence on the tenderest occasions, and often- times when I have made a business visit, and have sent in my name from the outer office, have I had it forced On my discursive notice, that the officiating young gen- tleman has over and over again inscribed AMELIA, in ink of various dates, on corners of his pad. Indeed, the pad may be regarded as the legitimate modern suc- cessor of the old forest-tree: whereon these young knights (having no attainable forest nearer than Epping) engrave the names of their mistresses. After all, it is a more satisfactory process than carving, and can be oftener repeated. So these Courts in their Sun- day rest are courts of Love Omnipotent (I rejoice to be- think myself), dry as they look. And here is Garra- way’s, bolted and shuttered hard and fast ! It is possible to imagine the man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back in a hayfield; it is possible to imagine his desk, like the desk of a clerk at church, without him; but imagination is unable to pursue the men who wait at Garraway’s all the week for the men who never come. When they are forcibly put out of Garraway’s on Saturday night—which they must be, for they never would go out of their own accord—where do they vanish until Monday morning P On the first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I expected to find them hover- ing about these lanes, like restless ghosts, and trying to peep into Garraway’s through chinks in the shutters, if not endeavouring to turn the lock of the door with false keys, picks and screw-drivers. But the wonder is, that they go clean away ! And now I think of it, the wonder is, that every working-day pervader of these scenes goes clean away. The man who sells the dogs’ collars and the little toy coal-scuttles, feels under as great an obligation to go afar off, as Glyn and Co., or Smith, Payne, and Smith. There is an old monastery crypt under Garraway’s (I have been in it among the port wine), and perhaps Garraway’s, taking pity on the mouldy men who wait in its public-room all their AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE. 221 lives, gives them cool house-room down there over Sun- days; but the catacombs of Paris would not be large enough to hold the rest of the missing. This character- istic of London City greatly helps its being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of business, and greatly helps my Sunday sensation in it of being the Last Man. In my solitude, the ticket-porters being all gone with the rest, I venture to breathe to the quiet bricks and stones my confidential wonderment why a ticket-porter who never does any work with his hands, is bound to wear a white apron, and why a great Ecclesiastical Dignitary, who never does any work with his hands either, is equally bound to wear a black One. CHAPTER XXII. AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE. EFORE the waitress had shut the door, I had for- gotten how many stage coaches she said used to change horses in the town every day. But it was of little moment; any high number would do as well as another. It had been a great Stage-coaching town in the great stage-coaching times, and the ruthless rail- ways had killed and buried it. The sign of the house was the Dolphin's Head. Why only head, I don’t know; for the Dolphin’s effigy at full length, and upside down—as a Dolphin is always bound to be when artistically treated, though I suppose he is sometimes right side upward in his natural gondi- tion—graced the sign-board. The sign-board chafed its rusty hooks outside the bow-window of my room, and was a shabby work. No visitor could have denied that the Dolphin was dying by inches, but he showed no bright colours. He had once served another master; there was a newer streak of paint below him, display- ing with inconsistent freshness the legend, By J. MELLOWS. My door opened again, and J. Mellows’s representa- tive came back. I had asked her what I could have for dinner, and she now returned with the counter question, 222 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. what would I like P As the Dolphin stood possessed of nothing that I do like, I was fain to yield to the sug- gestion of a duck, which I don’t like. J. Mellows’s re- presentative was a mournful young woman, with one eye susceptible of guidance, and one uncontrollable eye; which latter, seeming to wander in quest of stage- coaches, deepened the melancholy in which the Dolphin was steeped. This young woman had but shut the door on retiring again when I bethought me of adding to my order, the words, “with nice vegetables.” Looking out at the door to give them emphatic utterance, I found her al- ready in a state of pensive catalepsy in the deserted gallery, picking her teeth with a pin. t At the Railway Station seven miles off, I had been the subject of wonder when I ordered a fly in which to come here. And when I gave the direction “To the Dolphin’s Head,” I had observed an ominous stare on the countenance of the strong young man in velveteen, who was the platform servant of the Company. He had also called to my driver at parting, “ All-ri-ight ! Don’t hang yourself when you get there, Geo-o-rge l’ in a sarcastic tone, for which I had entertained some transitory thoughts of reporting him to the General Manager. I had no business in the town—I never have any business in any town—but I had been caught by the fancy that I would come and look at it in its degen- eracy. My purpose was fitly inaugurated by the Dol- phin's Head, which everywhere expressed past coach- fulness and present coachlessness. Coloured prints of coaches, starting, arriving, changing horses, coaches in the sunshine, coaches in the snow, coaches in the wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches on the King's birthday, coaches in all circumstances com- patible with their triumph and victory, but never in the act of breaking down or overturning, pervaded the house. Of these works of art, some, framed and not glazed, had holes in them; the varnish of others had become so brown and cracked, that they looked like overdone pie-crust; the designs of others were almost obliterated by the flies of many summers. Broken glasses, damaged frames, lop-sided hanging, and con- signment of incurable cripples to places of refuge in | * AN OLD STAGE-COACHING. HOUSE. 223 dark corners, attested the desolation of the rest. The old room on the ground floor where the passengers of the Highflyer used to dine, had nothing in it but a wretched show of twigs and flower-pots in the broad window to hide the nakedness of the land, and in a cor- ner little Mellows’s perambulator, with even its parasol- head turned despondently to the wall. The other room, where post-horse company used to wait while relays were getting ready down the yard, still held its ground but was as airless as I conceive a hearse to be; inso- much that Mr. Pitt, hanging high against the partition (with spots on him like portwine, though it is mysteri- ous how port wine ever got Squirted up there), had good reason for perking his nose and Sniffing. The stopper- less cruets on the spindle-shanked sideboard were in a miserably dejected state: the anchovy sauce having turned blue Some years ago, and the cayenne pepper (with a scoop in it like a small model of a wooden leg) having turned solid. The old fraudulent candles which were always being paid for and never used, were burnt out at last; but their tall stilts of candlesticks still lin- gered, and still outraged the human intellect by pre- tending to be silver. The mouldy old unreformed Borough Member, with his right hand buttoned up in the breast of his coat, and his back characteristically turned on bales of petitions from his constituents, was there too; and the poker which never had been among the fire-irons, lest post-horse company should overstir the fire, was not there, as of old. Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin's Head, I found it sorely shrunken. When J. Mellows came into possession, he had walled off half the bar, which was now a tobacco-shop with its own entrance in the yard —the once glorious yard where the post-boys, whip in hand and always buttoning their waistcoats at the last moment, used to come running forth to mount and away. A “Scientific Shoeing-Smith and Veterinary Surgeon,” had further encroached upon the yard; and a grimly satirical Jobber, who announced himself as having to Let “A neat one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart,” had established his business, himself, and his family, in a part of the extensive stables. Another part was lopped clean off from the Dolphin's Head, and now comprised a chapel, a wheelwright's, and a Young 224 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Men's Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a loft): the whole forming a back lane. No audacious hand had plucked down, the vane from the central cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty and stuck at N–Nil: while the score or two of pigeons that re- mained true to their ancestral traditions and the place, had collected in a row on the roof-ridge of the only out- house retained by the Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons tried to push the outside pigeon off. This I accepted as emblematical of the struggle for post and place in railway times. Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the covered and pillared entrance to the Dolphin's Yard, once redolent of soup and stable-litter, now redolent of musty disuse, I paced the street. It was a hot day, and the little sun-blinds of the shops were all drawn down, and the more enterprising tradesmen had caused their *Prentices to trickle water on the pavement appertain- ing to their frontage. It looked as if they had been shedding tears for the stage-coaches, and drying their ineffectual pocket-handkerchiefs. Such weakness would have been excusable; for business was—as one dejected porkman who kept a shop which refused to reciprocate the compliment by keeping him, informed me—“bitter bad.” Most of the harness-makers and corn-dealers were gone the way of the coaches, but it was a pleasant recognition of the eternal procession of Children down that old original steep Incline, the Valley of the Shadow, that those tradesmen were mostly succeeded by vendors of Sweetmeats and cheap toys. The opposition house to the Dolphin, once famous as the New White Hart, had long collapsed. In a fit of abject depression, it had cast whitewash on its windows, and boarded up its front door, and reduced itself to a side entrance; but even that had proved a world too wide for the Literary Institution which had been its last phase; for the institution had collapsed too, and of the ambitious letters of its inscription on the White Hart's front, all had fallen off but these: T. Y INS T —suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent. As to the neighbouring market-place, it seemed to have wholly AN OLD STAGE-COACHING. HOUSE. 225 relinquished marketing, to the dealerin crockery whose pots and pans straggled half across it, and to the Cheap Jack who sat with folded arms on the shafts of his cart superciliously gazing around; his velveteen waist- coat evidently harbouring grave doubts whether it was worth his while to stay a night in Such a lace. $ p The church bells began to ring as I left this spot, but they by no means improved the case, for they said, in a petulant way, and speaking with Some difficulty in their irritation, “WHAT’s-be-come-of-THE-coach-Es!” Nor would they (I found on listening) ever vary their emphasis, save in respect of growing more sharp and vexed, but invariably went on, “WHAT’s-be-come-of- THE-coach-ES l’—always beginning the inquiry with an unpolite abruptness. Perhaps from their elevation they saw the railway, and it aggravated them. Coming upon a coachmaker’s workshop, I began to look about me with a revived spirit, thinking that per- chance I might behold there some remains of the old times of the town’s greatness. There was only one man at work—a dry man, grizzled, and far advanced in years, but tall and ić. who, becoming aware of me looking on, straightened his back, pushed up his spectacles against his brown paper cap, and ºpeared inclined to defy me. To whom Ipacifically said: “Good day, sir!” - - “What ?” said he. “Good day, sir.” He seemed to consider about that, and not to agree with me.—“Was you a looking for anything?” he then asked, in a pointed manner. “I was wondering whether there happened to be any fragment of an old stage-coach here.” ‘‘IS that all?” ** That’s all.” - “No, there ain’t.” - t It was now my turn to say “Oh!” and I said it. Not another word did the dry and grizzled man say, but bent to his work again. In the coachmaking days, the coach-painters had tried their brushes on a post beside him; and quite a Calendar of departed glories was to be read upon it, in blue and yellow and red and green, some inches thick. Presently he looked up again. VOI, I. 15 226 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. “You seem to have a deal of time on your hands,” was his querulous remark. & - I admitted the fact. * “I think it’s a pity you was not brought up to some- thing,” said he. I said I thought so too. º Appearing to be informed with an idea, he laid down his plane (for it was a plane he was at work with), pushed up his spectacles again, and came to the door. “Would a po-shay do for you?” he asked. - “I am not sure that I understand what you mean.” “Would a po-shay,” said the coachmaker, standing close before me, and folding his arms in the manner of a cross-examining counsel—“would a po-shay meet the view: you have expressed? Yes, or no?” . & 6 es.” - “Then you keep straight along down there till you see one. You’ll see one if you go fur enough.” With that he turned me by the shoulder in the direc- tion I was to take, and went in and resumed his work against a background of leaves and grapes. For, al- though he was a soured man .and a discontented, his workshop was that agreeable mixture of town and country, street and garden, which is often to be seen in a small English town. I went the way he had turned me, and I came to the Beer-shop with the sign of The First and Last, and was out of the town on the old London road. I came to the turnpike, and I found it, in its silent way, eloquent respecting the change that had fallen on the road. The Turnpike-house was all overgrown with ivy; and the Turnpike-keeper, unable to get a living out of the tolls, plied the trade of a cobbler. Not only that, but his wife sold ginger-beer, and, in the very window of espial through which the Toll-takers of old times used with awe to behold the grand London coaches coming on at a gallop, exhibited for sale little barbers’-poles of sweetstuff in a sticky lantern. The political economy of the master of the turnpike thus expressed itself. “How goes turnpike business, master?” said I to him, as he sat in his little porch, repairing a shoe. “It don’t go at all, master,” said he to me. “It’s stopped.” i AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE. 227 “That’s bad,” said I. . “Bad?” he repeated. And he pointed to one of his sunburnt dusty children who was climbing the turn- pike-gate, and said, extending his open right hand in remonstrange with Universal Nature. “Five on 'em!” “But how to improve Turnpike business?” said I. “There's a way, master,” said he, with the air of one who had thought deeply on the subject. “I should like to know it.” * “Lay a toll on everything as comes through; lay a toll on walkers. Lay .#: toll on everything as don’t come through; lay a toll on them as stops at home.” “Would the last remedy be fair?” “Fair? Them as stops at home, could come through if they liked; couldn’t they?” “Say they could.” “Toll 'em. If they don’t come through, it's their look oup. Anyways, Toll 'em!” - Finding it was as impossible to argue with this financial genius as if he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and consequently the right man in the right place, I passed on meekly. My mind now began to misgive me that the disap- pointed coachmaker had sent me on a wild-goose errand, and that there was no post-chaise in those parts. But coming within view of certain allotment-gardens by the roadside, I retracted the suspicion, and confessed that I had done him an injustice. For, there I saw, surely, the poorest superannuated post-chaise left on earth. It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and wheels, and plumped down on the clayey soil among a ragged growth of vegetables. It was a post-chaise not even set straight upon the ground, but tilted over, as if it had fallen out of a balloon. It was a post-chaise that had been a long time in those decayed circumstances, and against which scarlet beans were trained. It was a post-chaise patched and mended with old teatrays, or with scraps of iron that looked like them, and boarded up as to the windows, but having A KNOCKER on the off- side door. Whether it was a post-chaise used as tool- house, summer-house, or dwelling-house, I could not discover, for there was nobody at home at the post- chaise when I knocked; but it was certainly used for something, and locked up. In the wonder of this dis- 228 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. covery, I walked round and round the post-chaise many times, and sat down by the post-chaise, waiting for fur- ther elucidation. None came. At last, I made my way back to the old London road by the further end of the allotment-gardens, and consequently at a point beyond that from which I had diverged. I had to scramble through a hedge and down a steep bank, and I nearly came down a-top of a little spare man who sat breaking stones by the roadside. He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me mys- teriously through his dark goggles of wire: “Are you aware, sir, that you’ve been trespassing?” “I turned out of the way,” said I, in explanation, “to look at that odd post-chaise. Do you happen to know anything about it?” - “I know it was many a year upon the road,” said he. “So I supposed. Do you know to whom it belongs?” The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his heap of stones, as if he were considering whether he should answer the question or not. Then, raising his barred eyes to my features as before, he said: ‘‘TO me.” Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with a sufficiently awkward “Indeed! Dear me!” Presently I added, “Do you—” I was going to say “live there,” but it seemed so absurd a question, that I substituted “live near here?” - The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since we began to converse, then did as follows. He raised himself by poising his figure on his hammer, and took his coat, on which he had been seated, over his arm. He then backed to an easier part of the bank than that by which I had come down, keeping his dark goggles silently upon me all the time, and then shoul- dered his hammer, suddenly turned, ascended, and was gone. His face was so small, and his goggles were so large, that he left me wholly uninformed as to his Countenance; but he left me a profound impression that the curved legs I had seen from behind as he vanished, were the legs of an old post-boy. It was not until then that I noticed he had been working by a grass-grown milestone, which looked like a tombstone erected over the grave of the London road. My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE. 229 to pursue the goggles or the subject then, but made my way back to the Dolphin’s Head. In the gateway I found J. Mellows, looking at nothing, and apparently experiencing that it failed to raise his spirits. “I don’t care for the town,” said J. Mellows, when I complimented him on the sanitary advantages it may or may not possess; “I wish I had never seen the town!” “You don’t belong to it, Mr. Mellows?” “Belong to it!” repeated Mellows. “If I didn’t be- long to a better style of town than this, I’d take and drown myself in a pail.” It then occurred to me that Mellows, having so little to do, was habitually thrown back on his internal resources—by which I mean the Dolphin’s cellar. º “What we want,” said Mellows, pulling off his hat, and making as if he emptied it of the last load of Dis- gust that had exuded from his brain, before he put it on again for another load; “what we want, is a Branch. The Petition for the Branch Bill is in the coffee-room. Would you put your name to it? Every little helps.” I found the document in question stretched out flat on the coffee-room table by the aid of certain weights from the kitchen, and I gave it the additional weight of my uncommercial signature. To the best of my belief, I bound myself to the modest statement that universal traffic, happiness, prosperity, and civilization, together with unbounded national triumph in compe- tition with the foreigner, would infallibly flow from the Branch. Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. Mellows if he could grace my dinner with a pint of good wine? Mr. Mellows thus replied: “If I couldn’t give you a pint of good wine, I’d— there!—I’d take and drown myself in a pail. But I was deceived when I bought this business, and the stock was higgledy-piggledy, and I haven’t yet tasted my way quite through it with a view to sorting it. There- fore, if you order one kind and get another, change till it comes right. For what,” said Mellows, unloading his hat as before, “what would you or any gentleman do, if you ordered one kind of wine and was required to drink another? Why, you’d (and naturally and properly, having the feelings of a gentleman), you’d take and drown yourself in a pail!” 230 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. (T. CHAPTER XXIII. THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND. HE shabbiness of Our English capital, as compared with Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfort, Milan, Geneva- almost any important town on the continent of Europe —I find very striking after an absence of any duration in foreign parts. London is shabby in contrast with Edinburgh, with Aberdeen, with Exeter, with Liver- pool, with a bright little town like Bury St. Edmunds. London is shabby in contrast with New York, with Boston, with Philadelphia. In detail, one would say it can rarely fail to be a disappointing piece of shabbi- ness, to a stranger from any of those places. There is nothing shabbier than Drury-lane, in Rome itself. The meanness of Regent-street, set against the great line of Boulevards in Paris, is as striking as the abortive ugliness of Trafalgar-square, set against the gallant beauty of the Place de la Concorde. London is shabby by daylight, and shabbier by gaslight. No English- man knows what gaslight is, until he sees the Rue de Rivoli and the Palais Royal after dark. The mass of London people are shabby. The absence of distinctive dress has, no doubt, something to do with it. The porters of the Vintners’ Company, the dray- men, and the butchers, are about the only people who wear distinctive dresses; and even these do not wear them on holidays. We have nothing which for cheap- ness, cleanliness, convenience, or picturesqueness, can compare with the belted blouse. As to our women;– next Easter or Whitsuntide, look at the bonnets at the British Museum or the National Gallery, and think of the pretty white French cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the Genoese mezzero. Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in London than in Paris, and yet the mass of the Lon- don population have a second-hand look which is not to be detected on the mass of the Parisian population. I think this is mainly because a Parisian workman does not in the least trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian idler, but dresses in the way of his own | THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND. 231 class, and for his own comfort. In London, on the con- trary, the fashions descend; and you never fully know how inconvenient or ridiculous a fashion is, until you ‘see it in its last descent. It was but the other day, on a race-course, that I observed four people in a barouche deriving great entertainment from the contemplation of four people on foot. The four people on foot were two young men and two young women; the four people in the barouche were two young men and two young women. The four young women were dressed in ex- actly the same style; the four young men were dressed in exactly the same style. Yet the two couples on wheels were as much amused by the two couples on foot, as if they were quite unconscious of having them- selves set those fashions, or of being at that very moment engaged in the display of them. Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends here in London—and consequently in England—and thence shabbiness arises? Let us think a little, and be just. The “Black Country” round about Birmingham, is a very black country; but is it quite as black as it has been lately painted? An appalling accident hap- pened at the People's Park near Birmingham, this last July, when it was crowded with people from the Black Country—an appalling accident consequent on a shame- fully dangerous exhibition. Did the shamefully danger- ous exhibition originate in the moral blackness of the Black Country, and in the Black People’s peculiar love of the excitement attendant on great personal hazard, which they looked on at, but in which they did not participate? Light is much wanted in the Black Country. O we are all agreed on that. But, we must not quite forget the crowds of gentlefolks who set the shamefully dangerous fashion, either. We must not Quite forget the enterprising Directors of an Institution vaunting mighty educational pretences, who made the low sensation as strong as they possibly could makeit, by hanging the Blondin rope as high as they possibly could hang it. All this must not be eclipsed in the Blackness of the Black Country. The reserved seats high up by the rope, the cleared space below it, so that no one should be smashed but the performer, the pretence of slipping , and falling off, the baskets for the feet and the sack for the head, the photographs everywhere, and the virtuous 232 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. . c. indignation nowhere—all this must not be wholly swallowed up in the blackness of the jet-black country. Whatsoever fashion is set in England, is certain to descend. This is a text for a perpetual sermon on care in setting fashions. When you find a fashion low down, look back for the time (it will never be far off) when it was the fashion high up. This is a text for a perpetual sermon on social justice. From imitations of Ethiopian Serenaders, to imitations of Prince’s coats and waistcoats, you will find the original model in St. James's Parish. When the Serenaders become tiresome, trace them beyond the Black Country; when the coats and waistcoats become insupportable, refer them to their source in the Upper Toady Regions. Gentlemen’s clubs were once maintained for purposes of savage party warfare; working men’s clubs of the same day assumed the same character. Gentlemen’s clubs became places of quiet inoffensive recreation; working men's clubs began to follow suit. If working men have seemed rather slow to appreciate advantages of combination which have saved the pockets of gentle- men, and enhanced their comforts, it is because working men could scarcely, for want of capital, Originate such combinations without help; and because help has not been separable from that great impertinence, Patronage. The instinctive revolt of his spirit against patronage, is a quality much to be respected in the English working man. It is the base of the base of his best qualities. Nor is it surprising that he should be unduly suspicious of patronage, and sometimes resentful of it even where it is not, seeing what a flood of washy talk has been let loose on his devoted head, or with what complacent condescension the same devoted head has been Smoothed and patted. It is a proof to me of his self-control that he never strikes out pugilistically, right and left, when addressed as one of “My friends,” or “My assembled friends; ” that he does not become inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever he sees a biped in broad- cloth getting on a platform to talk to him; that any retence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive im out of his mind, and cause him to toss his obliging patron like a mad bull. Tor, how often have I heard the unfortunate work- ing man lectured, as if he were a little charity-child, THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND 233 humid as to his nasal development, strictly literal as to his Catechism, and called by Providence to walk all his days in a station in life represented on festive occasions by a mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun! What popguns of jokes have these ears tingled to hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments, what impotent con- clusions, what spelling-book moralities, what adapta- tions of the orator’s insufferable tediousness to the assumed level of his understanding. If his sledge- hammers, his spades and pick-axes, his saws and chisels, his paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and engines, the horses that he drove at his work, and the machines that drove him at his work; were all toys in one little paper box, and he the baby who played with them, he could not have been , discoursed to, more im- pertinently and absurdly than I have heard him dis- Coursed to times innumerable. Consequently, not being a fool or a fawner, he has come to acknowledge his patronage by virtually saying: ‘‘Let me alone. If you understand me no better than that, sir and madam, let me alone. You mean very well, I dare say, but I don’t like it, and I won’t-come here again to have any more of it.” . . - Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement of the working man must be so far done by himself as that it is maintained by himself. And there must be in it no touch of condescension, no shadow of patronage. In the great working districts, this truth is studied and understood. When the American civil war rendered it necessary, first in Glasgow, and afterwards in Man- chester, that the working people should be shown how to avail themselves of the advantages derivable from System, and from the combination of numbers, in the purchase and the cooking of their food, this truth was above all things borne in mind. The quick consequence was, that suspicion and reluctance were vanquished, and that the effort resulted in an astonishing and a Complete success. - Such thoughts passed through my mind on a July morning of this summer, as I walked towards Com- mercial Street (not Uncommercial Street), Whitechapel. The Glasgow and Manchester system had been lately set a-going there, by certain gentlemen who felt an interest in its diffusion, and I had been attracted by the following hand-bill printed on rose-coloured paper: 234 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. - SELF-SUPPORTING C O O K I N G D E P O T FOR THE WORKING CLASSES, Commercial-street, Whitechapel, Where Accommodation is provided for Dining comfort- ably 300 persons at a time. Open from 7 A. M. till 7 P. M. PRICES. All Articles of the BEST QUALITY. Cup of Tea or Coffee . . . . . One Penny Bread and Butter . . . . . . . One Penny Bread and Cheese . . . One Penny Slice of Bread . One half-penny or One Penny Boiled Egg . . . . . . . One Penny Ginger Beer . . . . . . . . One Penny The above Articles always ready. Besides the above may be had, from 12 to 3 o'clock, Bowl of Scotch Broth. . . . . . One Penny Bowl of Soup . . . . . . . . One Penny Plate of Potatoes . . . . . . . One Penny Plate of Minced Beef . . . . . Twopence Plate of Cold Beef . . . . . . Twopence Plate of Cold Ham . . . . . . . Twopence Plate of Plum Pudding or Rice . . One Penny As the Economy of Cooking depends greatly upon the simplicity of the arrangements with which a great number of persons can be served at one time, the Upper Room of this Establishment will be especially set apart for a PUBLIC DINNER, EVERY DAY From 12 till 3 o'clock, Consisting of the following Dishes: Bowl of Broth, or Soup, Plate of Cold Beef or Ham, Plate of Potatoes, Plum Pudding, or Rice. FIXED CHARGE 4%d. THE DAILY PAPERS PROVIDED. THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND. 235 N. B.—This Establishment is conducted on the strict- est business principles, with the full intention of mak- ing it self-supporting, so that, every one may frequent it with a feeling of perfect independence. The assistance of all frequenting the Depôt is confi- dently expected in checking anything interfering with the comfort, quiet, and regularity of the establishment. Please do not destroy this Hand Bill, but hand it to some other person whom it may interest. This Self-Supporting Cooking Depôt (not a very good name, and one would rather give it an English One) had hired a newly-built warehouse that it found to let; there- fore it was not established in premises especially de- signed for the purpose. But, at a small cost they were exceedingly well adapted to the purpose: being light, well ventilated, clean, and cheerful. They consisted of . . three large rooms. That on the basement story was the kitchen; that on the ground floor was the general dining- room; that on the floor above was the Upper Room re- ferred to in the hand-bill, where the Fº Dinner at fourpence-halfpenny a head was provided every day. The cooking was done, with much economy of space and fuel, by American cooking-stoves, and by young women not previously brought up as cooks; the walls and pil- lars of the two dining-rooms were agreeably brightened with ornamental colours; the tables were capable of ac- commodating six or eight persons each; the attendants were all young women, becomingly and neatly dressed, and dressed alike. I think the whole staff was female, with the exception of the steward or manager. My first inquiries were directed to the wages of this staff; because, if any establishment claiming to be self- supporting, live upon the spoliation of anybody or any- thing, or eke out a feeble existence by poor mouths and beggarly resources (as too many so-called Mechanics’ Institutions do), I make bold to express my Uncommer- cial opinion that it has no business to live, and had bet- ter die. It was made clear to me by the account books, that every person employed was properly paid. My next inquiries were directed to the quality of the provi- sions purchased, and to the terms on which they were bought. It was made equally clear to me that the quality was the very best, and that all bills were paid weekly. 236 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. My next inquiries were directed to the balance-sheet' for the last two weeks—only the third and fourth of the establishment’s career. It was made equally clear to me, that after everything bought was paid for, and after each week was charged with its full share of wages, rent and taxes, depreciation of plant in use, and interest on capital at the rate of four per cent. per annum, the last week had yielded a profit of (in round numbers) one pound ten; and the previous week a profit of six pound ten. By this time I felt that I had a healthy appetite for the dinners. It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession of . faces had already begun to appear at a little window in the wall of the partitioned space where I sat looking over the books. Within this little window, like a pay- box at a theatre, a neat and brisk young woman pre- sided to take money and issue tickets. Every one com- ing in must take a ticket. Either the fourpence-half-, . penny ticket for the upper room (the most popular ticket, I think), or a penny ticket for a bowl of soup, or as many penny tickets as he or she chose to buy. For three penny tickets one had quite a wide range of choice. A plate of cold boiled beef and potatoes; or a Fº of cold ham and potatoes; or a plate of hot minced eef and potatoes; or a bowl of Soup, bread and cheese, and a plate of plum pudding. Touching what they should have, some customers on taking their seats fell into a reverie—became mildly distracted—postponed de- cision, and said in bewilderment, they would think of it. One old man I noticed when I sat among the tables in the lower room, who was startled by the bill of fare, and sat contemplating it as if it were something of a ghostly nature. The decision of the boys was as rapid as their execution, and always included pudding. There were several women among the diners, and several clerks and shopmen. There were carpenters and painters from the neighbouring buildings under re- pair, and there were nautical men, and there were, as one diner observed to me, ‘‘some of most sorts.” Some were Solitary, some came two together, some dined in parties of three or four, or six. The latter talked together, but assuredly no one was louder than at my club in Pall- Mall. One young fellow whistled in rather a shrill manner while he waited for his dinner, but I was grati- THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND. 237 fied to observe that he did so in evident defiance of my Uncommercial individuality, Quite agreeing with him, on consideration, that I had no business to be there, unless I dined like the rest, I “went in,” as the phrase is, for fourpence-halfpenny. The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet had, like the lower room, a counter in it, on which were ranged a great number of cold portions ready for dis- tribution. Behind this counter, the fragrant soup was steaming in deep cans, and the best-cooked of potatoes were fished out of similar receptacles. Nothing to eat was touched with the hand. Every waitress had her own tables to attend to. As soon as she saw a new customer seat himself at one of her tables, she took from the counter all his dinner—his soup, potatoes, meat, and pudding—piled it up dexterously in her two hands, set it before him, and took his ticket. This serv- ing of the whole dinner at once, had been found greatly to simplify the business of attendance, and was also popular with the customers: who were thus enabled to vary the meal by varying the routine of dishes: begin- ning with soup to-day, putting soup in the middle to- morrow, putting Soup at the end the day after to-mor- row, and ringing similar changes on meat and pudding. The rapidity with which every new comer got served, was remarkable; and the dexterity with which the waitresses (quite new to the art a month before) dis- charged their duty, was as agreeable to see, as the meat smartness with which they wore their dress and had dressed their hair. If I seldom saw better waiting, so I certainly never ate better meat, potatoes, or pudding. And the soup was an honest and stout soup, with rice and barley in it, and “little matters for the teeth to touch,” as had been observed to me by my friend below stairs already quoted. The dinner-service, too, was neither conspicu- ously hideous for High Art nor for Low Art, but was of a pleasant and pure appearance. Concerning the Viands and their cookery, one last remark. I dined at my club in Pall-Mall aforesaid, a few days afterwards, for ex- actly twelve times the money, and not half as well. The company thickened after one o'clock struck, and changed pretty quickly. Although experience of the place had been so recently attainable, and although 23S THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. there was still considerable curiosity out in the street and about the entrance, the general tone was as good as could be, and the customers fell easily into the ways of the place. It was clear to me, however, that they were there to have what they paid for, and to be on an independent footing. To the best of my judgment, they might be patronised out of the building in a month. With judicious visiting, and by dint of being ques- tioned, read to, and talked at, they might even be got rid of (for the next quarter of a century) in half the time. This disinterested and wise movement is fraught with so many wholesome changes in the lives of the working people, and with so much good in the way of overcom- ing that suspicion which Our Own unconscious imperti- nence has engendered, that it is scarcely gracious to criticise details as yet; the rather, because it is indis- utable that the managers of the Whitechapel estab- #. most thoroughly feel that they are upon their honour with the customers, as to the minutest points of administration. But, although the American stoves cannot roast, they can Surely boil one kind of meat as well as another, and need not always circumscribe their boiling talents within the limits of ham and beef. The most enthusiastic admirer of those substantials, would probably not object to occasional inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton: or, especially in cold weather, to a little innocent trifling with Irish stews, meat pies, and toads in holes. Another drawback on the Whitechapel establishment, is the absence of beer. Regarded merely as a question of policy, it is very impolitic, as having a tendency to send the working men to the public-house, where gin is reported to be sold. But, there is a much higher ground on which this absence of beer is objec- tionable. It expresses distrust of the working man. It is a fragment of that old mantle of patronage in which so many estimable Thugs, so darkly wandering up and down the moral world, are sworn to muffle him. Good beer is a good thing for him, he says, and he likes it; the Depôt could give it him good, and he now gets it bad. Why does the Depôt not give it him good? Because he would get drunk. Why does the Depôt not let him have a pint with his dinner, which would not make him drunk? Because he might have had another pint, or another two pints, before he came. Now, this THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND. 239 distrust is an affront, is exceedingly inconsistent with the confidence the managers express in their hand-bills, and is a timid stopping-short upon the straight high- way. It is unjust and unreasonable, also. It is unjust, because it punishes the sober man for the vice of the drunken man. It is unreasonable, because any one at all experienced in such things knows that the drunken workman does not get drunk where he goes to eat and drink, but where he goes to drink—expressly to drink. To suppose that the working man cannot state this question to himself quite as plainly as I state it here, is to suppose that he is a baby, and is again to tell him in the old wearisome condescending patronising way that he must be goody-poody, and do as he is toldy-poldy, and not be a manny-panny or a voter-poter, but fold his handy-pandys, and be a childy-pildy. I found from the accounts of the Whitechapel Self- Supporting Cooking Depôt, that every article sold in it, even at the prices I have quoted, yields a certain small profit! Individual jº. are of course already in the field, and are of course already appropriating the name. The classes for whose benefit the real depôts are designed, will distinguish between the two kinds of enterprise. - CHAPTER XXIV. C. H. A. T H A M D O C K Y A. R D . Tº are some small out-of-the-way landing-places on the Thames and the Medway, where I do much of my summer idling, Running water is favourable to day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best of run- ning water for mine. I like to watch the great ships standing out to sea or coming home richly laden, the active little steam-tugs confidently puffing with them to and from the sea-horizon, the fleet of barges that seem to have plucked their brown and russet sails from the ripe trees in the landscape, the heavy old colliers, light in ballast, floundering down before the tide, the light screw barks and schooners imperiously holding a straight course while the others patiently tack and go 240 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. about, the yachts with their tiny hulls and great white sheets of canvas, the little sailing-boats bobbing to and fro on their errands of pleasure or business, and—as it is the nature of little people to do—making, a pro- digious fuss about their small affairs. Watching these objects, I still am under no obligation to think about them, or even so much as to see them, unless it per- fectly suits my humour. As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming steam- ship paddles further away yet. These, with the creak- ing little jetty on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and low-water marks in the mud and the broken causeway, and the broken bank, and the broken stakes and piles leaning forward as if they were vain of their personal appearance and looking for their reflection in the water, will melt into any train of fancy. Equally adaptable to any purpose or to none, are the pasturing sheep and kine upon the marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip around me, the crows (well out of gunshot) going home from the rich harvest-fields, the heron that has been out a-fishing and looks as melancholy, up there in the sky, as if it hadn’t agreed with him. Every- thing within the range of the senses will, by the aid of the running water lend itself to everything beyond that range, and work into a drowsy whole, not unlike a kind of tune, but for which there is no exact definition. One of these landing-places is near an old fort (I can see the Nore Light from it with my pocket-glass), from which fort mysteriously emerges a º to whom I am much indebted for additions to my scanty stock of knowledge. He is a young boy, with an intelligent face burnt to a dust colour, by the Summer sun, and with crisp hair of the same hue. He is a boy in whom I have perceived nothing incompatible with habits of studious inquiry and meditation, unless an evanescent black eye (I was delicate of inquiring how occasioned) should be so considered. To him. I am indebted for ability to identify a Custom-house boat at any distance, and for acquaintance with all the forms and cer. emonies observed by a homeward-bound Indiaman coming up the river, when the Custom-house officers go aboard her. But for him, I might never have heard CHATHAM DOCKYARD. . 241 of the “dumb-ague,” respecting which malady I am now learned. Had I never sat at his feet, I might have finished my mortal career and never known that when I See a white horse on a barge's sail, that barge is a lime barge. For precious secrets in reference to beer, am I likewise beholden to him, involving warning against the beer of a certain establishment, by reason of its having turned sour through failure in point of demand: though my young sage is not of opinion that similar deterioration has befallen the ale. He has also enlightened me touching the mushrooms of the marshes, and has gently reproved my ignorance in having sup- posed them to be impregnated with salt. His manner of imparting information, is thoughtful, and appropriate to the scene. As he reclines beside me, he pitches into the river a little stone or piece of grit, and then delivers himself oracularly, as though he spoke out of the centre of the spreading circle that it makes in the water. He never improves my mind without observing this formula. With the wise boy—whom I know by no other name than the Spirit of the Fort—I recently consorted on a breezy day when the river leaped about us and was full of life. I had seen the sheaved corn carrying in the golden fields as I came down the river; and the rosy farmer, watching his labouring-men in the saddle on his cob, had told me how he had reaped his two hundred and sixty acres of long-strawed corn last week, and how a better week’s work he had never done in all his days. Peace and abundance were on the country- side in beautiful forms and beautiful colours, and the harvest seemed even to be sailing out to grace the never-reaped sea in the yellow laden barges that mel- lowed the distance. It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the Fort, directing his remarks to a certain floating iron battery lately lying in that reach of the river, enriched my mind with his opinions on naval architecture, and in- formed me that he would like to be an engineer. I found him up to everything that is done in the con- tracting line by Messrs. Peto and Brassey—cunning in the article of concrete—mellow in the matter of iron— great on the subject of gunnery. When he spoke of pile-driving and sluice-making, he left me not a leg to stand on, and I can never sufficiently acknowledge his WOL. I. 16 - 22 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. forbearance with me in my disabled state. While he thus discoursed, he several times directed his eyes to one distant quarter of the landscape, and spoke with vague mysterious awe of “the Yard.” Pondering his lessons after we had parted, I bethought me that the Yard was one of our large public Dockyards, and that it lay hidden among the crops down in the dip behind the wind-mills, as if it modestly kept itself out of view in peaceful times, and sought to trouble no man. Taken with this modesty on the part of the Yard, I resolved to improve the Yard's acquaintance. My good opinion of the Yard’s retiring character was not dashed by nearer approach. It resounded with the noise of hammers beating upon iron; and the great sheds or slips under which the mighty men-of-war are built, loomed business-like when contemplated from the opposite side of the river. For all that, however, the Yard made no display, but kept itself snug under hill-sides of corn-fields, hop-gardens, and orchards; its great chimneys Smoking with a quiet—almost a lazy— air, like giants smoking tobacco; and the great Shears moored off it, looking meekly and inoffensively out of proportion, like the Giraffe of the machinery creation. The store of cannon on the neighbouring gun-wharf, had an innocent toy-like appearance, and the one red- coated sentry on duty over them was a mere toy figure, with a clock-work movement. As the hot sunlight sparkled on him he might have passed for the identical little man who had the little gun, and whose bullets they were made of lead, lead, lead. - Crossing the river and landing at the Stairs, where a drift of chips and weed had been trying to land before me and had not succeeded, but had got into a corner instead, I found the very street posts to be cannon, and the architectural ornaments to be shells. And so I came to the Yard, which was shut up tight and strong with great folded gates, like an enormous patent safe. These gates devouring me, I became digested into the Yard; and it had, at first, a clean-swept holiday air, as if it had given over work until next war-time. Though indeed a quantity of hemp for rope was tumbling out of store-houses, even there, which would hardly be lying like so much hay on the white stones if the Yard were as placid as it pretended. CHATHAM DOCKYARD. 243 Ding, Clash, Dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash, BANG, Clink, BANG, Dong, BANG, Clatter, BANG BANG BANG! What on earth is this! This is, or soon will be, the Achilles, iron armour-plated ship. Twelve hundred men are working at her now; twelve hundred men working on stages over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, under her keel, between her decks, down in her hold, within her and without, crawling and creep- ing into the finest curves of her lines wherever it is possible for men to twist. Twelve hundred hammerers, measurers, calkers, armourers, forgers, Smiths, ship- wrights; twelve hundred dingers, clashers, dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers bangers bangers! Yet all this stupendous uproar around the rising Achilles is as nothing to the reverberations with which the perfected Achilles shall resound upon the dreadful day when the full work is in hand for which this is but note of prep- aration—the day when the scuppers that are now fitting like great dry thirsty conduit-pipes, shall run red. All these busy figures between decks, dimly seen bending at their work in Smoke and fire, are as nothing to the figures that shall do work here of another kind in smoke and fire, that day. These steam-worked engines along- side, helping the ship by travelling to and fro, and wafting tons of iron plates about, as though they were so many leaves of trees, would be rent limb from limb if they stood by here for a minute then. To think that this Achilles, monstrous compound of iron tank and Oaken chest, can ever swim or roll! To think that any force of wind and wave could ever break her! To think that wherever I see a glowing red-hot iron point thrust out of her side from within-as I do now, there, and there, and there!—and two watching men on a stage with- out, with bared arms and sledge-hammers, strike at it fiercely, and repeat their blows until it is black and flat, I see a rivet being driven home, of which there are many in every iron plate, and thousands upon thousands in the ship! To think that the difficulty I experience in appreciating the ship's size when I am on board, arises from her being a series of iron tanks and Oaken chests, so that internally she is ever finishing and ever begin- ning, and half of her might be smashed, and yet the remaining half suffice and be sound. Then, to go over the side again and down among the Ooze and wet to the 244 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. bottom of the dock, in the depths of the subterranean forest of dog-shores and stays that hold her up, and to see the immense mass bulging out against the upper light, and tapering down towards me, is, with great §: and much clambering, to arrive at an impossi- ility of realising that this is a ship at all, and to be- come possessed iy the fancy that it is an enormous immovable edifice set up in an ancient amphitheatre (say, that at Verona), and almost filling it! Yet what would even these things be, without the tributary work- shops and the mechanical powers for piercing the iron plates—four inches and a half thick—for rivets, shap- ing them under hydraulic pressure to the finest tapering turns of the ship's lines, and paring them away, with knives shaped like the beaks of strong and cruel birds, to the nicest requirements of the design! These ma- chines of tremendous force, so easily directed by One attentive face and presiding hand, seem to me to have in them something of the retiring character of the Yard. “Obedient monster, please to bite this mass of iron through and through, at equal distances, where these regular chalk-marks are, all round.” Monster looks at its work, and lifting its ponderous head, replies, “I don’t particularly want to do it; but if it must be done —!” The solid metal wriggles out, hot from the monster's crunching tooth, and it is done. “Dutiful monster, observe this other mass of iron. It is required to be pared away, according to this deligately lessening and arbitrary line, which please to look at.” Monster (who has been in a reverie) brings down its blunt head, and, much in the manner of Doctor Johnson, closely looks along the line—very closely, being somewhat near-sighted. “I don’t particularly want to do it; but if it must be done—!” Monster takes another near- sighted look, takes aim, and the tortured piece writhes off, and falls, a hot tight-twisted Snake, among the ashes. The making of the rivets is merely a pretty round game, played by a man and a boy, who put red- hot barley sugar in a Pope Joan board, and immediately rivets fall out of window; but the tone of the great machines is the tone of the great Yard and the great country: “We don’t particularly want to do it; but if it must be done How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles can ever CHATHAM DOCKYARD. 245 be held by such comparatively little anchors as those intended for her and lying near her here, is a mystery of seamanship which I will refer to the wise boy. For my own part, I should as soon have thought of tether- ing an elephant to a tent-peg, or the larger hippopotamus in the Zoological Gardens to my shirt-pin. Yonder in the river, alongside a hulk, lie two of this ship’s hollow iron masts. They are large enough for the eye, I find, and so are all her other appliances. I wonder why only her anchors look small. I have no present time to think about it, for I am going to see the workshops where they make all the oars used in the British Navy. A pretty large pile of build- ing, I opine, and a pretty long job!. As to the building, I am soon disappointed, because the work is all done in one loft. And as to a long job—what is this? Two rather large mangles with a swarm of butterflies hover- ing over them? What can there be in the mangles that attracts butterflies? Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not mangles, but intricate machines, set with knives and saws and planes, which cut Smooth and straight here, and slant- wise there, and now cut such a depth, and now miss cutting altogether, according to the predestined re- Quirements of the pieces of wood that are pushed on below them: each of which pieces is to be an oar, and is roughly adapted to that purpose before it takes its final leave of far-off forests, and sails for England. Tikewise I discern that the butterflies are not true butterflies, but wooden shavings, which, being spirted up from the wood by the violence of the machinery, and kept in rapid and not equal movement by the im- pulse of its rotation on the air, flutter and play, and rise and fall, and conduct themselves as like butterflies as heart could wish. Suddenly the noise and motion cease, and the butterflies drop dead. An oar has been made since I came in, wanting the shaped handle. As quickly as I can follow it with my eye and thought, the same oar is carried to a turning lathe. A whirl and a nick! Handle made. Oar finished. The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this machinery need no illustration, but happen to have a pointed illustration to-day. A pair of oars of unusual size chance to be wanted for a special purpose, and they 246 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. have to be made by hand. Side by side with the subtle and facile machine, and side by side with the fast- growing pile of Oars on the floor, a man shapes out these special oars with an axe. Attended by no but- terflies, and chipping and dinting, by comparison as leisurely as if he were a labouring Pagan getting them ready against his decease at threescore and ten, to take with him as a present to Charon for his boat, the man (aged about thirty) plies his task. The machine would make a regulation oar while the man wipes his forehead. The man might be buried in a mound made of the strips of thin broad wooden ribbon torn from the wood whirled into oars as the minutes fall from the clock, before he had done a forenoon’s work with his a,X62. Passing from this wonderful sight to the ships again —for my heart, as to the Yard, is where the ships are—I notice certain unfinished wooden walls left seasoning on the stocks, pending the solution of the merits of the wood and iron question, and having an air of biding their time with surly confidence. The names of these worthies are set up beside them, to- gether with their capacity in guns—a custom highly conducive to ease and satisfaction in social intercourse, if it could be adapted to mankind. By a plank more gracefully pendulous than substantial, I make bold to go aboard a transport ship (iron screw) just sent in from the contractor's yard to be inspected and passed. She is a very gratifying experience, in the simplicity and humanity of her arrangements for troops, in her provision for light and air and cleanliness, and in her care for women and children. It occurs to me, as I explore her, that I would require a handsome sum of money to go aboard her, at midnight by the Dockyard bell, and stay aboard alone till morning; for surely she must be haunted by a crowd of ghosts of obstinate old martinets, mournfully flapping their cherubic epau- lettes over the changed times. Though still we may learn from the astounding ways and means in our Yards now, more highly than ever to respect the fore- fathers who got to Sea, and fought the sea, and held the sea, without them. This remembrance putting me in the best of tempers with an old hulk, very green as to her copper, and generally dim and patched, I pull CHATHAM DOCKYARD. 24? off my hat to her. Which salutation a callow and downy-faced young officer of Engineers, going by at the moment, perceiving, appropriates—and to which he is most heartily welcome, I am sure. Having been torn to pieces (in imagination) by the steam circular saws, perpendicular saws, horizontal saws, and saws of eccentric action, I come to the saun- tering part of my expedition, and consequently to the core of my Uncommercial pursuits. Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the Yard, I meet with tokens of its quiet and retiring character. There is a gravity upon its red brick offices and houses, a staid pretence of having nothing worth mentioning to do, an avoidance of display, which I never saw out of England. The white stones of the pavement present no other trace of Achilles and his twelve hundred bang- ing men (not one of whom strikes an attitude) than a few occasional echoes. But for a whisper in the air suggestive of sawdust and shavings, the oar-making and the saws of many movements might be miles away. Down below here, is the great reservoir of water where timber is steeped in various temperatures, as a part of its seasoning process. Above it, on a tramroad sup- ported by pillars, is a Chinese Enchanter's Car, which fishes the logs up, when sufficiently steeped, and rolls smoothly away with them to stack them. When I was a child (the Yard being then familiar to me) I used to think that I should like to play at Chinese Enchanter, and to have that apparatus placed at my disposal for the purpose by a beneficent country. I still think that I should rather like to try the effect of writing a book in it. Its retirement is complete, and to go gliding to and fro among the stacks of timber would be a con- venient kind of travelling in foreign countries—among the forests of North America, the sodden Honduras swamps, the dark pine woods, the Norwegian frosts, and the tropical heats, rainy seasons, and thunder- storms. The costly store of timber is stacked and stowed away in sequestered places, with the pervading avoidance of flourish or effect. It makes as little of itself as possible, and calls to no one “Come and look at me!” And yet it is picked out from the trees of the world; picked out for length, picked out for breadth, picked out for straightness, picked out for crookedness; 218 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. chosen with an eye to every need of ship and boat. Strangely twisted pieces lie about, precious in the sight of shipwrights. Sauntering through these groves, I come upon an open glade where workmen are examin- ing some timber recently delivered. Quite a pastoral scene, with a background of river and windmill ! and no more like War than the American States are at present like an Union. - Sauntering among the ropemaking, I am spun into a state of blissful indolence, wherein my rope of life seems to be so untwisted by the process as that I can see back to very early days indeed, when my bad dreams—they were frightful, though my more mature understanding has never made out why—were of an interminable sort of ropennaking, with long minute filaments for strands, which when they were spun home together close to my eyes, occasioned screaming. Next, I walk along the quiet lofts of stores—of sails, spars, rigging, ships’ boats—determined to believe that somebody in authority wears a girdle and bends beneath the weight of a massive bunch of keys, and that, when such a thing is wanted, he comes telling his keys like Blue Beard, and opens such a door. Impassive as the long lofts look, let the electric battery send down the word, and the shutters and doors shall fly open, and such a fleet of armed ships, under steam and under sail, shall burst forth as will charge the old Medway—where the merry Stuart let the Dutch come, while his not so merry sailors starved in the streets—with something worth looking at to carry to the sea. Thus I idle round to the Medway again, where it is now flood tide; and I find the river evincing a strong Solicitude to force a way into the dry dock where Achilles is waited on by the twelve hundred bangers, with intent to bear the whole away before they are ready. To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon it; for I make my way to the gates through a little quiet grove of trees, shading the quaintest of Dutch landing-places, where the leaf-speckled shadow of a shipwright just passing away at the further end might be the shadow of Russian Peter himself. So, the doors of the great patent safe at last close upon me, and I take boat again: somehow, thinking as the oars dip, of braggart Pistol and his brood, and of the quiet monsters of the Yard, IN THE FRENCH-FILEMISH COUNTRY. 249 with their “ we don't particularly want to do it; but if it must be done—!” Scrunch CHAPTER XXV. IN THE FRENCH-FILEMISH COUNTRY. “IT is neither a cold nor a diversified country,” said I to myself, “this country which is three-quarters Flemish, and a quarter French; yet it has its attrac- tions too. Though great lines of railway traverse it, the trains leave it behind, and go puffing off to Paris and the South, to Belgium and Germany, to the Northern Sea-Coast of France, and to England, and merely smoke it a little in passing. Then I don’t know it, and that is a good reason for being here; and I can’t pro- nounce half the long queer names I see inscribed over the shops, and that is another good reason for being here, since I surely ought to learn how.” In short, I was “here,” and I wanted an excuse for not going away from here, and I made it to my satisfaction, and stayed here. What part in my decision was borne by Monsieur P. Salcy, is of no moment, though I own to encountering that gentleman’s name on a red bill on the wall, before I made up my mind. Monsieur P. Salcy, “par per- mission de M. le Maire,” had established his theatre in the whitewashed Hôtel de Ville, on the steps of which illustrious edifice I stood. And Monsieur P. Salcy, privileged director of such theatre, situate in “the first theatrical arrondissement of the department of the North,” invited French-Flemish mankind to come and partake of the intellectual banquet provided by his family of dramatic artists, fifteen subjects in number. “La Famille P. SALCY, composée d’artistes dramatiques, au nombre de 15 sujets.” Neither a bold nor a diversified country, I say again, and withal an untidy country, but pleasant enough to ride in, when the paved roads over the flats and through the hollows, are not too deep in black mud. A country so sparely inhabited, that I wonder where the peasants who till and sow and reap the ground, can possibly 250 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. dwell, and also by what invisible balloons they are conveyed from their distant homes into the fields at sunrise and back again at sunset. The occasional few poor cottages and farms in this region, Surely cannot afford shelter to the numbers necessary to the cultiva- tion, albeit the work is done so very deliberately, that on one long harvest day I have seen, in twelve miles, about twice as many men and women (all told) reaping and binding. Yet have I seen more cattle, more sheep, more pigs, and all in better case, than where there is purer French spoken, and also better ricks—round Swelling peg-top ricks, well thatched: not a shapeless brown heap, like the toast of a Giant's toast-and-water, pinned to the earth with one of the skewers out of his kitchen. A good custom they have about here, like- wise, of prolonging the sloping tiled roof of farm or cottage, so that it overhangs three or four feet, carry- ing off the wet, and making a good drying place wherein to hang up herbs, or implements, or what not. A better custom than the popular one of keeping the refuse-heap and puddle close before the house door: which although I paint my dwelling never so brightly blue (and it cannot be too blue for me hereabouts), will bring fever inside my door. Wonderful poultry of the French-Flemish country, why take the trouble to be poultry? Why not stop short at eggs in the rising generation, and die out and have done with it? Parents of chickens have I seen this day, followed by their wretched young families, scratching nothing out of the mud with an air—tottering about on legs so scraggy and weak, that the valiant word drumsticks becomes a mockery when applied to them, and the crow of the lord and master has been a mere dejected-case of croup. Carts have I seen, and other agricultural instruments, unwieldy, dislocated, monstrous. Poplar-trees by the thousand fringe the fields and fringe the end of the flat landscape, so that I feel, looking straight on before me, as if, when I pass the extremest fringe on the low horizon, I shall tumble over into space. Little white- washed black holes of chapels, with barred doors and Flemish inscriptions, abound at roadside corners, and often they are garnished with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children’s swords; or, in their default, some hollow old tree with a saint roosting in it, is IN THE FRENCH-FILEMISH COUNTRY. 351 similarly decorated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint enshrined aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon-house. Not that we are deficient in such decoration in the town here, for, over at the church yonder, outside the building, is a scenic representation of the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and stones, and made out with painted canvas and wooden figures: the whole sur- mounting the dusty skull of some holy personage (per- haps), shut up behind a little ashy iron grate, as if it were originally put there to be cooked, and the fire had long gone out. A windmilly country this, though the windmills are so damp and rickety, that they nearly knock themselves off their legs at every turn of their sails, and creak in loud complaint. A weaving coun- try, too, for in the wayside cottages the loom goes wearily—rattle and click, rattle and click—and, look- ing in, I see the poor weaving peasant, man or woman, bending at the work, while the child, working too, turns a little hand-wheel put upon the ground to suit its height. An unconscionable monster, the loom in a small dwelling, asserting himself ungenerously as the bread-winner, straddling over the children’s straw beds, cramping the family in Space and air, and making himself generally Qbjectionable and tyrannical. He is tributary, too, to ugly mills and factories and bleach- ing-grounds, rising out of the sluiced fields in an abrupt bare way, disdaining, like himself, to be orna- mental or accommodating. Surrounded by these things, here I stood on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, per- suaded to remain by the P. Salcy Family, fifteen dramatic subjects strong. There was a Fair besides. The double persuasion being irresistible, and my sponge being left behind at the last Hotel, I made the tour of the little town to buy another. In the Small Sunny shops—mercers, opticians, and druggist-grocers, with here and there an emporium of religious images—the gravest of old spectacled Flemish husbands and wives sat contemplating one another across bare counters, while the wasps, who seemed to have taken military possession of the town, and to have placed it under wasp-martial law, executed warlike manoeuvres in the windows. Other shops the wasps had entirely to themselves, and nobody cared and nobody came when I beat with a 252 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. five-franc piece upon the board of custom, What I sought was no more to be found than if I had Sought a nugget of Californian gold: So I went, spongeless, to pass the evening with the Family P. Salcy. The members of the Family P. Salcy were so fat and so like one another—fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, and aunts—that I think the local audience were much confused about the plot of the piece under representation, and to the last expected that everybody must turn out to be the long-lost relative of everybody else. The Theatre was established on the top story of the Hôtel de Ville, and was approached by a long bare staircase, whereon, in an airy situation, one of the P. Salcy Family—a stout gentleman imper- fectly repressed by a belt—took the money. This occasioned the greatest excitement of the evening; for, no sooner did the curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville, and reveal in the person of the young lover (singing a very short song with his eyebrows) appar- ently the very same identicak stout gentleman imper- fectly repressed by a belt, than everybody rushed out to the paying-place, to ascertain whether he could possibly have put on that dress-coat, that clear com- plexion, and those arched black vocal eyebrows, in so short a space of time. It then became manifest that this was another stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt: to whom, before the spectators had recovered their presence of mind, entered a third stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, exactly like him. These two “subjects,” making with the money-taker three of the announced fifteen, fell into conversation touching a charming young widow: who, presently ap- pearing, proved to be a stout lady altogether irre- pressible by any means—quite a parallel case to the American Negro–fourth of the fifteen subjects, and sister of the fifth who presided over the check depart- ment. In good time the whole of the fifteen subjects were dramatically presented, and we had the inevi- table Ma Mère, Ma Mère! and also the inevitable malédiction d’un père, and likewise the inevitable Marquis, and also the inevitable provincial young man, weak-minded but faithful, who followed Julie to Paris, and cried and laughed and choked all at once. The story was wrought out with the help of a virtuous IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH COUNTRY. 253 Spinning-wheel in the beginning, a vicious set of dia- monds in the middle, and a rheumatic blessing (which arrived by post) from Ma Mère towards the end; the whole resulting in a small sword in the body of one of the stout gentlemen imperfectly repressed by a belt, fifty thousand francs per annum and a decoration to the other stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, and an assurance from everybody to the pro- Vincial young man that if he were not supremely happy —which he seemed to have no reason whatever for being—he ought to be. This afforded him a final oppor- tunity of crying and laughing and choking all at once, and sent the audience home sentimentally delighted. Audience more attentive or better behaved there could not possibly be, though the places of second rank in the Theatre of the Family P. Salcy were sixpence each in English money, and the places of first rank a shilling. How the fifteen subjects ever got so fat upon it, the ind Heavens know. What gorgeous china figures of knights and ladies, gilded till they gleamed again, I might have bought at the Fair for the garniture of my home, if I had been a French-Flemish peasant, and had had the money! What Shining coffee-cups and saucers I might have won at the turntables, if I had had the luck! Ravishing per- fumery also, and sweatmeats, I might have speculated in, or I might have fired for prizes at a multitude of little dolls in niches, and might have hit the doll of dolls, and won francs and fame. Or, being a French- Flemish youth, I might have been drawn in a hand- cart by my compeers, to tilt for municipal rewards at the water-quintain; which, unless I sent my lance clean through the ring, emptied a full bucket over me; to fend off which, the competitors wore grotesque old scarecrow hats. Or, being French-Flemish man or woman, boy or girl, I might have circled all night on my hobby- horse in a stately cavalcade of hobby-horses four abreast, interspersed with triumphal cars, going round and round and round and round, we the goodly company Singing a ceaseless chorus to the music of the barrel- Organ, drum, and cymbals. On the whole, not more monotonous than the Ring in Hyde Park, London, and much merrier; for when do the circling company sing chorus, there, to the barrel-organ, when do the ladies 254 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. embrace their horses round the neck with both arms, when do the gentlemen fan the ladies with the tails of their gallant steeds? On all these revolving delights, and on their own especial lamps and Chinese lanterns revolving with them, the thoughtful weaver-face brightens, and the Hôtel de Ville sheds an illuminated line of gaslight: while above it, the Eagle of France, gas-outlined and apparently afflicted with the prevailing infirmities that have lighted on the poultry, is in a very undecided state of policy, and as a bird moulting. Flags flutter all around. Such is the prevailing gaiety that the keeper of the prison sits on the stone steps outside the prison-door, to have a look at the world that is not locked up; while that agreeable retreat, the wine-shop opposite to the prison in the prison-alley (its sign La Tranquillité, because of its charming situation), resounds with the voices of the shepherds and shepherdesses who resort there this festive night. And it reminds me that only this afternoon, I saw a shepherd in trouble, tending this way, over the jagged stones of a neigh- bouring street. A magnificent sight it was, to behold him in his blouse, a feeble little jog-trot rustic, swept along by the wind of two immense gendarmes, in cocked- hats for which the street was hardly wide enough, each carrying a bundle of stolen property that would not have held his shoulder-knot, and clanking a sabre that dwarfed the prisoner. “Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you at this Fair, as a mark of my confidence in the people of this so-renowned town, and as an act of homage to their good sense and fine taste, the Ventriloquist, the Ventriloquist! Further, Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the Face-Maker, the Physiognomist, the great Changer of Countenances, who transforms the features that Heaven has bestowed upon him into an endless succession of surprising and extraordinary visages, comprehending, Messieurs et Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expressive, of which the human face is capable, and all the passions of the human heart, as Love, Jeal- ousy, Revenge, Hatred, Avarice, Despair! Hi hi, Ho, ho, Lu, lu, Come in l’ To this effect, with an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind of tambourine—bestowed with a will, as if it represented the people who won’t come in-holds forth a man of lofty and severe de- IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH COUNTRY. 255 meanour; a man in stately uniform, gloomy with the knowledge he possesses of the inner secrets of the booth. “Come in, come in! Your opportunity presents itself to-night; to-morrow it will be gone for ever. To-morrow morning by the Express Train the railroad will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker! Algeria will reclaim the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker! Yes! For the honour of their country they have accepted propositions of a magnitude incredible, to appear in Algeria. See them for the last time before their departure! We go to commence on the instant. Hi hi! Ho hol Lu lu! Come in Take the money that now ascends, Madame; but after that, no more, for we com- mence! Come in l’’ . Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy Speaker and of Madame receiving sous in a muslin bower, sur- vey the crowd pretty sharply after the ascending money has ascended, to detect any lingering sous at the turn- ing-point. “Come in, come in Is there any more money, Madame, on the point of ascending? If so, we wait for it. If not, we commence!” The orator looks back Over his shoulder to say it, lashing the spectators with the conviction that he beholds through the folds of the drapery into which he is about to plunge, the Ventriloquist and the Face-Maker. Several sous burst Out of pockets, and ascend. “Come up then, Mes- sieurs!” exclaims Madame in a shrill voice, and beck- Oning with a bejewelled finger. “Come up! This presses. Monsieur has commanded that they com- mence!” Monsieur dives into his Interior, and the last half-dozen of us follow. His Interior is comparatively severe; his Exterior also. A true Temple of Art needs nothing but seats, drapery, a small table with two moderator lamps hanging over it, and an ornamental looking-glass let into the wall. Monsieur in uniform ets behind the table and surveys us with disdain, his orehead becoming diabolically intellectual under the moderators. “ Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you the Ventriloquist. He will commence with the celebrated Experience of the bee in the window. The bee, apparently the veritable bee of Nature, will hover in the window and about the room. He will be with difficulty caught in the hand of Monsieur the Ventrilo- quist—he will escape—he will again hover—at length 256 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. he will be recaptured by Monsieur the Ventriloquist, and will be with difficulty put into a bottle. Achieve then, Monsieur!” Here the proprietor is replaced be- hind the table by the Ventriloquist, who is thin and sallow, and of a weakly aspect. While the bee is in progress, Monsieur the Proprietor sits apart on the stool, immersed in dark and remote thought. . The moment the bee is bottled, he stalks forward, eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and then announces, sternly waving his hand: “The magnificent Experience of the child with the whooping-cough!” The child disposed of, he starts up as before. “The superb and extraor- dinary Expérience of the dialogue between Monsieur Tatambour in his dining-room, and his domestic, Jerome, in the cellar; concluding with the songsters of the grove, and the Concert of domestic Farm-yard animals.” All this done, and well done, Monsieur the Ventriloquist withdraws, and Monsieur the Face-Maker bursts in, as if his retiring-room were a mile long in- stead of a yard. A corpulent little man in a large white waistcoat, with a comic countenance, and with a wig in his hand. Irreverent disposition to laugh, in- stantly checked by the tremendous gravity of the Face- Maker, who intimates in his bow that if we expect that sort of thing we are mistaken. A very little shav- ing-glass with a leg behind it is handed in, and placed On the table before the Face-Maker. “Messieurs et Mesdames, with no other assistance than this mirror and this wig, I shall have the honour of showing you a thousand characters.” As a preparation, the Face- Maker with both hands gouges himself, and turns his mouth inside out. He then becomes frightfully grave again, and says to the Proprietor, “I am ready l’ Pro- prietor stalks forth from baleful reverie, and announces “The Young Conscript!” Face-Maker claps his wig on, hind side before, looks in the glass, and appears above it as a conscript so very imbecile, and squinting so extremely hard, that I should think the State would never get any good of him. Thunders of applause. Face-Maker dips behind the looking-glass, brings his own hair forward, is himself again, is awfully grave. “A distinguished inhabitant of the Faubourg St. Ger- main.” Face-Maker dips, rises, is supposed to be aged, blear-eyed, toothless, slightly palsied, supernaturally § IN THE FRENCH-FILEMISH COUNTRY. 25% polite, evidently of noble birth. “ The oldest member of the Corps of Invalides on the fête-day of his master.” Face-Maker dips, rises, wears the wig on one side, has become the feeblest military bore in existence, and (it is clear) would lie frightfully about his past achieve- ments, if he were not confined to pantomime. “The Miser!” Face-Maker dips, rises, clutches a bag, and . every hair of the wig is on end to express that he lives in continual dread of thieves. “The Genius of France!” Face-Maker dips, rises, wig pushed back and Smoothed flat, little cocked-hat (artfully concealed till now) put a-top of it, Face-Maker’s white waistcoat much ad- vanced, Face-Maker's left hand in bosom of white waistcoat, Face-Maker's right hand behind his back. Thunders. This is the first of three positions of the Genius of France. In the second position, the Face- Maker takes his snuff; in the third, rolls up his right hand, and surveys illimitable armies through that pocket-glass. The Face-Maker then, by putting out his ſongue, and wearing the wig nohow in particular, becomes the Village Idiot. The most remarkable feat- ure in the whole of his ingenious performance, is, that whatever he does to disguise himself, has the effect of rendering him rather more like himself than he was at first. There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure of recognising several fields of glory with which I became well acquainted a year or two ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty as Mexican victories. The change was neatly effected by some extra Smoking of the Russians, and by permitting the camp followers free range in the foreground to despoil the enemy of their uniforms. As no British troops had ever happened to be within sight when the artist took his original sketches, it followed fortunately that none were in the way now. The fair wound up with a ball. Respecting the par- ticular night of the week on which the ball took place, I decline to commit myself; merely mentioning that it was held in a stable-yard so very close to the railway, that it is a mercy the locomotive did not set fire to it. (In Scotland, I suppose it would have done so.) There, in a tent pººl; decorated with looking glasses and a myriad of toy flags, the people danced all night. It WOT, I. jº 25s THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. was not an expensive recreation, the price of a double ticket for a cavalier and lady being one and threepence in English money, and even of that Small sum fivepence was reclaimable for “consommation: ” which word I venture to translate into refreshments of no greater strength, at the strongest, than ordinary wine made hot, with sugar and lemon in it. It was a ball of great good humour and of great enjoyment, though very many of the dancers must have been as poor as the fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family. - - In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot with me to this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the measure of simple enjoyment that it poured into the dull French-Flemish country life. How dull that is, I had an opportunity of considering when the Fair was over—when the tri-coloured flags were withdrawn from the windows of the houses on the Place where the Fair was held—when the windows were close shut, ap- parently until next Fair time—when the Hôtel de Ville had cut off its gas and put away its eagle—when, the two paviors, whom I take to form the entire paving population of the town, were ramming down the stones which had been pulled up for the erection of decorative poles—when the gaoler had slammed his gate, and locked himself in with his charges. But then, as I paced the ring which marked the track of the departed hobby-horses on the market-place, pondering in my mind how long some hobby-horses do leave their tracks in public ways, and how difficult they are to erase, my eyes were greeted with a goodly sight. I beheld four male personages thoughtfully pacing the Place together, lin the sunlight, evidently not belonging to the town, and having upon them a certain loose cosmopolitan air of not belonging to any town. One was clad in a suit of white canvas another in a cap and blouse, the third in an old military frock, the fourth in a shapeless dress that looked as if it had been made Out of old umbrellas. All wore dust-coloured shoes. My heart beat high; for, in those four male personages, although complexionless and eye-browless, I beheld four subjects of the Family P. Salcy. Blue-bearded though they were, and bereft of the youthful Smoothness of cheek which is imparted by what is termed in Albion a “Whitechapel shave * (and which is, in fact, whitening judiciously applied to IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH country. 259 the jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognised them. As I stood admiring, there emerged from the yard of a lowly Cabaret; the excellent Ma Mère, Ma Mère, with the words, “The soup is served; ” words. which so elated the subject in the canvas suit, that when they all ran in to partake, he went last, dancing with his hands stuck angularly into the pockets of his canvas trousers, after the Piérrot manner. Glancing' down the Yard, the last I saw of him was, that he looked in through a window (at the soup, no donbt) on One leg. - . - . . º Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from the town, little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune. But more was in reserve. I went by a train which was heavy with third-class carriages, full of young fellows (well guarded) who had drawn unlucky numbers in the last conscription, and were on their way to a famous French garrison town where much of the raw military material is worked up into soldiery. At the station,they had been sitting about, in their threadbare homespun blue garments, with their poor little bundles under their arms, covered with dust and clay, and the various soils of France; sad enough at heart, most of them, but putting a good face upon it, and slapping their breasts and singing choruses on the smallest provocation; the gayer spirits shouldering half loaves of black bread speared upon their walking-sticks. As we went along, they were audible at every station, chorusing wildly out of tune, and feigning the highest hilarity. After a while, however, they began to leave off singing, and to laugh naturally, while at intervals there mingled with their laughter the barking of a dog. Now, I had to alight short of their destination, and, as that stoppage of the train was attended with a quantity of horn blowing, bell ringing, and proclamation of what Messieurs les Voyageurs were to do, and were not to do, in order to reach their respective destinations, I had ample leisure to go forward on the platform to take a parting look at my recruits, whose heads were all out at window, and who were laughing like delighted children. Then I perceived that a large poodle with a pink nose, who had been their travelling companion and the cause of their mirth, stood on his hind-legs presenting arms on the extreme verge of the platform, * - { - t 200 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. ready to salute them as the train went off. This poodle wore a military shako (it is unnecessary to add, very much on one side over one eye), a little military coat, and the regulation white gaiters. He was armed with a little musket and a little sword-bayonet, and he stood presenting arms in perfect attitude, with his unobscured eye on his master or superior officer, who stood by him. So admirable was his discipline, that, when the train moved, and he was greeted with the parting cheers of the recruits, and also with a shower of centimes, several of which struck his shako, and had a tendency to dis- compose him, he remained staunch on his post, until the train was gone. He then resigned his arms to his officer, took off his shako by rubbing his paw over it, dropped on four legs, bringing his uniform coat into the absurdest relations with the overarching skies, and ran about the platform in his white gaiters, wagging his tail to an exceeding great extent. It struck me that there was more waggery than this in the poodle, and that he knew that the recruits would neither get through their exercises, nor get rid of their uniforms, as easily as he; revolving which in my thoughts, and seeking in my pockets some small money to bestow upon him, I casually directed my eyes to the face of his superior officer, and in him beheld the Face-Maker! Though it was not the way to Algeria, but quite the reverse, the military poodle's Colonel was the Face- Maker in a dark blouse, with a small bundle dangling over his shoulder at the end of an umbrella, and taking a pipe from his breast to smoke as he and the poodle went their mysterious way. CHAPTER XXVI. MEDICINE-MEN OF CIVILISATION. M Y voyages (in paper boats) among Savages often yield me matter for reflection at home. It is curi- ousto trace the savage in the civilised man, and to detect the hold of some savage customs on conditions of society rather boastful of being high above them. I wonder is the Medicine Man of the North American f A. MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION. 261 Indians never to be got rid of, out of the North Amer- ican country P. He comes into my Wigwam on all manner. of occasions, and with the absurdest “Medicine.” I always find it extremely difficult, and I often find it simply impossible, to keep him out of my Wigwam. For his legal “Medicine " he sticks upon his head the hair of quadrupeds, and plasters the same with fat, and dirty white powder, and talks a gibberish quite unknown to the men and squaws of his tribe. For his religious “Medicine” he puts on puffy white sleeves, little black aprons, large black waistcoats of a peculiar cut, collar- less coats with Medicine button-holes, Medicine stockings and gaiters and shoes, and tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medicinal hat. In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free from him. On occasions when the Medi- cine Men in general, together with a large number of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his village, both male and female, are presented to the principal Chief, his native “Medicine * is a comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of traders) and new things in antiquated shapes, and pieces of red cloth (of which he is particu- larly fond), and white and red and blue paint for the face. The irrationality of this particular Medicine cul- minates in a mock battle-rush, from which many of the Squaws are borne out, much dilapidated. I need not observe how unlike this is to a Drawing-Room at St. James’s Palace. • . The African magician I find it very difficult to exclude from my Wigwam too. This creature takes cases of death and mourning under his supervision, and will fre- quently impoverish a whole family by his preposterous enchantments. He is a great eater and drinker, and always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior. His charms consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for which he charges very high. He impresses on the poor bereaved natives, that the more of his followers they pay to exhibit such scraps on their persons for an hour or two (though they never saw the deceased in their lives, and are put in high spirits oy his decease) the more honourably and piously they grieve for the dead. The poor people, submitting them- selves to this conjurer, an expensive procession is formed, in which bits of sticks, feathers of birds, and a Quantity of other unmeaning objects besmeared with 262 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly order of - which no one understands the meaning, if it ever had any, to the brink of the grave, and are then brought back again. In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a soul, so that when a hatchet is irreparably broken, they say, “His immortal part has departed; he is gone to the happy hunting-plains.” This belief leads to the logical sequence that when a man is buried, some of his eating and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike implements, must be broken and buried with him. Superstitious and wrong, but surely a more respectable superstition than the hire of antic scraps for a show that has no meaning based on any sincere belief. º Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a passing glance on some funeral Solemnities that I have seen where North American Indians, African Ma- gicians, and Tonga Islanders, are supposed not to be. Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, were there dwelt with me for a while, an Englishman of an amiable nature, great enthusiasm, and no discretion. This friend discovered a desolate stranger, mourning over the unexpected death of one very dear to him, in a soli- tary cottage among the vineyards of an outlying village. The circumstances of the bereavement were unusually distressing; and the Survivor, new to the peasants and the country, sorely needed help, being alone with the remains. With some difficulty, but with the strong influence of a purpose at once gentle, disinterested, and determined, my friend—Mr. Kindheart—obtained access to the mourner, and undertook to arrange the burial. There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city walls, and as Mr. Kindheart came back to me, he turned into it and chose the spot. He was always highly flushed when rendering a service unaided, and I knew that to make him happy I must keep aloof from his ministration. But when at dinner he warmed with the good action of the day, and conceived a brilliant idea of comforting the mourner with “an English funeral,” I ventured to intimate that I thought that institution, which was not absolutely sublime at home, might prove a failure in Italian hands. However, Mr. Kindheart was so enraptured with his conception, that he pres- ently wrote down into the town requesting the attend- MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION. 263 ance with to-morrow’s earliest light of a certain little upholsterer. This upholsterer was famous for speaking the unintelligible local dialect (his Own) in a far more unintelligible manner than any other man alive. When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. Rindheart and the upholsterer in conference on the to of an echoing staircase; and when I Overheard Mr. Kind- heart rendering English Undertaking phrases into very choice Italian, and the upholsterer replying in the un- known Tongues; and when I furthermore remembered that the local funerals had no resemblance to English funerals; I became in Imy secret bosom apprehensive. But Mr. Kindheart informed me at breakfast that measures had been taken to insure a signal success. As the funeral was to take place at Sunset, and as I knew to which of the city gates it must tend, I went Out at that gate as the Sun descended, and walked along the dusty, dusty road. I had not walked far when I encountered this procession: h 1. Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense grey OPSé. 2. A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coach- man in bright red velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat. (This was the established local idea of State.) Both coach doors kept open by the coffin, which was on its side within, and sticking out at each. . 3. Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach was intended, walking in the dust. 4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation of a garden, the unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring. It matters little now. Coaches of all colours are alike to poor Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little cemetery with the cypress-trees, by the city walls where the Mediterranean is so beautiful. My first funeral, a fair representative funeral after its kind, was that of the husband of a married servant, Once my nurse. She married for money. Sally Flan- ders, after a year or two of matrimony, became the relict of Flanders, a small master builder; and either she or Flanders had done me the honour to express a desire that I should “follow.” I may have been seven or eight years old ; – young enough, certainly, to feel rather alarmed by the expression, as not knowing Where the invitation was held to terminate, and how 264 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. far I was expected to follow the deceased Flanders. Consent being given by the heads of houses, I was jobbed up into what was pronounced at home decent mourning (comprehending somebody else’s shirt, unless my memory deceives me), and was admonished that if, when the funeral was in action, I put my hands in my pockets, or took my eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, I was personally lost, and my family disgraced. On the eventful day, having tried to get myself into a dis- astrous frame of mind, and having formed a very poor opinion of myself because I couldn’t cry, I repaired to Sally's. Sally was an excellent creature, and had been a good wife to old Flanders, but the moment I saw her I knew that she was not in her own real natural state. She formed a sort of Coat of Arms, grouped with a Smelling-bottle, a handkerchief, an Orange, a bottle of vinegar, Flanders's sister, her own sister, Flanders’s brother's wife, and two neighbouring gossips—all in mourning, and all ready to hold her whenever she fainted. At sight of poor little me she became much agitated (agitating me much more), and having exclaimed, “O here's dear Master Uncommercial' " became hystericaº, and swooned as if I had been the death of her. An affecting scene followed, during which I was handed about and poked at by various people, as if I were the bottle of salts. Reviving a little, she embraced me, said “You knew him well, dear Master Uncommercial, and he knew you!” and fainted again: which, as the rest of the Coat of Arms sooth- ingly said, “ done her credit.” Now, I knew that she needn’t have fainted unless she liked, and that she wouldn’t have fainted unless it had been expected of her, quite as well as I know it at this day. It made me foel uncomfortable and hypocritical besides. I was not sure but that it might be manners in ºne to faint next, and I resolved to keep my eye on Flanders's uncle, and if I saw any signs of his going in that direction, to go too, politely. But Flanders's uncle (who was a weak little old retail grocer) had only one idea, which was that we all wanted tea; and he handed us cups of tea all round, incessantly, whether we refused or not. There was a young nephew of Flanders's present, to whom Flanders, it was rumoured, had left nineteen guineas. He drank all the tea that was offered him, MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION. 265 this nephew—amounting, I should say, to several Quarts—and ate as much plum-cake as he could pos- sibly come by; but he felt it to be decent mourning that he should now and then stop in the midst of a lump of cake, and appear to forget that his mouth was full, in the contemplation of his uncle's memory. I felt all this to be the fault of the undertaker, who was handing us gloves on a tea-tray as if they were muffins, and tying us into cloaks (mine had to be pinned up all round, it was so long for me), because I knew that he was making' game. So when we got out into the streets, and I con- stantly disarranged the procession by tumbling on the people before me because my handkerchief blinded my eyes, and tripping up the people behind me because my cloak was so long, I felt that we were all making game. I was truly sorry for Flanders, but I knew that it was no reason why we should be trying (the women with their heads in hoods like coal-scuttles with the black side outward) to keep step with a man in a scarf, carry- ing a thing like a mourning spy-glass, which he was going to open presently and sweep the horizon with. I knew that we should not all have been speaking in one particular key-note struck by the undertaker, if we had not been making game. Even in our faces we were every one of us as like the undertaker as if we had been his own family, and I perceived that this could not have happened unless we had been making game. When we returned to Sally's, it was all of a piece. The continued impossibility of getting on without plum-cake; the ceremonious apparition of a pair of decanters contain- ing port and sherry and cork; Sally’s sister at the tea- table, clinking the best crockery and shaking her head mournfully every time she looked down into the teapot, as if it were the tomb; the Coat of Arms again, and Sally as before; lastly, the words of consolation admin- istered to Sally when it was considered right that she should “ come round nicely:” which were, that the deceased had had “as com-for-ta-ble a fu-ne-ral as comfortable could be!” Other funerals have I seen with grown-up eyes, since that day, of which the burden has been the same child- ish burden. Making game. Real affliction, real grief and solemnity, have been outraged, and the funeral has been “performed.” The waste for which the funeral 206 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. customs of many tribes of Savages are conspicuous, has attended these civilised obsequies; and once, and twice, have I wished in my soul that if the waste must be, they would let the undertaker bury the money, and let me bury the friend. In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies are more sensibly regulated, because they are upon the whole less expensively regulated. I cannot say that I have ever been much edified by the custom of tying a bib and apron on the front of the house of mourning, or that I would myself particularly care to be driven to my grave in a nodding and bobbing car, like an infirm four-post bedstead, by an inky fellow-creature in a cocked-hat. But it may be that I am constitutionally insénsible to the virtues of a Cocked-hat. In provincial France, the solemnities are sufficiently hideous, but are few and cheap. The friends and townsmen of the departed, in their own dresses and not masquerading under the au- spices of the African Conjurer, surround the hand-bier, and often carry it. It is not considered indispensable to stifle the bearers, or even to elevate the burden on their shoulders; consequently it is easily taken up, and easily set down, and is carried through the streets with- out the distressing floundering and shuffling that we see at home. A dirty priest or two, and and a dirtier aco- lyte or two, do not lend any especial grace to the pro- ceedings; and I regard with personal animosity the bassoon, which is blown at intervals by the big-legged riest (it is always a big-legged priest who blows the º when his fellows combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl. But there is far less of the Conjurer and the Medicine Man in the business than under like circumstances here. The grim coaches that we reserve expressly for such shows, are non-existent; if the cem- etery be far out of the town, the coaches, that are hired for other purposes of life are hired for this purpose; and although the honest vehicles make no pretence of being overcome, I have never noticed that the people in them were the worse for it. In Italy, the hooded Members of Confraternities who attend on funerals, are dismal and ugly to look upon; but the services they render are at least voluntarily rendered, and impoverish no one, and cost nothing. Why should high civilisation and low savagery ever come together on the point of making MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION. 207 them a wantonly wasteful and contemptible set of forms? Once I lost a friend by death, who had been troubled in his time by the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and upon whose limited resources there were abundant claims. The Conjurer assured me that I must posi- tively “follow,” and both he and the Medicine Man en- tertained no doubt that I must go in a black carriage, and must wear “fittings.” I objected to fittings as having nothing to do with my friendship, and I ob- jected to the black carriage as being in more senses than one a job. So, it came into my mind to try what would happen if I quietly walked, in my own way, from my own house to my friend’s burial-place, and stood beside his open grave in my own dress and person, reverently listening to the best of Services. It satisfied my mind, I found, quite as well as if I had been disguised in a hired hatband and scarf both trailing to my very heels, and as if I had cost the orphan children, in their greatest need, ten guineas. Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous absur- dities attendant on “A message from the Lords” in the House of Commons, turn upon the Medicine Man of the poor Indians ? Has he any “ Medicine’’ in that dried skin pouch of his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters in Chancery holding up their black petticoats and butting their ridiculous wigs at Mr. Speaker P Yet there are authorities innumerable to tell me—as there are authorities innumerable among the Indians to tell them—that the nonsense is indispensable, and that its abrogation would involve most awful consequences. What would any rational creature who had never heard of judicial and forensic “fittings,” think of the Court of Common Pleas on the first day of Term” Or with what an awakened sense of humour would LIVING- STONE's account of a similar scene be perused, if the fur and red cloth and goats’ hair and horse hair, and pow- dered chalk and black patches on the top of the head, were all at Tala Mungongo instead of Westminster? That model missionary and good brave man found at least one tribe of blacks with a very strong sense of the ridiculous, insomuch that although an amiable and docile people, they never could see the Missionaries dis- pose of their legs in the attitude of kneeling, or hear them begin a hymn in chorus, without bursting into 268 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. roars of irrepressible laughter. It is much to be hoped that no member of this facetious tribe may ever find his way to England and get committed for contempt of Court. - In the Tonga Islands already mentioned, there are a Set of personages called Mataboos—or some such name —who are the masters of all the public ceremonies, and who know the exact place in which every chief must sit down when a solemn public meeting takes place: a meeting which bears a family resemblance to our Own Public Dinner, in respect of its being a main part of the proceedings that every gentleman present is re- quired to drink something nasty. These Mataboos are a privileged Order, so important is their avocation, and they make the most of their high functions. A long way Out of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather near the British Islands, was there no calling in of the Mata- boos the other day to settle an earth-convulsing ques- tion of precedence; and was there no weighty opinion delivered on the part of the Mataboos which, being in- terpreted to that unlucky tribe of blacks with the sense of the ridiculous, would infallibly set the whole popula- tion screaming with laughter? My sense of justice demands the admission, however, that this is not quite a one-sided question. If we sub- mit ourselves meekly to the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and are not exalted by it, the Savages may retort upon us that we act more unwisely than they in other matters wherein we fail to imitate them. It is a widely diffused custom among savage tribes, when they meet to discuss any affair of public importance, to sit up all night making a horrible noise, dancing, blowing shells, and (in cases where they are familiar with fire-arms) flying out into open places and letting off guns. It is questionable whether our legislative assemblies might not take a hint from this. A shell is not a melódious wind-instrument, and it is monotonous, but it is as musical as, and not more monotonous than, my Honourable friend’s own trumpet, or the trumpet that he blows so hard for the Minister. The useless- ness of arguing with any supporter of a Government or of an Opposition, is well known. Try dancing. It is a better exercise, and has the unspeakable recom- mendation that it couldn’t be reported. The honour- MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION, 269 able and Savage member who has a loaded gun, and has grown impatient of debate, plunges out of doors, fires in the air, and returns calm and silent to the Palaver. Let the honourable and civilised member similarly charged with a speech, dart into the cloisters of West- Iminster Abbey in the silence of night, let his speech off, and come back harmless. It is not at first sight a very rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe across one's nose and both cheeks, and a broad red stripe from the forehead to the chin, to attach a few pounds of wood to one’s under lip, to stick fish-bones in one’s ears and a brass' curtain-ring in one's nose, and to rub one’s body all over with rancid oil, as a prelimi- nary to entering on business. But this is a question of taste and ceremony, and so is the Windsor Uni- form. The manner of entering on the business itself is another question. A council of six hundred savage gentlemen entirely independent of tailors, sitting on their hams in a ring, smoking and occasionally grunt- ing, seem to me, according to the experience I have gathered in my voyages and travels, somehow to do What-they come together for; whereas that is not at all the general experience of a council of six hundred civil- ised gentlemen very dependent on tailors and sitting On mechanical contrivances. It is better that an As- Sembly should do its utmost to envelop itself in smoke, than that it should direct its endeavours to envelop- ing the public in smoke; and I would rather it buried half a hundred hatchets than buried one subject de- manding attention. CHAPTER XXVII. TITBULL's ALMS-HOUSE. BY the side of most railways out of London, one - may see Alms-Houses and Retreats º with a Wing or a Centre wanting, and ambitious of being much bigger than they are), some of which are newly-founded Institutions, and some old establish- ments transplanted. There is a tendency in these 270 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. pieces of architecture to shoot upward unexpectedly, like Jack’s bean-stalk, and to be Ornate in spires of Chapels and lanterns of Halls, which might lead to the embellishment of the air with many castles of question- able beauty but for the restraining consideration of ex- pense. However, the managers, being always of a sanguine temperament, comfort themselves with plans and elevations of Loomings in the future, and are in- fluenced in the present by philanthropy towards the railway passengers. For, the question how prosperous and promising the buildings can be made to look in their eyes, usually supersedes the lesser question how they can be turned to the best account for the inmates. - Why none of the people who reside in these places ever look out of window, or take an airing in the piece of ground which is going to be a garden by-and-by, is one of the wonders I have added to my always-lengthen- ing list of the wonders of the world. I have got it into my mind that they live in a state of chronic injury and resentment, and on that account refuse to decorate the building with a human interest. As I have known legatees deeply injured by a bequest of five hundred pounds because it was not five thousand, and as I was . once acquainted with a pensioner on the Public to the extent of two hundred a year, who perpetually amathe- matised his Country because he was not in the receipt of four, having no claim whatever to sixpence: so per- haps it usually happens, within certain limits, that to get a little help is to get a notion of being defrauded of more. “How do they pass their lives in this beautiful and peaceful place?” was the subject of my specula- tion with a visitor who once accompanied me to a charming rustic retreat for old men and women: a quaint ancient foundation in a pleasant English county, behind a picturesque church and among rich old con- vent gardens. There were but some dozen or so of houses, and we agreed that we would talk with the in- habitants, as they sat in their groined rooms between the light of their fires and the light shining in at their lat- ticed windows, and would find out. They passed their lives in considering themselves mulcted of certain Ounces of tea by a deaf old steward who lived among them in the quadrangle, There was no reason to Sup- TITBULL's ALMS HousF, 271 pose that any such ounces of tea had ever been in existence, or that the old steward so much as knew what was the matter;--he passed his life in consider- ing himself periodically defrauded of a birch-broom by the beadle. - But it is neither to old Alms-Houses in the country, nor to new Alms-Houses by the railroad, that these present Uncommercial notes relate. They refer back to journeys made among those common-place Smoky- fronted London Alms-Houses, with a little paved court- yard in front enclosed by iron railings, which have got snowed up, as it were, by bricks and mortar; which were once in a suburb, but are now in the densely popu- lated town; gaps in the busy life around them, paren- theses in the close and blotted texts of the streets. Sometimes, these Alms-Houses belong to a Company or Society. Sometimes, they are established by in- dividuals, and are maintained out of private funds be- Queathed in perpetuity long ago. My favourite among them is Titbull’s, which establishment is a picture of many. Of Titbull I know no more than that he de- ceased in 1723, that his Christian name was Sampson, and his social designation Esquire, and that he found- ed these Alms-Houses as Dwellings for Nine Poor Women and Six Poor Men by his Will and Testament. I should not know even this much, but for its being in- scribed on a grim stone very difficult to read, let into the front of the centre house of Titbull’s Alms-Houses, and which stone is ornamented a-top with a piece of sculptured drapery resembling the effigy of Titbull’s bath-towel. - Titbull’s Alms-Houses are in the east of London, in a great highway, in a poor busy and thronged neigh- bourhood. Old iron and fried fish, cough drops and artificial flowers, boiled pigs’-feet and household furni- ture that looks as if it were polished up with lip-salve, umbrellas full of vocal literature and saucers full of shell-fish in a green juice which I hope is natural to them when their health is good, garnish the paved side- ways as you go to Titbull’s. I take the ground to have risen in those parts since Titbull’s time, and you drop into his domain by three stone steps. So did I first drop into it, very nearly striking my brows against Titbull’s pump, which stands with its back to the 372 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. thoroughfare just inside the gate, and has a conceited air of reviewing Titbull’s pensioners. “And a worse one,” said a virulent old man with a pitcher, “there isn’t nowhere. A harder one to work, nor a grudginer one to yield, there isn’t nowhere!” This ji man wore a long coat, such as we see Hogarth’s chairmen represented with, and it was of that peculiar green-pea hue without the green, which seems to come of poverty. It had also that peculiar smell of cupboard which seems to come of poverty. “The pump is rusty, perhaps,” said I. “Not it,” said the old man, regarding it with undi- luted virulence in his watery eye. “It never were fit to be termed a pump. That’s what’s the matter with it.” “Whose fault is that?’” said I. The old man, who had a working mouth which seemed to be trying to masticate his anger and to find that it was too hard and there was too much of it, replied, “Them gentlemen.” * “What gentlemen?” “Maybe you’re one of 'em?” said the old man, sus- piciously. “The trustees?” # “I wouldn’t trust 'em myself,” said the virulent old Iſla,I). +. “If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place, no, I am not one of them; nor have I ever so much as heard of them.” - “I wish I never heard of them,” gasped the old man: “at my time of life—with the rheumatics—drawing water—from that thing!” Not to be deluded into calling it a Pump, the old man gave it another virulent look, took up his pitcher, and carried it into a corner dwelling- house, shutting the door after him. - Looking around and seeing that each little house was a house of two little rooms; and seeing that the little oblong court-yard in front was like a graveyard for the inhabitants, saving that no word was engraven on its flat dry stones; and seeing that the currents of life and noise ran to and fro outside, having no more to do with the place than if it were a sort of low-water mark on a lively beach; I say, seeing this and nothing else, I was going out at the gate when one of the doors opened. TITBULL's ALMS-HOUSE. 373 “Was you looking for anything, sir?” asked a tidy well-favoured woman. - Really, no; I couldn’t say I was. “Not wanting any one, sir?” “No–at least I–pray what is the name of the elderly gentleman who lives in the corner there?” * The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I indicated, and she and the pump and I stood all three in a row with our backs to the thoroughfare. “Oh! His name is Mr. Battens,” said the tidy woman, dropping her voice. “I have just been talking with him.” “Indeed?” said the tidy woman. “Ho! I wonder Mr. Battens talked!” “Is he usually so silent?” “Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here—that is to say, the oldest of the old gentlemen—in point of residence.” She had a way of passing her hands over and under one another as she spoke, that was not only tidy but propitiatory; so I asked her if I might look at her little sitting-room? She willingly replied Yes, and we went into it together; she leaving the door open, with an eye as I understood to the social proprieties. The door opéning at once into the room without any intervening entry, even scandal must have been silenced by the precaution. It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and with a mug of wallflower in the window. On the chimney- piece were two peacock's feathers, a carved ship, a few shells, and a black profile with one eyelash; whether this portrait purported to be male or female passed my comprehension, until my hostess informed me that it was her only son, and “ quite a speaking one.” “He is alive, I hope?” “No, sir,” said the widow, “he were cast away in China.” This was said with a modest sense of its reflecting a certain geographical distinction on his mother. “If the old gentlemen here are not given to talking,” said I, “I hope the old ladies are?—not that you are one.” . She shook her head. “You see they get so cross.” “HOW is that P” “Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of VOL. I. LS 274 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, any little matters which ought to be ours by rights, I cannot say for certain; but the Opinion of the old ones is they do. And Mr. Battens he do even go so far as to doubt whether credit is due to the Founder. For Mr. Battens he do say, anyhow he got his name up by it and he done it cheap.” “I am afraid the pump has soured Mr. Battens.” “It may be so,” returned the tidy widow, “but the handle does go very hard. Still, what I say to myself is, the gentlemen may not pocket the difference between a good pump and a bad one, and I would wish to think well |P them. And the dwellings,” said my hostess, glancing round her room; “perhaps they were con- venient dwellings in the Founder's time, considered as his time, and therefore he should not be blamed. But Mrs. Saggers is very hard upon them.” “Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here.” “The oldest but one. Mrs. Quinch being the oldest, and have totally lost her head.” “And you?” “I am the youngest in residence, and consequently am not looked up to. But when Mrs. Quinch makes a happy release, there will be one below me. Nor is it to be expected that Mrs. Saggers will prove herself immortal.” * “True. Nor Mr. Battens.” “Regarding , the old gentlemen,” said my widow slightingly, “they count among themselves. They do not count among us. Mr. Battens is that exceptional that he have written to the gentlemen many times and have worked the case against them. Therefore he have took a higher ground. But we do not, as a rule, greatly reckon the old gentlemen.” Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally settled among the poor ladies that the poor gentlemen, whatever their ages, were all very old indeed, and in a state of dotage. I also discovered that the juniors and new comers preserved, for a time, a waning disposition to believe in Titbull and his trustees, but that as they gained social standing they lost this faith, and dis- paraged Titbull and all his works. Improving my acquaintance subsequently with this respected lady, whose name was Mrs. Mitts, and occa- Sionally dropping in upon her with a little offering TITBULL's ALMS-HOUSE. 275 of Sound Family Hyson in my pocket, I gradually be- came familiar with the inner politics and ways of Titbull’s Alms-Houses. But I never could find out who the trustees were, or where they were: it being one of the fixed ideas of the place that these authorities must be vaguely and mysteriously mentioned as “the gentle- men’’ only. The secretary of “the gentlemen’’ was Once pointed out to me, evidently engaged in champion- ing the obnoxious pump against the attacks of the discontented Mr. Battens; but I am not in a condition to report further of him than that he had the sprightly bearing of a lawyer's clerk. I had it from Mrs. Mitts’s lips in a very confidential moment, that Mr. Battens was once “had up before the gentlemen’’ to stand or . fall by his accusations, and that an old shoe was thrown after him on his departure from the building On this dread errand;—not ineffectually, for, the inter- view resulting in a plumber, was considered to have encircled the temples of Mr. Battens with the wreath of victory. • e In Titbull’s Alms-Houses, the local society is not re- garded as good society. A gentleman or lady receiving Visitors from without, or going out to tea, counts, as it were, accordingly; but visitings or tea-drinkings in- terchanged among Titbullians do not score. Such inter- Changes, however, are rare, in consequence of internal dissensions occasioned by Mrs. Saggers's pail: which household article has split Titl)ull’s into almost as many parties as there are dwellings in that precinct. The extremely complicated nature of the conflicting articles of belief on the subject prevents my stating them here with my, usual perspicuity, but I think they have all branched off from the root-and-trunk question, Has Mrs. Saggers any right to stand her pail outside her dwelling? The question has been much refined upon, but roughly stated may be stated in those terms. There were two old men in Titbull's Alms-Houses who, I have been given to understand, knew each Other in the world beyond its pump and iron railings, when they were both “in trade.” They make the best of their reverses, and are looked upon with great con- tempt. They are little stooping blear-eyed old men of cheerful countenance, and they hobble up and down the court-yard wagging their chins and talking to- 276 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. gether quite gaily. This has given offence, and has moreover, raised the question whether they are justified in passing any other windows than their own. Mr. Battens, however, permitting them to pass his windows, on the disdainful ground that their imbecility almost amounts to irresponsibility, they are allowed to take their walk in peace. They live next door to one another, and take it by turns to read the newspaper aloud (that is to say, the newest newspaper they can get), and they £º. Cribbage at night. On warm and Sunny days they have been known to go so far as to bring out two chairs and sit by the iron railings, slooking forth, but this low conduct, being much remarked upon through- out Titbull’s, they were deterred by an outraged public opinion from repeating it. There is a rumour—but it may be malicious —that they hold the memory of Tit- bull in some weak sort of veneration, and that they once set off together on a pilgrimage to the parish churchyard to find his tomb. To this, perhaps, might be traced a general suspicion that they are spies of “the gentlemen: ” to which they were supposed to have given colour in my own presence on the occasion of the . weak attempt at justification of the pump by the gentlemen’s clerk; when they emerged bare-headed from the doors of their dwellings, as if their dwellings and themselves constituted an old-fashioned weather- glass of double action with two figures of old ladies inside, and deferentially bowed to him at intervals until he took his departure. They are understood to be perfectly friendless and relationless. Unquestionably the two poor fellows make the very best of their lives in Titbull’s Alms-Houses, and unquestionably they are (as before mentioned), the subjects of unmitigated contempt there. - On Saturday nights, when there is a greater stir than usual outside, and when itinerant vendors of miscel- laneous wares even take their stations and light up their smoky lamps before the iron railings, Titbull’s becomes flurried. Mrs. Saggers has her celebrated pal- pitations of the heart, for the most part on Saturday nights. But Titbull’s is unfit to strive with the uproar of the streets in any of its phases. It is religiously believed at Titbull’s that people push more than they used, and likewise that the foremost object of the TITBULL’S ALMS-HOUSE. 277 population of England and Wales is to get you down and trample on you. Even of railroads they know, at Tit- bull’s little more than the shriek (which Mrs. Saggers says goes through her, and Ought to be taken up by the Government); and the penny postage may even yet be unknown there, for I have never seen a letter de- livered to any inhabitant. But there is a tall straight sallow lady resident in Number Seven, Titbull’s, who never speaks to anybody, who is surrounded by a super- stitious halo of lost wealth, who does her household work in housemaid’s gloves, and who is secretly much deferred to, though openly cavilled at; and it has ob- scurely leaked out that this old lady has a son, grand- son, nephew, or other relative, who is “a Contractor,” and who would think it nothing of a job to knock down Titbull’s, pack it off into Cornwall, and knock it to- gether again. An immense sensation was made by a gipsy-party calling in a spring-van to take this old lady up to go for a day’s pleasure into Epping Forest, and notes were compared as to which of the company was the son, grandson, nephew, or other relative, the Contractor. A thick-set personage with a white hat and a cigar in his mouth, was the favourite; though as Titbull’s had no other reason to believe that the Con- tractor was there at all, than that this man was Sup- j to eye the chimney stacks as if he would like to nock them down and cart them off, the general mind was much unsettled in arriving at a conclusion. As a way out of this difficulty, it concentrated itself on the acknowledged Beauty of the party, every stitch in whose dress was verbally unripped by the old ladies then and there, and whose “goings on ’’ with another and a thinner personage in a white hat might have suffused the pump (where they were principally dis- cussed) with blushes for months afterwards. Herein Titbull’s was to Titbull’s true, for it has a constitutional dislike of all strangers. As concerning innovations and improvements, it is always of opinion that what it doesn’t want itself, nobody ought to want. But I think I have met with this opinion outside Titbull’s. Of the humble treasures of furniture brought into Titbull’s by the inmates when they establish them- selves in that place of contemplation for the rest of their days, by far the greater and more valuable part 278 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER." belongs to the ladies. I may claim the honour of having either crossed the threshold, or looked in at the door, of every One of the nine ladies, and I have noticed that they are all particular in the article of bedsteads, and maintain favourite and long-established bedsteads and bedding as a regular part of their rest. Generally an antiquated chest of drawers is among their cherished possessions; a tea-tray always is. I know of at least two rooms in which a little tea-kettle of genuine bur- nished copper, vies with the cat in winking at the fire; and one old lady has a tea-urn set forth in state on the top of her chest of drawers, which urn is used as her library, and contains four duodecimo volumes, and a black-bordered newspaper giving an account of the funeral of Her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte. Among the poor old gentlemen there are no such nice- ties. Their furniture has the air of being contributed, like some obsolete Literary Miscellany, “by several hands; ” their few chairs never match; old patchwork coverlets linger among them; and they have an untidy habit of keeping their wardrobes in hat-boxes. When I recal one old gentleman who is rather &hoice in his shoe-brushes and blacking-bottle, I have summed up the domestic elegancies of that side of the building. On the occurrence of a death in Titbull’s, it is inva- riably agreed among the survivors—and it is the only subject on which they do agree—that the departed did something “ to bring it on.” Judging by Titbull’s I should say the human race need never die, if they took care. But they don’t take care, and they do die, and when they die in Titbull’s they are buried at the cost of the Foundation. Some provision has been made for the purpose, in virtue of which (I record this on the strength of having seen the funeral of Mrs. Quinch) a lively neighbouring undertaker dresses up four of the old men, and four of the old women, hustles them into a procession of four couples, and leads off with a large black bow at the back of his hat, looking over his shoulder at them airily from time to time to see that no member of the party has got lost, or has tumbled down; as if they were a company of dim old dolls. Resignation of a dwelling is of very rare occurrence in Titbull’s. A story does obtain there, how an old lady’s son once drew a prize of Thirty Thousand Pounds TITBULL's ALMS House. 2% in the Lottery, and B.º. drove to the gate in his own carriage, with French Horns playing up behind, and whisked his mother away, and left ten guineas for a Feast. But I have been unable to substantiate it by any evidence, and regard it as an Alms-House Fairy Tale. It is curious that the only proved case of resig- nation happened within my knowledge. It happened on this wise. There is a sharp compe- - tition among the ladies respecting the gentility of their visitors, and I have so often observed visitors to be dressed as for a holiday occasion, that I suppose the ladies to have besought them to make all possible display when they come. In these circumstances much excite- ment was one day occasioned by Mrs. Mitts receiving a visit from a Greenwich Pensioner. He was a Pen- sioner of a bluff and warlike appearance, with an empty coat-sleeve, and he was got up with unusual care; his coat-buttons were extremely bright, he wore his empty coat-sleeve in a graceful festoon, and he had a walking- stick in his hand that must have cost money. When, with the head of his walking-stick, he knocked at Mrs. Mitts’s door—there are no knockers in Titbull’s—Mrs. Mitts was overheard by a next-door neighbour to -utter a cry of surprise expressing much agitation; and the same neighbour did afterwards solemnly affirm that when he was admitted into Mrs. Mitts’s room, she heard a smack. Heard a smack which was not a blow. There was an air about this Greenwich Pensioner when he took his departure, which imbued all Titbull’s with the conviction that he was coming again. He was eagerly looked for, and Mrs. Mitts was closely watched. In the meantime, if anything could have placed the un- fortunate six old gentlemen at a greater disadvantage than that at which they chronically stood, it would have been the apparition of this Greenwich Pensioner. They were well shrunken already, but they shrunk to nothing in comparison with the Pensioner. Even the poor old gentlemen themselves seemed conscious of their inferiority, and to know submissively that they could never hope to hold their own against the Pen- sioner with his warlike and maritime experience in the past, and his tobacco money in the present: his cheq: uered career of blue water, black gunpowder, and red bloodshed for England home and beauty. 280 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Before three weeks were out, the Pensioner re- appeared. Again he knocked at Mrs. Mitts’s door with the handle of his stick, and again was he admitted. But not again did he depart alone; for Mrs. Mitts, in a bonnet identified as having been re-embellished, went out walking with him, and stayed out till the ten o’clock beer, Greenwich time. There was now a truce, even as to the troubled waters of Mrs. Saggers's pail; nothing was spoken of among the ladies but the conduct of Mrs. Mitts and its blight- ing influence on the reputation of Titbull’s. It was agreed that Mr. Battens “ought to take it up,” and Mr. Battens was communicated with on the subject. That unsatisfactory individual replied “that he didn’t see his way yet,” and it was unanimously voted by the ladies that aggravation was in his nature. How it came to pass, with some appearance of incon- sistency, that Mrs. Mitts was cut by all the ladies and the Pensioner admired by all the ladies, matters not. Before another week was out, Titbull’s was startled by another phenomenon. At ten o’clock in the forenoon appeared a cab, containing not only the Greenwich Pensioner with one arm, but, to boot, a Chelsea, Pen- sioner with one leg. Both dismounting to assist Mrs. Mitts into the cab, the Greenwich Pensioner bore her company inside, and the Chelsea, Pensioner mounted the box by the driver; his wooden leg sticking out after the manner of a bowsprit, as if in jocular homage to his friend’s seagoing career. Thus the equipage drove away. No Mrs. Mitts returned that night. What Mr. Battens might have done in the matter of taking it up, goaded by the infuriated State of public feeling next morning, was anticipated by another phenomenon. A Truck, propelled by the Greenwich Pensioner and the Chelsea, Pensioner, each placidly smoking a pipe, and pushing his warrior breast against the handle. The display on the part of the Greenwich Pensioner of his “marriage-lines,” and his announcement that himself and friend had looked in for the furniture of Mrs. G. Pensioner, late Mitts, by no means reconciled the ladies to the conduct of their sister; on the con- trary, it is said that they appeared more than ever exasperated. Nevertheless, my stray visits to Tit- ñº ||||W | lº----- § % iſ ; X. º %Z | | * ſ W’ſ 2. º'. 2 s . . . N : . . . . . G * Dº '. . % ºf " ". . . º º, ſº * \ , , , , º/, "... . . . Ž º, | Yºſh |#. º ſ - | . . . . . It | |ſ|| | | º W º: | | | | || || || | | | | | º | º' |}}}| * Thiſ, ...', ºr ... . * tº ". º º . if I', 'º ... I !". * , | § º º; ; ; ; ; ;| T- º |: º M. - ſ [. | 'ſ º f ū ſ | § § 1. || º - º | ºff º g 3. , $º º | a ſ - | % 9, :, . | º - ->-º-º-º-S - N -- ==-->†: <- = ºzºs A PHENOMENON AT TITDULL’s. Uncommercial Traveller. THE ITALIAN PRISONER. 281 bull’s since the date of this occurrence, have confirmed me in an impression that it was a wholesome fillip. The nine ladies are Smarter, both in mind and dress, than they used to be, though it must be admitted that they despise the six gentlemen to the last extent. They have a much greater interest in the external thorough- fare too, than they had when I first knew Titbull’s. And whenever I chance to be leaning my back against the pump or the iron railings, and to be talking to one of the junior ladies, and to see that a flush has passed Over her face, I immediately know without looking round that a Greenwich Pensioner has gone past. CHAPTER XXVIII. T H E IT A L I A N P R IS () N E R . THE rising of the Italian people from under their un- 1- utterable wrongs, and the tardy burst of day upon them after the long long night of oppression that has darkened their beautiful country, have naturally caused my mind to dwell often of late on my own small wan- derings in Italy. Connected with them, is a curious little drama, in which the character I myself sustained was so very subordinate that I may relate its story without any fear of being suspected of self-display. It is strictly a true story. I am newly arrived one summer evening, in a cer- tain small town on the Mediterranean. I have had my dinner at the inn, and I and the mosquitoes are coming Out into the streets together. It is far from Naples; but a bright brown plump little woman-servant at the inn, is a Neapolitan, and is so vivaciously expert in pantomimic action, that in the single moment of answering my request to have a pair of shoes cleaned which I have left up-stairs, she plies imaginary brushes, and goes completely through the motions of polishing the shoes up, and laying them at my feet. I smile at the brisk little woman in perfect satisfaction with her briskness; and the brisk little woman, amiably pleased with me because I am pleased with her, claps her hands and laughs delightfully. We are in the inn yard. As 2s2 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. the little woman's bright eyes sparkle on the cigarette I am smoking I make bold to offer her one; she accepts it none the less merrily, because I touch a most charm- ing little dimple in her fat cheek, with its light paper end. Glancing up at the many green lattices to assure herself that the mistress is not looking on, the little woman then puts her two little dimple arms a-kimbo, and stands on tiptoe to light her cigarette at mine. “And now, dear little sir,” says she, puffing out smoke in a most innocent and cherubic manner, “keep quite straight on, take the first to the right, and probably you will see him standing at his door.” I have a commission to “ him,” and I have been in- Quiring about him. I have carried the commission about Italy several months. Before I left England, there came to me One night a certain generous and gentle English nobleman (he is dead in these days when I relate the story, and exiles have lost their best British friend), with this request : “Whenever you come to such a town, will you seek out one Giovanni Carlavero, who keeps a little wine-shop there, mention my name to him Suddenly, and observe how it affects him?” I accepted the trust, and am on my way to discharge it. The Sirocco has been blowing all day, and it is a hot unwholesome evening with no cool sea-breeze. Mos- quitoes and fire-flies are lively enough, but most other creatures are faint. The coquettish airs of pretty young women in the tiniest and wickedest of dolls’ straw hats, who lean out at opened lattice blinds, are almost the Only airs stirring. Very ugly and haggard old women with distaffs, and with a grey tow upon them that looks as if they were spinning out their own hair (I suppose they were once pretty, too, but it is very difficult to believe so), sit on the footway leaning against house walls. Everybody who has come for water to the fountain stays there, and seems incapable of any such energetic idea as going home. Vespers are over, though not so long but that I can smell the heavy resinous incense as I pass the church. No man seems to be at work, save the coppersmith. In an Italian town he is always at work, and always thump- ing in the deadliest manner. - I keep straight on, and come in due time to the first THE ITALIAN PRISONER. 288 On the right; a narrow dull street, where I see a well- favoured man of good stature and military bearing, in a great cloak, standing at a door. Drawing nearer to this threshold, I see it is the threshold of a small wine-shop; and I can just make out, in the dim light, the inscription that it is kept by Giovanni Carlavero. I touch my hat to the figure in the cloak, and pass in, and draw a stool to a little table. The lamp (just such another as they dig out of Pompeii) is lighted, but the place is empty. ' The figure in the cloak has fol- lowed me in, and stands before me. “The master?” - “At your service, sir.” - “Please to give me a glass of the wine of the country.” He turns to a little counter to get it. As his strik- ing face is pale, and his action is evidently that of an enfeebled man, I remark that I fear he has been ill. It is not much, he courteously and gravely answers, though bad while it lasts: the fever. As he sets the wine on the little table, to his mani- fest surprise I lay my hand on the back of his, look him in the face, and say in a low voice: “I am an Englishman, and you are acquainted with a friend of mine. Do you recollect ?” and I mentioned the name of my generous countryman. Instantly, he utters a loud cry, bursts into tears, and falls on his knees at my feet, clasping my legs in both his arms and bowing his head to the ground. Some years º; this man at my feet, whose over- fraught heart is heaving as if it would burst from his breast, and whose tears are wet upon the dress I wear, was a galley-slave in the North of Italy. He was a political offender, having been concerned in the then last rising, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. That he would have died in his chains, is cer- tain, but for the circumstance that the Englishman happened to visit his prison. - It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and a part of it was below the waters of the harbour. The place of his confinement was an arched under-ground and under-water gallery, with a grill-gate at the entrance, through which it received such light and air as it got. Its condition was insufferably foul, and a stranger 284 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. could hardly breathe in it, or see in it with the aid of a torch. At the upper end of this dungeon, and conse- quently in the worst position, as being the furthest re- moved from light and air, the Englishman first beheld him, sitting on an iron bedstead to which he was chained by a heavy chain. His countenance impressed the Englishman as having nothing in common with the faces of the malefactors with whom he was associ- ated, and he talked with him, and learnt how he came to be there. When the Englishman emerged from the dreadful den into the light of day, he asked his conductor, the governor of the gaol, why Giovanni Carlavero was put into the worst place? ‘‘ Because he is particularly recommended,” was the stringent answer. s “Recommended, that is to say, for death?’” “Excuse me; particularly recommended,” was again the answer. “He has a bad tumour in his neck, no doubt occa- sioned by the hardship of his miserable life. If he continues to be neglected, and he remains where he is, it will kill him.” t “Excuse me, I can do nothing. He is particularly recommended.” - The Englishman was staying in that town, and he went to his home there; but the figure of this man chained to the bedstead made it no home, and de- stroyed his rest and peace. He was an Englishman of an extraordinarily tender heart, and he could not bear the picture. He went back to the prison grate; went back again and again, and talked to the man and cheered him. - He used his utmost influence to get the man unchained from the bedstead, were it only for ever so short a time in the day, and per- mitted to come to the grate. It took a long time, but the Englishman’s station, personal character, and steadiness of purpose, wore Out Opposition so far, and that grace was at last accorded. Through the bars, when he could thus get light upon the tumour, the Englishman lanced it, and it did well, and healed. His strong interest in the prisoner had greatly in- creased by this time, and he formed the desperate resolution that he would exert his utmost Self-devotion THE ITALIAN PRISONER. 285 and use his utmost efforts, to get Carlavero pardoned. If the prisoner had been a brigand and a murderer, if he had committed every non-political crime in the Newgate Calendar and out of it, nothing would have been easier than for a man of any court or priestly in- fluence to obtain his release. As it was, nothing could have been more difficult. Italian authorities, and Eng- lish, authorities who had interest with them, alike as- sured the Englishman that his object was hopeless. He met with nothing but evasion, refusal and ridicule. His political prisoner became a joke in the place. It was especially observable that English Circumlocution, and English Society on its travels, were as humourous on the subject as Circumlocution and Society may be on any subject without loss of caste. But, the English- man possessed (and proved it well in his life) a courage very uncommon among us: he had not the least fear of being considered a bore, in a good humane cause. So he went on persistently trying, and trying, and trying, to get Giovanni Carlavero out. That prisoner had been rigorously re-chained, after the tumour operation, and it was not likely that his miserable life could last very long. One day, when all the town knew about the Eng- lishman and his political prisoner, there came to the Englishman, a certain sprightly .Italian Advocate of whom he had some knowledge; and he made this strange proposal. “Give me a hundred pounds to ob- tain Carlavero's release. I think I can get him a par- don, with that money. But I cannot tell you what I am going to do with the money, nor must you ever ask me the question if I succeed, nor must you ever ask me for an account of the money if I fail.” The English- man decided to hazard the hundred pounds. He did so, and heard not another word of the matter. For half a year and more, the Advocate made no sign, and never once “took on ” in any way, to have the subject on his mind. The Englishman was then obliged to change his residence to another and more famous town in the North of Italy. He parted from the poor prisoner with a sorrowful heart, as from a doomed man from whom there was no release but Death. The Englishman lived in his new place of abode an- other half-year and more, and had no tidings of the 286 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. wretched prisoner. At length, one day, he received from the Advocate a cool concise mysterious note, to this effect. “If you still wish to bestow that benefit upon the man in whom you were once interested, send me fifty pounds more, and I think it can be insured.” Now, the Englishman had long settled in his mind that the Advocate was a heartless sharper, who had preyed upon his credulity and his interest in an unfortunate sufferer. So, he sat down and wrote a dry answer, giving the Advocate to understand that he was wiser now than he had been formerly, and that no more money was extractable from his pocket. - He lived outside the city gates, some mile or two from the post-office, and was accustomed to walk into the city with his letters and post them himself. On a lovely spring day, when the sky was exquisitely blue, and the sea divinely beautiful, he took his usual walk, carrying this letter to the Advocate in his pocket. As he went along, his gentle heart was much moved by the loveliness of the prospect, and by the thought of the slowly-dying prisoner chained to the bedstead, for whom the universe had no delights. As he drew nearer and nearer to the city where he was to post the letter, he became very uneasy in his mind. He debated with himself, was it remotely possible, after all, that this sum of fifty pounds could restore the fel- low-creature whom he pitied so much, and for whom he had striven so hard, to liberty? He was not a con- ventionally rich Englishman—very far from that— but, he had a spare fifty pounds at the banker's. He resolved to risk it. Without doubt, GOD has recom- pensed him for the resolution. He went to the bankers, and got a bill for the amount, and enclosed it in a letter to the Advocate that I wish I could have seen. He simply told the Advocate that he was quite a poor man, and that he was sensible it might be a great weakness in him to part with so much money on the faith of so vague a communication; but, that there it was, and that he prayed the Advocate to make a good use of it. If he did otherwise no good could ever come of it, and it would lie heavy on his soul one day. - Within a week, the Englishman was sitting at his ſpreakfast, when he heard some suppressed sounds of THE ITALIAN PRISONER. - 2S7 agitation on the staircase, and Giovanni Carlavero leaped into the room and fell upon his breast, a free man! Conscious of having wronged the Advocate in his own thoughts, the Englishman wrote him an earnest and grateful letter, avowing the fact, and entreating him to confide by what means and through what agency he had succeeded so well. The Advocate re- turned for answer through the post “There are many things, as you know, in this Italy of ours, that are safest and best not even spoken of—far iess written of. We may meet some day; and then I may tell you what you want to know; not here, and now.” But, the two never did meet again. The Advocate was dead when the Englishman gave me my trust; and how the man had been set free, remained as great a mystery to the Englishman, and to the man himself, as it was to me. But, I knew this :-here was the man, this sultry night, on his knees at my feet, because I was the Eng- lishman's friend; here were lis tears upon my dress; here were his sobs choking his utterance; here were his kisses on my hands, because they had touched the hands that had worked out his release. He had no need to tell me it would be happiness to him to die for his benefactor; I doubt if I ever saw real, sterling, fer- vent gratitude of soul, before or since. * He was much watched and suspected, he said, and had had enough to do to keep himself out of trouble. This, and his not having prospered in his worldly affairs, had led to his having failed in his usual com- munications to the Englishman for—as I now remember the period—some two or three years. But, his prospects were brighter, and his wife who had been very ill had recovered, and his fever had left him, and he had bought a little vineyard, and would I carry to his bene- factor the first of its wine? Ay, that I would (I told him with enthusiasm), and not a drop of it should be spilled or lost! - He had cautiously closed the door before speaking of himself, and had talked with such excess of emotion, and in a provincial Italian so difficult to understand, that I had more than Once been obliged to stop him, and beg him to have compassion on me and be slower and calmer. By degrees he became so, and tranquilly walked back with me to the hotel. There, I sat º 288 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. before I went to bed and wrote a faithful account of him to the Englishman; which I concluded by saying that I would bring the wine home, against any diffi- culties, every drop. Early next morning when I came out at the hotel door to pursue my journey, I found my friend waiting with one of those immense bottles in which the Italian peasants store their wine—a bottle holding some half- dozen gallons—bound round with basket-work for greater safety on the journey. I see him now, in the bright sunlight, tears of gratitude in his eyes, proudly inviting my attention to this corpulent bottle. (At the street corner hard by, two high-flavoured able-bodied monks—pretending to talk together, but keeping their four evil eyes upon us.) How the bottle had been got there, did not appear; but the difficulty of getting it into the ramshackle vet- turino carriage in which I was departing, was so great, and it took up so much room when it was got in, that I elected to sit outside. The last I saw of Giovanni Carlavero was his running through the town by the side of the jingling wheels, clasping my hand as I stretched it down from the box, charging me with a thousand last loying and dutiful messages to his dear patron, and finally looking in at the bottle as it reposed inside, with an admiration of its honourable way of travelling that was beyond measure delightful. And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly-beloved and highly-treasured Bottle began to cost me, no man knows. It was my precious charge through a long tour, and, for hundreds of miles, I never had it off my mind by day or by night. Over bad roads—and they were many—I clung to it with affectionate desperation. Up mountains, I looked in at it and saw it helplessly tilting over on its back, with terror. At innumerable "inn doors when the weather was bad, I was obliged to be put into my vehicle before the Bottle could be got in, and was obliged to have the Bottle lifted out before human aid could come near me. The Imp of the same name, except that his associations were all evil and these associations were all good, would have been a less troublesome travelling companion. I might have served Mr. Cruikshank as a subject for a new illustration of the miseries of the Bottle. The National Temperance THE ITALIAN PRISONER, 289 Society might have made a powerful Tract of me. The suspicions that attached to this innocent Bottle greatly aggravated my difficulties. It was like the apple-pie in the child’s book. Parma pouted at it, Modena mocked it, Tuscany tackled it, Naples nibbled it, Rome refused it, Austria accused it, Soldiers sus- pected it, Jesuits jobbed it. I composed a neat Oration, developing my inoffensive intentions in connection with this Bottle, and delivered it in an infinity of guard- houses, at a multitude of town gates, and on every drawbridge, angle, and rampart, of a complete system of fortifications. Fifty times a day, I got down to har- angue an infuriated soldiery about the Bottle. Through the filthy degradation of the abject and vile Roman States, I had as much difficulty in working my way with the Bottle, as if it had bottled up a complete sys- tem of heretical theology. In the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, a priest or a laz- Zarone, the shameless beggars of all four denominations incessantly pounced on the Bottle and made it a pretext for extorting money from me. Quires—quires do I say? Reams—of forms illegibly printed on whity-brown paper were filled up about the Bottle, and it was the subject of more stamping and sanding than I had ever seen before. In consequence of which haze of sand, º: it was always irregular, and always latent with dismal penalties of going back or not going for- ward, which were only to be abated by the silver cross- ing of a base hand, poked shirtless out of a ragged uni- form sleeve. Under all discouragements, however, I stuck to my Bottle, and held firm to my resolution that every drop of its contents should reach the Bottle's destination. The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of troubles on its own separate account. What corkscrews did I see the military power bring out against that Bot- tie; what gimlets, spikes, divining rods, gauges, and unknown tests and instruments! At Some places, they persisted in declaring that the wine must not be passed, without being opened and tasted; I, pleading to the contrary, used then to argue the question seated on the Bottle lest they should open it in spite of me. In the southern parts of Italy more violent shrieking, face- making, and gesticulating, greater vehemence of speech WOL. I. 290 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. and countenance and action, went on about that Bottle, than would attend fifty murders in a northern latitude. It raised important functionaries out of their beds, in the dead of night. I have known half-a-dozen military lanterns to disperse themselves at all points of a great sleeping Piazza, each lantern Summoning some official creature to get up, put on his cocked-hat instantly, and come and stop the Bottle. It was characteristic that while this innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty in getting from little town to town, Signor Mazzini and the fiery cross were traversing Italy from end to end. Still, I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English gentleman all of the olden time. The more the Bottle was interfered with, the stauncher I became (if possi- ble) in my first determination that my coutryman should have it delivered to him intact, as the man whom he had so nobly restored to life and liberty had delivered it to me. If ever I had been obstimate in my days— and I may have been, say, Once or twice—I was obsti- nate about the Bottle. But, I made it a rule always to keep a pocket full of small coin at its service, and never to be out of temper in its cause. Thus, I and the Bottle made our way. Once we had a break-down; rather a bad break-down, on a steep high place with the sea below us, on a tempestuous evening when it blew great guns. We were driving four wild horses abreast, Southern fashion, and there was some little difficulty in stopping them. I was outside, and not thrown off; but no words can describe my feelings when I saw the Bot- tle—travelling inside, as usual—burst the door open, and roll obesely out into the road. A blessed Bottle with a charmed existence, he took no hurt. and we re- paired damage, and went on triumphant. - A thousand represenations were made to me that the Bottle must be left at this place, or that, and called for again. I never yielded to one of them, and never parted from the Bottle, on any pretence, consideration, threat, or entreaty. I had no faith in any official receipt for the Bottle, and nothing would induce me to accept one. . These unmanageable politics at last brought me and the Bottle, still triumphant, to Genoa. There, I took a tender and reluctant leave of him for a few weeks, and consigned him to a trusty English captain, to be con- veyed to the Port of London by sea, THE ITALIAN PRISONER. 291 While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, I read the Shipping Intelligence as anxiously as if I had been an underwriter. There was some stormy Weather after I myself had got to England by way of Switzerland and France, and my mind greatly misgave me that the Bottle might be wrecked. At last to my great joy, I received notice of his safe arrival, and immediately went down to Saint Katharine's Docks, and found him in a state of honourable captivity in the . Custom House. * The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down, before the generous Englishman—probably it had been some- thing like vinegar when I took it up from Giovanni Carlavero—but not a drop of it was spilled or gone. And the Englishman told me, with much emotion in his face and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed to him so sweet and sound. And long after- wards, the Bottle graced his table. And the last time I saw him in this world that misses him, he took me aside in a crowd, to say, with his amiable smile : ‘‘We were talking of you only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had been there, for I had some Claret up in Carlavero's Bottle.” CHAPTER XXIX. T H E S H O R T TIM E R S . "Wºº so many yards of this Covent-garden lodging of mine, as within so many yards of Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, the Prisons, the Courts of Justice, all the Institutions that govern the land, I can find—must find, whether I will or no—in the open streets, shame- ful instances of neglect of children, intolerable tolera- tion of the engenderment of paupers, idlers, thieves, races of wretched and destructive cripples both in body and mind, a misery to themselves, a misery to the community, a disgrace to civilisation, and an outrage on Christianity. I know it to be a fact as easy of demonstration as any sum in any of the elementary rules of arithmetic, that if the State would begin its 292 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. work and duty at the beginning, and would with the strong hand take those children out of the streets, while they are yet children, and wisely train them, it would make them a part of England’s glory, not its shame— of England’s strength, not its weakness—would raise good soldiers and sailors, and good citizens, and many great men, out of the seeds of its criminal population. Yet I go on bearing with the enormity as if it were nothing, and I go on reading the Parliamentary Debates as if they were something, and I concern myself far more about one railway-bridge across a public thorough- fare, than about a dozen generations of scrofula, ignor- ance, wickedness, prostitution, poverty, and felony. I can slip out at my door, in the small hours after any midnight, and, in one circuit of the purlieus of Covent- garden Market, can behold a state of infancy and youth, as vile as if a Bourbon sat upon the English throne; a great police force looking on with authority to do no more than worry and hunt the dreadful vermin into corners, and there leave them. Within the length of a few streets I can find a workhouse, mismanaged with that dull short-sighted obstinacy that its greatest opportunities as to the children it receives are lost, and yet not a farthing saved to any one. But the wheel goes round and round, and round; and because it goes º-so I am told by the politest authorities—it goes well.” Thus I reflected, one day in the Whitsun week last past, as I floated down the Thames among the bridges, looking—not inappropriately—at the drags that were hanging up at certain dirty stairs to hook the drowned out, and at the numerous conveniences provided to facilitate their tumbling in. My object in that uncom- mercial journey called up another train of thought, and it ran as follows: “When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder by what secret understanding our attention began to wander when we had pored over our books for some hours. I wonder by what ingenuity we brought on that confused state of mind when sense became nonsense, when figures wouldn’t work, when dead languages wouldn’t construe, when live languages wouldn’t be spoken, when memory wouldn’t come, when dulness and vacancy wouldn’t go. I cannot THE SHORT TIMERs. 393 remember that we ever conspired to be sleepy after dinner, or that we ever particularly wanted to be stupid, and to have flushed faces and hot beating heads, or to find blank hopelessness and obscurity this afternoon in what would become perfectly clear and bright in the freshness of to-morrow morning. We suffered for these things, and they made us miserable enough. Neither do I remember that we ever bound ourselves by any secret oath or other solemn obligation, to find the seats getting too hard to be set upon after a certain time; or to have intolerable twitches in our legs, ren- dering us aggressive and malicious with those members; or to be troubled with a similar uneasiness in our elbows, attended with fistic consequences to our neighbours; or to carry two pounds of lead in the chest, four pounds in the head, and several active blue-bottles in each ear. Yet, for certain, we suffered under those distresses, and were always charged at for labouring under them, as if we had brought them on, of our own deliberate act and deed. As to the mental portion of them being my own fault in my own case—I should like to ask any well-trained and experienced teacher, not to say pys- chologist. And as to the physical portion—I should like to ask PROFESSOR OWEN.” - It happened that I had a small bundle of papers with me, on what is called “The Half-Time System ’’ in schools. Referring to one of those papers I found that the indefatigable MR. CHADWICK had been before- hand with me and had already asked Professor Owen: who had handsomely replied that I was not to blame, but that, being troubled with a skeleton, and having been constituted according to certain natural laws, I and my skeleton were unfortunately bound by those laws—even in school—and had comported ourselves accordingly. Much comforted by the good Professor's being on my side, I read on to discover whether the indefatigable Mr. Chadwick had taken up the mental part of my afflictions. I found that he had, and that he had gained on my behalf, SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE, SIR DAVID WILKIE, SIR WALTER SCOTT, and the common sense of mankind. For which I beg Mr. Chadwick, if this should meet his eye, to accept my warm acknowl. edgments. tip to that time I had retained a misgiving that the 294 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. . seventy unfortunates of whom I was one, must have been, without knowing it, leagued together by the spirit of evil in a sort of perpetual Guy Fawkes Plot, to grope about in vaults with dark lanterns after a cer- tain period of continuous study. But now the misgiving vanished, and I floated on with a quieted mind to see the Half-Time System in action. For that was the purpose of my journey, both by steamboat on the Thames, and by very dirty railway on the shore. To which last institution, I beg to recommend the legal use of coke as engine-fuel, rather than the illegal use of coal; the recommendation is quite disinterested, for I was most liberally supplied with small coal on the journey, for which no charge was made. I had not only my eyes, nose, and ears filled, but my hat, and all my pockets, and my pocket-book, and my watch. The V. D. S. C. R. C. (or Very Dirty and Small Coal Railway Company) delivered me close to my destina- tion, and I soon found the Half-Time System estab- lished in spacious premises, and freely placed at my convenience and disposal. - - What would I see first of the Half-Time System? I chose Military Drill. “Atten—tion!” Instantly a hundred boys stood forth in the paved yard as one boy; bright, quick, eager, steady, watchful for the look of command, instant and ready for the word. Not only was there complete precision—complete accord to the eye and to the ear—but an alertness in the doing of the thing which deprived it, curiously, of its monotonous or mechanical character. There was perfect uni- formity, and yet an individual spirit and emulation. No spectator could doubt that the boys liked it. With non-commissioned officers varying from a yard to a yard and a half high, the result could not possibly have been attained otherwise. They marched, and counter-marched, and formed in line and square company and single file and double file, and per- formed a variety of evolutions; all most admirably. In respect of an air of enjoyable understanding of what they were about, which seems to be forbidden to English soldiers, the boys might have been small French troops. When they were dismissed and the broadsword exercise, limited to a much smaller number, succeeded, the boys who had no part in that new drill | THE SHORT TIMERS. 295 either looked on attentively, or disported themselves in a gymnasium hard by. The steadiness of the broad- sword boys on their short legs, and the firmness with which they sustained the different positions, was truly remarkable. The broadsword exercise over, suddenly there was great excitement and a rush. Naval Drill ! In a corner of the ground stood a decked mimic ship, with real masts, yards, and sails—mainmast seventy feet high. . At the word of command from the Skipper of this ship—a mahogany-faced Old Salt, with the in- dispensable quid in his cheek, the true nautical roll, and all wonderfully complete—the rigging was covered with a Swarm of boys : one, the first to spring into the shrouds, Outstripping all the others, and resting on the track of the main-topmast in no time. And now we stood out to sea, in a most amazing man- ner; the Skipper himself, the whole crew, the Uncom- mercial, and all hands present, implicitly believing that there was not a moment to lose, that the wind had that instant chopped round and sprung up fair, and that we were away on a voyage round the world. Get all sail upon her! With a will, my lads! Lay out upon the main- yard there! Look alive at the weather earring ! Cheery, my boys! Let go the sheet now! Stand by at the braces, you! With a will, aloft there! Belay, star- board watch! Fifer! Come aft, fifer, and give 'em a tune ! Forthwith, springs up fifer, fife in hand—smallest boy ever seen—big lump on temple, having lately fallen down on a paving-stone—gives 'em a tune with all his might and main. Hooroar, fifer! With a will, my lads! Tip ’em a livelier one, fifer! Fifer tips 'em a livelier One, and excitement increases. Shake 'em out, my lads! Well done! There you have her | Pretty, pretty! Every rag upon her she can carry, wind right astarn, i. ship cutting through the water fifteen knots an Our ! tº At this favourable moment of her voyage, I gave the alarm “A man overboard!” (on the gravel), but he was immediately recovered, none the worse. Presently, I observed the Skipper overboard, but forbore to mention it, as he seemed in no wise disconcerted by the acci- dent. Indeed, I soon came to regard the Skipper as an amphibious creature, for he was so perpetually plunging 296 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. overboard to look up at the hands aloft, that he was oftener in the bosom of the ocean than on deck. His pride in his crew on those occasions was delightful, and the conventional unintelligibility of his orders in the ears of uncommercial land-lubbers and loblolly boys, though they were always intelligible to the crew, was hardly less pleasant. But we couldn’t expect to go on in this way for ever; dirty weather came on, and then worse weather, and when we least expected it we got into tremendous difficulties. Screw loose in the chart perhaps—something certainly wrong somewhere—but here we were with breakers ahead, my lads, driving head on, slap on a lee shore! The Skipper broached this terrific announcement in such great agitation, that the small fifer, not fifeing now, but standing looking on near the wheel with his fife under his arm, seemed for the moment quite unboyed, though he speedily recovered his presence of mind. In the trying circumstances that ensued, the Skipper and the crew proved worthy of one another. The Skipper got dreadfully hoarse, but other- wise was master of the situation. The man at the wheel did wonders; all hands (except the fifer) were turned up to wear ship; and I observed the fifer, when we were at our greatest extremity, to refer to Some document in his waistcoat-pocket, which I conceived to be his will. I think she struck. I was not myself conscious of any collision, but I saw the Skipper so very often washed overboard and back again, that I could only impute it to the beating of the ship. I am not enough of a Sea- man to describe the manoeuvres by which we were saved, but they made the Skipper very hot (French polishing his mahogany face) and the crew very nimble, and succeeded to a marvel; for, within a few minutes of the first alarm, we had wore ship and got her off, and were all a-tauto–which I felt very grateful for : not that I knew what it was, but that I perceived that we had not been all a-tauto lately. Land now appeared on our weather-bow, and we shaped our course for it, having the wind abeam, and frequently changing the man at the helm, in order that every man might have his spell. We worked into harbour under prosperous circumstances, and furled our sails, and Squared Our yards, and made all ship-shape and handsome, and so our voyage ended. When I complimented the Skipper THE SHORT TIMERs. 29% at parting On his exertions and those of his gallant crew, he informed me that the latter were provided for the worst, all hands being taught to swim and dive; and he added that the able seaman at the main-topmast truck especially, could dive as deep as he could go high. The next adventure that befell me in my visit to the Short-Timers, was the sudden apparition of a military band. I had been inspecting the hammocks of the crew of the good ship, when I saw with astonishment that Several musical instruments, brazen and of great size, appeared to have suddenly developed two legs, each, and to be trotting about a yard. And my astonishment was heightened when I observed a large drum, that had previously been leaning helpless against a wall, taking up a stout position ori four legs. Approaching this drum and looking over it, I found two boys behind it (it was too much for One), and then I found that each of the brazen instruments had brought out a boy, and was going to discourse sweet sounds. The boys—not omit- ting the fifer, now playing a new instrument—were dressed in neat uniform, and stood up in a circle at their music-stands, like any other Military Band. They played a march or two, and then we had Cheer boys, Cheer, and then we had Yankee Doodle, and we finished, as in loyal duty bound, with God Save the Queen. The band’s proficiency was perfectly wonderful and it was not at all wonderful that the whole body corporate of Short-Timers listened with faces of the liveliest interest and pleasure. What happened next among the Short-Timers? As if the band had blown me into a great class-room out of their brazen tubes, in a great class-room I found myself now, with the whole choral force of Short-Timers sing- ing the praises of a summer's day to the harmonium, and my small but highly-respected friend the fifer blazing away vocally, as if he had been saving up his wind for the last twelvemonth; also the whole crew of the good ship Nameless swarming up and down the scale as if they had never swarmed up and down the rigging. This done, we threw our whole power into God bless the Prince of Wales, and blessed his Royal Highness to such an extent that, for my own Uncom- mercial part, I gasped again when it was over. The moment this was done, we formed, with Surpassing * 298 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. freshness, into hollow squares, and fell to work at oral lessons, as if we never did, and had never thought of doing, anything else. Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals into which the Uncommercial Traveller would have been betrayed but for a discreet reticence, coupled with an air of absolute wisdom on the part of that artful person- age. Take the square of five, multiply it by fifteen, divide it by three, deduct eight from it, add four dozen to it, give me the result in pence, and tell me how many eggs I could get for it at three farthings apiece. The problem is hardly stated, when a dozen Small boys pour out answers. Some wide, some very nearly right, some worked as far as they go with such accuracy, as at once to show what link of the chain has been dropped in the hurry. For the moment, none are quite right; but be- hold a labouring spirit beating the buttons on its corporeal waistcoat, in a process of internal calcula- tion, and knitting an accidental bump on its corporeal forehead in a concentration of mental arithmetic! It is my honourable friend (if he will allow me to call him so) the fifer. With right arm eagerly extended in token of being inspired with an answer, and with right leg foremost, the fifer solves the mystery: then recalls both arm and leg, and with bump in ambush awaits the next poser. Take the square of three, multiply it by seven, divide it by four, add fifty to it, take thirteen from it, multiply it by two, double it, give me the result in pence, and say how many halfpence. Wise as the serpent is the four feet of performer on the nearest approach to that instrument, whose right arm instantly appears, and quenches this arithmetical fire. Tell me something about Great Britain, tell me something about its principal productions, tell me something about its ports, tell me something about its seas and rivers, tell me something about coal, iron, cotton, timber, tin, and turpentine. The hollow square bristles with ex- tened right arms; but ever faithful to fact is the fifer, ever wise as the serpent is the performer on that instru- ment, ever prominently buoyant and brilliant are all members of the band. I observe the player of the cymbals to dash at a sounding answer now and then rather than not cut in at all; but I take that to be na the way of his instrument. All these questions, and THE SHORT TIMERS. 299 many such, are put on the spur of the moment, and by One who has never examined these boys. The Uncom- mercial, invited to add another, falteringly demands how many birthdays a man born on the twenty-ninth of February will have had on completing his fiftieth year? A general perception of trap and pitfall in- stantly arises, and the fifer is seen to retire behind the Corduroys of his next neighbours, as perceiving special ` necessity for collecting himself and communing with his mind. Meanwhile, the wisdom of the serpent sug- gests that the man will have had only one birthday in all that time, for how can any man have more than one, seeing that he is born once and dies once? The blush- ing Uncommercial stands corrected, and amends the formula. Pondering ensues, two or three wrong answers are offéred, and Cymbals strikes up “Six!” but doesn’t know why. Then modestly emerging frºm his Academic Grove of corduroys appears the fiferº right arm ex- tended, right leg foremost, bump irradiated. “Twelve, and two Over!” - The feminine Short-Timers passed a similar exam- ination, and very creditably too. Would have done better perhaps, with a little more geniality on the part Of their pupil–teacher; for a cold eye, my young friend, and a hard abrupt manner, are not by any means the powerful engines that your innocence supposes them to be. Both girls and boys wrote excellently, from copy and dictation; both could cook; both could mend their own clothes; both could clean up everything about them in an orderly and skilful way, thesgirls having womanly household knowledge superadded. Order and method began in the songs of the Infant School which I visited likewise, and they were even in their dwarf degree to be found in the Nursery, where the Uncom- mercial walking-stick was carried off with acclama-, tions, and where “the Doctor,”—a medical gentleman . of two, who took his degree on the night when he was ; found at an apothecary’s door—did the honours of the ' establishment with great urbanity and gaiety. These have long been excellent schools; long before the days of the Short-Time. I first saw them, twelve or fifteen years ago. But since the introduction of the Short-Time system it has been proved here that eighteen hours a week of book-learning are more profitable than 300 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. * thirty-six, and that the pupils are far áuicker and brighter than of yore. The good influences of music on the whole body of children have likewise been sur- prisingly proved. Obviously another of the immense advantages of the Short-Time system to the cause of good education is the great diminution of its cost, and of the period of time over which it extends. The last is a most important consideration, as poor parents are always impatient to profit by their children’s labour. It will be objected : Firstly, that this is all very well, but special local advantages and special selection of children must be necessary to such success, Secondly, that this is all very well, but must be very expensive. Thirdly, that this is all very well, but we have no proof of the results, sir, no proof. On the first head of local advantages and special selection. Would Limehouse Hole be picked out for the site of a Chºtiren’s Paradise? Or would the legiti- mate and illegitimate pauper children of the long-shore population of such a riverside district, be regarded as unusually favourable specimens to work with? Yet these schools are at Limehouse, and are the Pauper Schools of the Stepney Pauper Union. On the second head of expense. Would sixpence a week be considered a very large cost for the education of each pupil, including all salaries of teachers and rations of teachers? But supposing the cost were not sixpence a week, not fivepence? It is FOURPENCE- HALFPENNY. . On the third head of no proof, sir, no proof. Is there any, proof in the facts that Pupil Teachers more in number, and more highly qualified, have been produced here under, the jº, system than under the Long- Time system. That the Short-Timers, in a writing competition, beat the Long-Timers of a first-class National School 2 That the sailor-boys are in such de- mand for merchant ships, that whereas, before they were trained, 10l. premium used to be given with each boy—too often to some greedy brute of a drunken skipper, who disappeared before the term of apprentice- ship was out, if the ill-used boy didn't—captains of the best character now take these boys more than willingly, with no premium at all? That they are also much esteemed in the Royal Navy, which they prefer, “be- THE SHORT TIMERS. 301 cause everything is so neat and clean and orderly”? Or, is there any proof in Naval captains writing, “Your [ittle fellows are all that I can desire?” Or, is there any proof in such testimony as this : “The owner of a vessel called at the school, and said that as his ship was going down Channel on her last voyage, with one of the boys from the school on board, the pilot said, “It would be as well if the royal were lowered; I wish it were down.” Without waiting for any orders, and unobserved by the pilot, the lad, whom they had taken on board from the school, instantly mounted the mast and lowered the royal, and at the next glance of the pilot to the masthead, he perceived that the sail had been let down. He exclaimed, “Who’s done that job?’ The owner, who was on board, said “That was the little fellow whom I put on board two days ago.” The pilot immediately said, “Why, where could he have been brought up?’ That boy had never seen the sea or been on a real ship before ”? Or, is there any proof in these boys being in greater demand for Regimental Bands than the Union can meet? Or, in ninety-eight of them having gone into Regimental Bands in three years? Or, in twelve. of them being in the band of one regi- ment? Or, in the colonel of that regiment writing, “We want six more boys; they are excellent lads”? Or, in one of the boys having risen to be band-corporal in the same regiment? Or, in employers of all kinds chorusing, “Give us drilled boys, for they are prompt, obedient, and punctual”? Other proofs I have myself beheld with these Uncommercial eyes, though I do not regard myself as having a right to relate in what social positions they have seen respected men and women who were once pauper children of the Stepney Union. Into what admirable soldiers others of these boys have the capabilities for being turned, I need not point out. Many of them are always ambitious of military service; and once upon a time when an old boy came back to see the old place, a cavalry soldier all complete, with his spurs on, such a yearning broke out to get into cavalry regiments and wear those sublime ap- pendages, that it was one of the greatest excitements ever known in the school. The girls make excellent domestic servants, and at certain periods come back, a score or two at a time, to see the old building, and to 302 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. take tea with the old teachers, and to hear the old band, and see the old ship with her masts towering up above the neighbouring roofs and chimneys. As to the physical health of these schools, it is so exceptionally remarkable (simply because the sanitary regulations are as good as the other educational arrangements), that when MR. TUFNELL, the Inspector, first stated it in a report, he was supposed, in spite of his high char- acter, to have been betrayed into some extraordinary mistake or exageration. In the moral health of these schools—where corporal punishment is unknown— Truthfulness stands high. When the ship was first erected, the boys were forbidden to go aloft, until the nets, which are now always there, were stretched as a precaution against accidents. Certain boys, in their eagerness, disobeyed the injunction, got out of window in the early daylight, and climbed to the masthead. One boy unfortunately fell, and was killed. There was no clue to the others; but all the boys were assembled, and the chairman of the Board addressed them. “I promise nothing; you see what a dreadful thing has happened; you know what a grave offence it is that has led to such a consequence; I cannot say what will be done with the offenders; but, boys, you have been trained here, above all things, to respect the truth. I want the truth. Who are the delinquents?” Instantly, the whole number of boys concerned, separated from the rest, and stood out. Now, the head and heart of that gentleman (it is needless to say, a good head and a good heart) have been deeply interested in these schools for many years, and are so still; and the establishment is very fortu- nate in a most admirable master, and moreover the schools of the Stepney Union cannot have got to be what they are, without the Stepney Board of Guardians having been earnest and humane men, strongly imbued with a sense of their responsibility. But what one set of men can do in this wise, another set of men can do; and this is a noble example to all other Bodies and Unions, and a noble example to the State. Followed, and enlarged upon by its enforcement on bad parents, it would clear London streets of the most terrible objects they Smite the sight with—myriads of little children who awfully reverse Our Saviour's words, and - A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST 303 º#. of the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom OI E16211. - z Clear the public streets of such shame, and the public conscience of such reproach? Ah! Almost prophetic, surely, the child’s jingle, When will that be, Say the bells of Step-ney! —l CHAPTER XXX. A SMAT,L STAR IN THE EAST. - T HAD been looking, yesternight, through the famous “Dance of Death,” and to-day the grim old wood- cuts arose in my mind with the new significance of a ghastly monotony not to be found in the original. The weird skeleton rattled along the streets before me, and struck fiercely; but it was never at the pains of assum- ing a disguise. It played on no dulcimer here, was crowned with no flowers, waved no plume, minced in no flowing robe or train, lifted no wine-cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted no gold. It was simply a bare, gaunt, famished skeleton, slaying his way along. The borders of Ratcliff and Stepney, eastward of London, and giving on the impure river, were the scene of this uncompromising dance of death, upon a drizzling November day. A squalid maze of Streets, courts, and alleys of miserable houses let out in single rooms. A wilderness of dirt, rags, and hunger. A mud-desert, chiefly inhabited by a tribe from whom employment has departed, or to whom it comes but fitfully and rarely. They are not skilled mechanics in any wise. They are but labourers, dock labourers, water-side labourers, coal-porters, ballast-heavers, such like hewers of wood and drawers of water. But they have come into exist- emce, and they propagate their wretched race. One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed to play off here. It had stuck election-bills on the walls, which the wind and rain had deteriorated into suitable rags. It had even summed up the state of the poll, in chalk, on the shutters of one ruined house. It 304 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. adjured the free and independent starvers to vote for Thisman and vote for Thatman; not to plump, as they valued the state of parties and the national prosperity (both of great importance to them, I think); but, by returning Thisman and Thatman, each naught without the other, to compound a glorious and immortal whole. Surely the skeleton is nowhere more cruelly ironical in the original monkish idea! - Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of Thisman and Thatman, and of the public blessing called Party, for staying the degeneracy, physical and moral, of many thousands (who shall say how many?) of the English race; for devising employment useful to . the community for those who want but to work and live; for equalising rates, cultivating waste lands, facilitat- ing emigration, and, above all things, saving and util- ising the oncoming generations, and thereby changing ever-growing national weakness into strength: ponder- ing in my mind, I say, these hopeful exertions, I turned down a narrow street to look into a house or two. It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side. Nearly all the outer door of the houses stood open. I took the first entry, and knocked at a parlour-door. Might I come in? I might, if I plased, sur. The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long strips of wood, about some wharf or barge; and they had just now been thrust into the otherwise empty grate to make two iron pots boil. There was some fish in one, and there were some potatoes in the other. The flare of the burning wood enabled me to see a table, and a broken chair or so, and some old cheap crockery ornaments about the chimney-piece. It was not until I had spoken with the women a few minutes, that I saw a horrible brown heap on the floor in a corner, which, but for previous experience in this dis- mal wise, I might not have suspected to be “the bed.” There was something thrown upon it; and I asked what that was. - ‘‘’Tis the poor craythur that stays here, sur; and ’tis very bad she is, and 'tis very bad she's been this long time, and ’tis better she’ll never be, and ’tis slape she does all day, and ’tis wake she does all night, and ’tis the lead, sur.” º “The what?” A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 305 “The lead, Sur. Sure 'tis the lead-mills, where the Women gets took on at eighteen-pence a day, Sur, when they makes application early enough, and is lucky and wanted; and ’tis lead-pisoned she is, sur, and Some of them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; and ’tis all according to the constitooshun, sur, and some constitooshuns is strong, and some is weak; and her constitooshun is lead-pisoned, bad as can be, Sur, and her brain is coming out at her ear, and it hurts her dreadful; and that’s what it is, and niver no more, and niver no less, sur.” The sick young woman moaning here, the speaker bent over her, took a bandage from her head, and threw open a back door to let in the daylight upon it, from the smallest and most miserable back-yard I ever saw. “That’s what cooms from her, sur, being lead- pisoned; and it comes from her night and day, the poor, sick craythur; and the pain of it is dreadful; and God he knows that my husband has walked the sthreets these four days, being a labourer, and is walk- ing them now, and is ready to work, and no work for him, and no fire and no food but the bit in the pot, and no more than ten shillings in a fortnight: God be good to us! and it is poor we are, and dark it is and could it is indeed.” Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for my self-denial, if I saw fit, I had resolved that I would give nothing in the course of these visits. I did this to try the people. I may state at once that my closest observation could not detect any indication whatever of an expectation that I would give money: they were grateful to be talked to about their miserable affairs, and sympathy was plainly a comfort to them; but they neither asked for money in any case, nor showed the least trace of surprise or disappointment o resentment at my giving none. - The woman’s married daughter had by this time come down from her room on the floor above, to join in the conversation. She herself had been to the lead-mills very early that morning to be “took on,” but had not succeeded. She had four children; and her husband, also a water-side labourer, and then out seeking work, seemed in no better case as to finding it than her WOL. I. 20 - 306 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. father. She was English, and by nature of a buxom figure and cheerful. Both in her poor dress and in her mother's there was an effort to keep up some appear- ance of neatness. She knew all about the sufferings of the unfortunate invalid, and all about the lead-poison- ing, and how the symptoms came on, and how they grew, having often seen them. The very smell when you stood inside the door of the works was enough to knock you down, she said; yet she was going back again to get “took on.” What could she do? Better be ulcerated and paralysed for eighteen-pence a day, while it lasted, than see the childen starve. A dark and squalid cupboard in this room, touching the back door and all manner of offence, had been for some time the sleeping place of the sick young woman. But the nights being now wintry, and the blankets and coverlets “gone to the leaving shop,” she lay all night where she lay all day, and was lying then. The woman of the room, her husband, this most miserable patient, and two others, lay on the one brown heap together for warmth. : © “God bless you, sir, and thank you!” were the part- ing words from these people, -gratefully spoken too, with which I left this place. Some streets away, I tapped at another parlour-door on another ground-floor. Looking in, I found a man, his wife, and four children, sitting at a washing-stool by way of table, at their dinner of bread and infused tea-leaves. There was a very scanty cinderous fire in the grate by which they sat; and there was a tent bed- stead in the room with a bed upon it and a coverlet. The man did not rise when I went in, nor during my stay, but civilly inclined his head on my pulling off my hat, and, in answer to my inquiry whether I might ask him a question or two, said, “Certainly.” There being a window at each end of this room, back and front, it might have been ventilated; but it was shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and was very sickening. The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose and stood at her husband's elbow; and he glanced up at her as if for help. It soon appeared that he was rather deaf. . He was a slow, simple fellow of about thirty. “What was he by trade?” - “Gentleman asks what are you by trade, John?” A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 30% “I am a boilermaker;” looking about him with an exceedingly perplexed air, as if for a boiler that had tlnaccountably vanished. “He ain’t a mechanic, you understand, sir,” the wife put in: “he’s only a labourer.’ “Are you in work?” He looked j. at his wife again. “Gentleman says are you in work, John?” “In work!” cried this forlorn boilermaker, staring aghast at his wife, and then wºrking his vision's way very slowly round to me: “Lord, no!” “Ah, he ain’t indeed!” said the poor woman, shaking her head, as she looked at the four children in succes- Sion, and then at him. +. “Work!” said the boilermaker, still seeking that evaporated boiler, first in my countenance, then in the air, and then in the features of his second son at his knee: “I wish I was in work! I haven’t had more than a day’s work to do this three weeks.” “How have you lived?” - A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the would-be boilermaker, as he stretched out the short sleeve of his threadbare canvas jacket, and replied, pointing her out, “On the work of the wife.” g I forget where boilermaking had gone to, or where he Supposed, it had gone to; but he added some resigned information on that head, coupled with an expression of his belief that it was never coming back. The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very re- markable. She did slop-work; made pea-jackets. She produced the pea-jacket then in hand, and spread it out upon the bed,—the only piece of furniture in the room On which to spread it. She showed how much of it she made, and how much was afterwards finished off by the machine. According to her calculation at the moment, deducting what her trimming cost her, she got for making a pea-jacket tempence half-penny, and she could make one in something less than two days. “But, you see, it come to her through two hands, and of course it didn’t come through the second hand for nothing. Why did it come through the second hand at all? Why, this way. The second hand took the risk of the given-out work, you see. If she had money enough to pay the security deposit, call it two pound,-she 308 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. could get the work from the first hand, and so the second would not have to be deducted for. But, having no money at all, the second hand come in and took its profit, and so the whole worked down to tenpence half- penny. Having explained all this with great intelli- gence, even with some little pride, and without a whine or murmur, she folded her work again, sat down by her husband’s side at the Washing-stool, and resumed her dinner of dry bread. Mean as the meal was, on the bare board, with its old gallipots for cups, and what not other sordid makeshifts; shabby as the woman was in dress, and toning down towards the Bosjesman colour, with want of nutriment and washing, there was posi- tively a dignity in her, as the family anchor just hold- ing the poor shipwrecked boilermaker’s bark. When I left the room, the boilermaker’s eyes were slowly turned towards her, as if his last hope of ever again seeing that vanished boiler lay in her direction. These people had never applied for parish relief but once; and that was when the husband met with a dis- abling accident at his work. Not many doors from here, I went into a room on the first floor. The woman apologised for its being in “an untidy mess.” . The day was Saturday, and she was boiling the children’s clothes in a saucepan on the hearth. There was nothing else into which she could have put them. There was no crockery, or tinware, or tub, or bucket. There was an old gallipot or two, and there was a broken bottle or so, and there were some broken boxes for seats. The last small scraping of coals left was raked together in a corner of the floor. There were some rags in an open cupboard, also on the floor. In a corner of the room was a crazy old French bedstead, with a man lying on his back upon it in a ragged pilot jacket, and rough oil-skin fantail hat. The room was perfectly black. It was difficult to be- lieve, at first, that it was not purposely coloured black, the walls were so begrimed. As I stood opposite the woman boiling the children’s clothes, she had not even a piece of Soap to wash them with, and apologising for her Occupation, I could take in all these things without appearing to notice them, and could even correct my inventory. I had missed, at the first glance, some half a pound of bread in the | A SMALL-STAR IN THE EAST. 309 otherwise º Safe, an old red ragged crinoline hanging on the handle of the door by which I had en- tered, and certain fragments of rusty iron scattered on the floor, which looked like broken tools and a piece of Stove-pipe. A. child stood looking on. On the box nearest to the fire sat two younger children; one a delicate and pretty little creature, whom the other sometimes kissed. This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was degenerating to the Bosjesman complexion. But her figure, and the ghost of a certain vivacity about her, and the spectre of a dimple in her cheek, carried my memory Strangely back to the old days of the Adelphi Theatre, London, when Mrs. Fitzwilliam was the friend of Victorine. “May I ask you what your husband is?” “He’s a coal-porter, sir,”—with a glance and a sigh towards the ...; ‘‘Is he out of work?” . “Oh, yes, sir! and work’s at all times very, very scanty with him; and now he's laid up.” “It’s my legs,” said the man upon the bed. “I’ll un- roll 'em.” And immediately began. “Have you any older children?” “I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I have a son that does what he can. She's at her work now, and he's trying for work.” “Do they live here?” “They sleep here. They can’t afferd to pay more rent, and so they come here at night. The rent is very hard upon us. It's rose upon us too, now, sixpence a week, -on account of these new changes in the law about the rates. We are a week behind; the landlord’s been shaking and rattling at that door frightfully; he says he’ll turn us out. I don’t know what’s to come Of it.” The man upon the bed ruefully interposed, “Here's my legs. The skin's broke, besides the swelling. I have had a many kicks, working, one way and another.” He looked at his legs (which were much discoloured and misshapen) for a while, and then appearing to re- Imember that they were not popular with his family, rolled them up again as if they were something in the nature of maps or plans that were not wanted to be re- 310 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. ferred to, lay hopelessly down on his back once more with his fantail hat over his face, and stirred not. “Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cup- board?” “Yes,” replied the woman. ‘‘ With the Children?” “Yes. We have to get together for warmth. We have little to cover us.” “Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread I see there?” “Nothing. And we had the rest of the loaf for our ºfas, with water. I don’t know what’s to come Of it.” “Have you no prospect of improvement?” - “If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he’ll bring it home. Then we shall have something to eat to-night, and may be able to do something towards the rent. If not, I don’t know what’s to come of it.” “This is a sad state of things.” “Yes, sir; it’s a hard, hard life. Take care of the stairs as you go, sir, –they’re broken,_and good day, Sir!” - These people had a mortal dread of entering the work- house, and received no out-of-door relief. Y. In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very decent woman with five children, the last a baby, and she herself a patient of the parish doctor, to whom, her husband being in the hospital, the Union allowed for the support ef herself and family, four shillings a week and five loaves. I suppose when Thisman, M. P., and Thatman, M. P., and the Public-blessing Party, lay their heads together in course of time, and come to an equalisation of rating, she may go down to the dance of death to the tune of sixpence more. I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I could not bear the contemplation of the children. Such heart as I had summoned to Sustain me against the miseries of the adults failed me when I looked at the children. I saw how young they were, how hungry, how serious and still. I thought of them, sick and dying in those lairs. I think of them dead without anguish; but to think of them so suffering and so dying quite unmanned me. Down by the river's bank in Ratcliff, I was turning A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 311 upward by a side-street, therefore, to regain the railway, when my eyes rested on the inscription across the road, “East London Children’s Hospital.” I could scarcely have seen an inscription better suited to my frame of mind; and I went across and went straight in. Ifound the children’s hospital established in an old sail loft or storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the simplest means. There were trap-doors in the floors, where goods had been hoisted up and down; heavy feet and heavy weights had started every knot in the well- trodden planking : inconvenient bulks and beams and awkward staircases perplexed my passage through the wards. But I found it airy, sweet, and clean. In its seven and thirty beds I saw but little beauty; for star- vation, in the second or third generation takes a pinched look : but I saw the sufferings both of infancy and child- hood tenderly assuaged; I heard the little patients answering to pet playful names, the light touch of a delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms for me to pity; and the claw-like little hands, as she did so, twined themselves lovingly around her wedding-ring. One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael's angels. The tiny head was bandaged for water on the brain; and it was suffering with acute bronchitis too, and made from time to time a plaintive, though not impatient or complaining, little sound. The Smooth curve of the cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its condensation of infantine beauty, and the large bright eyes were most lovely. It happened as I stopped at the foot of the bed, that these eyes rested upon mine with that wistful expression of wondering thoughtfulness which we all know sometimes in very little children. They remained fixed on mine, and never turned from me while I stood there. When the utterance of that plaintive sound shook the little form, the gaze still re- mained unchanged, I felt as though the child implored me to tell the story of the little hospital in which it was sheltered to any gentle heart I could address. Laying my world-worn hand upon the little unmarked clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a silent promise that I would do so. A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have bought and fitted up this building for its present noble use, and have quietly settled themselves in it as 312 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. its médical officers and directors. Both have had con- siderable practical experience of medicine and surgery; he as house-Surgeon of a great London hospital; she as a very earnest student, tested by severe examination, and also as a nurse of the sick poor during the preva- lence of cholera. With every qualification to lure them away, with youth and accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have no response in any breast near them, close begirt by every repulsive circumstance inseparable from such a neighbourhood, there they dwell. They live in the hospital itself, and their rooms are on its first floor. Sitting at their dinner-table, they could hear the cry of one of the children in pain. The lady’s piano, drawing- materials, books, and other such evidences of refinement are as much a part of the rough place as the iron bed- steads of the little patients. They are put to shifts for room, like passengers on board ship. The dispenser of medicines (attracted to them not by self-interest, but by their Own magnetism and that of their cause) sleeps in a recess in the dining-room, and has his washing appa- ratus in the sideboard. - - - Their contented manner of making the best of the things around them, I found so pleasantly inseparable from their usefulness! Their pride in this partition that we put up ourselves, or in that partition that we took down, or in that other partition that we moved, or in the stove that was given us for the waiting-room, or in our nightly conversion of the little consulting-room into a smoking-room! Their admiration of the situation, if we could only get rid of its one objectionable inci- dent, the coal-yard at the back! “Our hospital carriage, presented by a friend, and very useful.” That was my presentation to a perambulator, for which a coach-house had been discovered in a corner down-stairs, just large enough to hold it. Coloured prints, in all stages of prep- aration for being added to those already decorating the wards, were plentiful; a charming wooden phenom- enon of a bird, with an impossible top-knot, who ducked his head when you set a counter weight going, had been inaugurated as a public statue that very morning; and trotting about among the beds on familiar terms with all the patients, was a comical mongrel dog, called Poodles. This comical dog (quite a tonic in him- A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 313 Self) was found characteristically starving at the door of the institution, and was taken in and fed, and has lived here ever since. An admirer of his mental en- dowments has presented him with a collar bearing the legend, “Judge not Poodles by external appearances.” He was merrily wagging his tail on a boy’s pillow when he made this modest appeal to me. - When this hospital was first opened, in January of the present year, the people could not possibly conceive but that somebody paid for the services rendered there; and were disposed to claim them as a right, and to find fault if out of temper. They soon came to understand the case better, and have much increased in gratitude. The mothers of the patients avail themselves very freely of the visiting rules; the fathers often on Sun- days. There is an unreasonable (but still, I think, touching and intelligible) tendency in the parents to take a child away to its wretched home, if on the point of death. One boy who had been thus carried off on a rainy night, when in a violent state of inflammation, and who had been afterwards brought back, had been recovered with exceeding difficulty; but he was a jolly boy, with a specially strong interest in his dinner, when I saw him. Insufficient food and unwholesome living are the main causes of disease among these small patients. So nourishment, cleanliness, and ventilation are the main remedies. Discharged patients are looked after, and invited to come and dine now and then; so are certain famishing creatures who were never patients. Both the lady and the gentleman are well acquainted, not only with the histories of the patients and their fami- lies, but with the characters and circumstances of great numbers of their neighbours: of these they keep a reg- ister. It is their common experience, that people, sinking down by inches into deeper and deeper poverty, will conceal it, even from them, if possible, unto the very last extremity. The nurses of this lospital are all young—ranging, say, from nineteen to four-and-twenty. They have even within these narrow limits, what many well- endowed hospitals would not give them, a comfortable room of their own in which to take their meals. It is a beautiful truth, that interest in the children and 314 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. sympathy with their sorrows bind these young women to their places far more strongly than any other con- sideration could. The best skilled of the nurses came originally from a kindred neighbourhood, almost as poor; and she knew how much the work was needed. She is a fair dressmaker. The hospital cannot pay her as many jº. in the year as there are months in it; and one day the lady regarded it as a duty to speak to her about her improving her prospects and following her trade. “No,” she said: she could never be so use- ful or so happy elsewhere any more; she must stay among the children. And she stays. One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing a baby-boy. Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to speak to her charge, a common, bullet-headed, frowning charge enough; lay- ing hold of his own nose with a slippery grasp, and staring very solemnly out of a blanket. The melting of the pleasant face into delighted smiles, as this young gentleman gave an unexpected kick, and laughed at me, was almost worth my previous pain. . An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called “The Children’s Doctor.” As I parted from my children’s doctor, now in question, I saw in his easy black necktie, in his loose buttoned black frock-coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in the very turn of his moustache, the exact realisation of the Paris artist’s ideal as it was presented on the stage. But no romancer that I know of has had the boldness to prefigure the life and home of this young husband and young wife in the Children’s Hospital in the east of London. I came away from Ratcliff by the Stepney railway station to the terminus at Fenchurch Street. Any One who will reverse that route may retrace my steps. CHAPTER XXXI. ABOARD SHIP. M | Y journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human-Interest Brothers have not slackened since I last reported them, but have kept me contin- ABOARD SHIP. 315 ually on the move. ... I remain in the same idle employ- ment. I never solicit an order, I never get any com- mission, I am the rolling stone that gathers no moss, unless any should by chance be found among these samples. * Some half a year ago, I found myself in my idlest, dreamiest, and least accountable condition altogether, on board ship, in the harbour of the city of New York, in the United States of America. Of all the good ships afloat, mine was the good steamship “RUSSIA,” CAPT. COOK, Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool, What more could I wish for. * I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage. My Salad-days, when I was green of visage and sea- sick, being gone with better things (and no worse), no coming event cast its shadow before. I might but a few moments previously have imitated Sterne, and said, ‘‘‘ And yet, methinks, Eugenius,’— laying my forefinger wistfully on his coat-sleeve, thus, —‘ and yet, methinks, Eugenius, ’tis but sorry work to part with thee, for what fresh fields, . . . my dear Eugenius, . . . can be fresher than thou art, and in what pastures new shall I find Eliza, or call her, Eugenius, if thou wilt, Annie P’”—I say I might have done this; but Eugenius was gone, and I hadn’t done it. I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, watching the working of the ship very slowly about, that she might head for England. It was high noon on a most brilliant day in April, and the beautiful bay was glorious and glowing. Full many a time, on shore there, had I seen the snow come down, down, down (itself like down), until it lay deep in all the ways of men, and particularly, as it seemed, in my way, for I had not gone dry-shod many hours for months. Within two or three days iast past had I watched the feathery fall setting in with the ardour of a new idea, instead of dragging at the skirts of a worn-out winter, and per- mitting glimpses of a fresh young spring. But a bright sun and a clear sky had melted the Snow in the great crucible of nature; and it had been poured out again that morning over sea and land, transformed into myriads of gold and silver sparks. The ship was fragrant with flowers. . Something of the old Mexican passion for flowers may have gradually 316 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, passed into North America, where flowers are luxuri- ously grown, and tastefully combined in the richest profusion ; but, be that as it may, Sugh gorgeous fare- wells in flowers had come on board, that the small officer’s cabin on deck, which I tenanted, bloomed over into the adjacent scuppers, and banks of other flowers that it couldn’t hold made a garden of the unoccupied tables in the passengers’ saloon. These delicious scents of the shore, mingling with the fresh airs of the sea, made the atmosphere a dreamy, an enchanting one. And so, with the watch aloft setting all the sails, and w?th the screw below revolving at a mighty rate, and occasionally giving the ship an angry shake for resist- ing, I fell into my idlest ways, and lost myself. As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some other entity even more mysterious, was a matter I was far too lazy to look into. What did it signify to me if it were I? or to the more mysterious entity, if it were he? Equally as to the remembrances that drowsily floated by me, or by him, why ask when or where the things happened? Was it not enough that they befell at some time, somewhere? There was that assisting at the church service on board another steamship, one Sunday, in a stiff breeze. Perhaps on the passage out. No matter. . Pleasant to hear the ship's bells go as like church bells as they could; pleasant to see the watch off duty mustered and come in: best hats, best Guernseys, washed hands and faces, smoothed heads. But then arose a set of circum- stances so rampantly comical, that no check which the gravest intentions could put upon them would hold them in hand. Thus the scene. Some seventy passengers assembled at the saloon tables. Prayer-books on tables. Ship rolling heavily. Pause. No minister. Rumour has related that a modest young clergyman on board has responded to the Captain’s request that he will officiate. Pause again, and very heavy rolling. Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two strong stewards skate in, supporting minister between them. General appearance as of somebody picked up drunk and incapable, and under conveyance to station- house. Stoppage, pause, and particularly heavy rolling. Stewards watch their opportunity, and balance them- selves, but cannot balance minister; who, struggling ABOARD SHIP 317 with a drooping head and a backward tendency, seems determined to return below, while they are as deter- mined that he shall be got to the reading-desk in mid- saloon. Desk portable, sliding away down a long table, and aiming itself at the breasts of various mem- bers of the congregation. Here the double doors, which have been carefully closed by other stewards, fly open again, and worldly passenger tumbles in, seemingly with pale-ale designs: 'who, seeking friend, says “Joe!” Perceiving incongruity, says, “ Hullo! Beg yer pardon!” and tumbles out again. All this time the congregation have been breaking up into sects, as the manner of con- gregations often is, each sect sliding away by itself, and all pounding the weakest sect which slid first into the corner. Utmost point of dissent soon attained in every corner, and violent rolling. Stewards at length make a dash; conduct minister to the mast in the centre of the saloon, which he embraces with both arms; skate Out; and leave him in that condition to arrange affairs with flock. There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship read the service. It was quiet and impressive, until we fell upon the dangerous and perfectly unnec- essary experiment of striking up a hymn. After it was given out, we all rose, but everybody left it to some- body else to begin. Silence resulting, the officer (no singer himself) rather reproachfully gave us the first line again, upon which a rosy pippin of an old gentle- man, remarkable throughout the passage for his cheer- ful politeness, gave a little stamp with his boot (as if he were leading off a country dance), and blithely warbled us into a show of joining. At the end of the first verse we became, through these tactics, so much refreshed and encouraged, that none of us, howsoever unmelodious, would submit to be left out of the second verse ; while as to the third we lifted up our voices in a sacred howl that left it doubtful whether we were the more boastful of the sentiments we united in professing or of professing them with a most discordant defiance of time and tune. “Lord bless us!” thought I, when the fresh remem- brance of these things made me laugh heartily alone in the dead water-gurgling waste of the night, what time I was wedged into my berth by a wooden bar, or I 318 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. must have rolled out of it, “what errand was I then upon, and to what Abyssinian point had public events then marched? No matter as to me. And as to them, if the wonderful popular rage for a plaything (utterly confounding in its inscrutable unreason) had not then lighted on a poor young savage boy, and a poor old screw of a horse, and hauled the first off by the hair of his princely head to “inspect ' British volunteers, and hauled the second off by the hair of his equine tail to the Crystal Palace, why so much the better for all of us outside Bedlam!” So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking myself would I like to show the grog distribution in “the fiddle * at noon to the Grand United Amalgama- ted Total Abstinence Society? Yes, I think I should. I think it would do them good to smell the rum, under the circumstances. Over the grog, mixed in a bucket, presides the boatswain's mate, small tin can in hand. Enter the crew, the guilty consumers, the grown-up brood of Giant Despair, in contradistinction to the band of youthful angel Hope. Some in boots, some in leggings, some in tarpaulin overalls, some in frocks, Some in pea-coats, a very few in jackets, most with Sou’wester hats, all with something rough and rugged round the throat; all, dripping salt water where they stand; all pelted by weather, besmeared with grease, and blackened by the sooty rigging. Each man’s knife in its sheath in his girdle loosened for dinner. As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, watches the filling of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very small tin mug, to be prosaic), and, tossing back his head, tosses the contents into himself, and passes the empty chalice and passes on, so the second man with an anticipatory wipe of his mouth or sleeve or handkerchief, bides his turn, and drinks and hands and passes On, in whom, and in each as his turn ap- proaches, beams a knowingly kindled eye, a brighter temper, and a suddenly awakened tendency to be jocose with some shipmate. Nor do I even observe that the man in charge of the ship's lamps, who in right of his office has a double allowance of poisoned chalices, seems thereby vastly degraded, even though he empties the chalices into himself, one after the other, much as if he were delivering their contents at some absorbent | * - - - ABOARD SHIP. 319 establishment in which he had no personal interest. But vastly comforted, I note them all to be, on deck pres- ently, even to the circulation of redder blood in their cold blue knuckles; and when I look up at them lying out on the yards, and holding on for life among the beating sails, I cannot for my life see the justice of visiting on them—or on me—the drunken crimes of any number of criminals arraigned at the heaviest of assizes. . *. Abettting myself in my idle humour, I closed my eyes, and recalled life on board of one of those mail- packets, as I lay, part of that day, in the Bay of New York, O! The regular life began—mine always did, for I never got to sleep afterwards—with the rigging of the pump while it was yet dark, and washing down of decks. Any enormous giant at a prodigious hydro- pathic establishment, conscientiously undergoing the water-cure in all its departments, and extremely partic- ular about cleaning his teeth, would make those noises. Swash, splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble, swash, Splash, bubble, toothbrush, Splash, Splash, bubble, rub. Then the day would break, and, descending from my berth by a graceful ladder composed of half-opened drawers beneath it, I would reopen my outer-deadlight and my inner sliding window (closed by a watchman during the water-cure), and would look out at the long- rolling, lead-coloured, white-topped waves over which the dawn, on a cold winter morning, cast a level, lonely glance, and through which the ship fought her melan- choly way at a terrific rate, And now, lying down again, awaiting the season for broiled ham and tea, I would be compelled to listen to the voice of conscience, —the screw. It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of stomach; but I called it in my fancy by the higher name. Because it seemed to me that we were all of us, all day long, endeavouring to stifle the voice. Because it was under everybody’s pillow, everybody’s plate, everybody’s campstool, everybody’s book, everybody’s occupation. Because we pretended not to hear it, especially at meal times, evening whist and morning conversation on deck; but it was always among us in an under monotone, not to be drowned in pea soup, not to be shuffled with 320 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. cards, not to be diverted by books, not to be knitted into any pattern, not to be walked away from. It was smoked in the weediest cigar, and drunk in the strongest cocktail ; it was conveyed on deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay there in their wrappers until the stars shone; it waited at table with the stew- ards; nobody could put it out with the lights. It was con- sidered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknowledge the voice of conscience. It was not polite to mention it. One squally day an amiable gentleman in love gave much offence to a surrounding circle, including the object of his attachment, by saying of it, after it had goaded him over two easy-chairs and a sky-light, “Screw l’” Sometimes it would appear subdued. In fleeting moments, when bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose, or when there was “hot pot ” in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we had had regularly every day was described in that official document by a new name, —under such excitements, one would almost believe it hushed. The ceremony of washing plates on deck, performed after every meal by a circle as of ringers of crockery triple-bob majors for a prize, would keep it down. Hauling the reel, taking the Sun at noon, post- ing the twenty-four hours’ run, altering the ship's time by the meridian, casting the waste food overboard, and attracting the eager gulls that followed in Our wake, these events would suppress it for awhile. But the instant any break or pause took place in any such diversion, the voice would be at it again, importuning us to the last extent. A newly married young pair, who walked the deck affectionately some twenty miles per day, would, in the full flush of their exercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and stand trembling, but other- wise immovable, under its reproaches. When this terrible monitor was most severe with us was when the time approached for Our retiring to our dens for the night; when the lighted candles in the saloon grew fewer and fewer; when the deserted glasses with spoons in them grew more and more numerous; when waifs of toasted cheese and strays of sardines fried in batter slid languidly to and fro in the table- racks; when the man who always read had shut up his book, and blown out his candle; when the man who always talked had ceased from troubling; when the man •º ABOARD SHIP. -- 321 who was always medically reported as going to have delirium tremens had put it off till to-morrow; when the man who every night devoted himself to a midnight smoke on deck two hours in length, and who every night was in bed within ten minutes afterwards, was buttoning himself up in his third coat for his hardy vigil: for then, as we fell off one by One, and, entering our several hut- ches, came into a peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water and Windsor soap, the voice would shake us to the centre. Woe to us when we sat down on our sofa, watching the swinging candle for ever trying and re-trying to stand upon his head or Our coat upon its peg, imitating us as we appeared in Our gymnastic days by sustaining itself horizontally from the wall, in emulation of the lighter and more facile towels! Then would the voice especially claim us for its prey, and rend us all to pieces. Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the voice grows angrier and deeper. Under the mattress and under the pillow, under the sofa and under the washing-stand, under the ship and under the sea, seem- ing to rise from the foundations under the earth with every scoop of the great Atlantic (and oh! why scoop so P), always the voice. Vain to deny its existence in the night season; impossible to be hard of hearing; screw, screw, screw Sometimes it lifts out of the water, and revolves with a whirr, like a ferocious fire- work, except that it never expends itself, but is always ready to go off again; sometimes it seems to be in anguish, and shivers; sometimes it seems to be terrified by its last plunge, and has a fit which causes it to Struggle, quiver, and for an instant stop. And now the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so fiercely screwed through time - and space, day and night, fair weather and foul, can roll. Did she ever take a roll before like that last? Did she ever take a roll before like this worse one that is coming now? Here is the partition at my ear down in the deep on the lee side. Are we ever coming up again together ? I think not ; the Fº and T are so long about it that I really do elieve we have overdone it this time. Heavens, what a scoop! What a deep scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a long scoop! Will it ever end, and can we bear the WOL. I. 21. 322 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. heavy mass of water we have taken on board, and which has let loose all the table furniture in the officers’ mess, and has beaten open the door of the little passage between the purser and me, and is swashing about, even there and even here 2 The purser Snores reassuringly, and the ship's bells striking, I hear the cheerful “All’s well !” of the watch musically given back the length of the deck, as the lately diving partition, now high in the air, tries (unsoftened by what we have gone through together) to force me out of bed and berth. “ All’s well!” Comforting to know, though surely all might be better. Put aside the rolling and the rush of water, and think of darting through such darkness with such velocity. . Think of any other similar object coming in the opposite direction! * Whether there may be an attraction in two such moving bodies out at Sea, which may help accident to bring them into collision? Thoughts, too, arise (the voice never silent all the while, but marvellously sug- gestive) of the gulf below; of the strange unfruitful mountain ranges and deep valleys over which we are passing; of monstrous fish midway; of the ship's sud- denly altering her course on her own account, and with a wild plunge settling down, and making that voyage with a crew of dead discoverers. Now, too, one recals an almost universal tendency on the part of passengers to stumble, at some time or other in the day, on the topic of a certain large steamer making this same run, which was lost at sea, and never heard of more. Everybody has seemed under a spell, com- pelling approach to the threshold of the grim subject, stoppage, discomfiture, and pretence of never having been near it. The boatswain’s whistle sounds! A change in the wind, hoarse orders issuing, and the watch very busy. Sails come crashing home overhead, ropes (that seem all knot) ditto; every man engaged appears to have twenty feet, with twenty times the average amount of stamping power in each. Gradually the noise slackens, the hoarse cries die away, the boat- Swain's whistle softens into the soothing and contented notes, which rather reluctantly admit that the job is done for the time, and the voice sets in again. Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down, and Swinging and Swaying, until consciousness revives ABOARD SHIP. - 323 of atmospherical Windsor soap and bilge-water, and the voice announces that the giant has come for the water-cure again. - Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of that day, in the Bay of New York, O! Also, as we passed clear of the Narrows, and got to sea; also in many an idle hour at sea in sunny weather! At length the observations and computations showed that we should make the coast of Ireland to-night. So I stood watch on deck all night to-night, to see how we made the coast of Ireland. Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphor- escent. Great way on the ship, and double look-out kept. Vigilant captain on the bridge, vigilant first §ºr looking over the port side, vigilant second officer standing by the quartermaster at the compass, vigilant third officer posted at the stern rail with a lantern. No passengers on the quiet decks, but expectation everywhere nevertheless. The two men at the wheel very steady, very serious, and very prompt to answer orders. An order issued sharply now and then, and echoed back; otherwise the night drags slowly, silently, and with no change. - All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morning, a vague movement of relief from a long strain expresses itself in all hands; the third officer's lantern twinkles, and he fires a rocket, and another rocket. A sullen solitary light is pointed out to me in the black sky yonder. A change is expected in the light, but none takes place. “Give them two more rockets, Mr. Vigilant.” Two more, and a blue light burnt. All eyes watch the light again. At last a little toy sky-rocket is flashed up from it; and, even as that small streak in the darkness dies away, we are telegraphed to Queenstown, Liverpool, and London, and back again under the Ocean to America. Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going ashore at Queenstown, and up comes the mail- agent in charge of the bags, and up come the men who are to carry the bags into the mail-tender that will come off for them out of the harbour. Lamps and lanterns gleam here and there about the decks, and impeding bulks are knocked away with handspikes; and the port-side bulwark, barren but a moment ago, * ſ | | 324 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. bursts into a crop of heads of seamen, stewards, and engineers. • The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be along- side, begins to be left astern. More rockets, and, be- tween us and the land, steams beautifully the Inman steamship City of Paris, for New York, outward bound. We observe with complacency that the wind is dead against her (it being with us), and that she rolls and pitches. (The sickest passenger on board is the most delighted by this circumstance.) Time rushes by as we rush on; and now we see the light in Queenstown Harbour, and now the lights of the mail-tender coming out to us. What vagaries the mail-tender performs on the way, in every point of the compass, especially in those where she has no business, and why she performs them, Heaven only knows! At length she is seen plung- ing within a cable’s length of our port broadside, and is being roared at through our speaking-trumpets to do this thing, and not to do that, and to stand by the other, as if she were a very demented tender indeed. Then, we slackening amidst a deafening roar of steam, this much abused tender is made fast to us by hawsers, and the men in readiness carry the bags aboard, and return for "more, bending under their burdens, and looking just like the pasteboard figures of the miller and his men in the theatre of our boyhood, and com- porting themselves almost as unsteadily. All the while the unfortunate tender plunges high and low, and is roared at. Then the Queenstown passengers are put on board of her, with infinite plunging and roaring, and the tender gets heaved up on the sea to that surprising extent that she looks within an ace of washing aboard of us, high and dry. Roared at with contumely to the last, this wretched tender is at length let go, with a final plunge of great ignominy, and falls spinning into our wake. The voice of conscience resumed its dominion as the day climbed up the sky, and kept by all of us passengers into port; kept by us as we passed other lighthouses, and dangerous islands off the coast, where some of the officers, with whom I stood my watch, had gone ashore in sailing-ships in fogs (and of which by that token they seemed to have quite an affectionate remem- brance), and past the Welsh coast, and past the A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 325 Cheshire coast, and past everything and everywhere lying between our ship and her own special dock in the Mersey. Off which, at last, at nine of the clock, on a fair evening early in May, we stopped, and the voice ceased. A very curious sensation, not unlike having my own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence; and it was with a no less curious sensation that I went over . the side of the good, Cunard ship “Russia” (whom prosperity attend through all her voyages 1) and Sur- veyed the outer hull of the gracious monster that the voice had inhabited. So, perhaps, shall we all, in the spirit, one day survey the frame that held the busier voice from which my vagrant fancy derived this similitude, C H A P T E R X X XII. A L I TT I, E D IN N E R IN A N H O U R . IT fell out on a day in this last autumn, that I had to go down from London to a place of seaside resort, on an hour's business, accompanied by my esteemed friend Bullfinch. Let the place of seaside resort be, for the nonce, called Namelesston. I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, pleasantly breakfasting in the open air in the garden of the Palais Royal or the Tuilleries, pleasantly dining in the open air in the Elysian Fields, pleasantly taking my cigar and lemonade in the open air on the Italian Boule- vard towards the small hours after midnight. Bull- finch—an excellent man of business—had summoned me back across the Channel, to transact this said hour's business at Namelesston; and thus it fell out that Bull- finch and I were in a railway carriage together on our way to Namelesston, each with his return-ticket in his waistcoat-pocket. Says Bullfinch, “I have a proposal to make. Let us dine at the Temeraire.” tº I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire? inasmuch as I had not been rated on the books of the Temeraire for many years. Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of rec- ommending the Temeraire, but on the whole was 326 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. rather sanguine about it. He ‘‘ seemed to remember,” Bullfinch said, that he had dined well there. A plain dinner, but good. Certainly not like a Parisian dinner (here Bullfinch obviously became the prey of want of confidence), but of its kind very fair. r I appeal to Bullfinch’s intimate knowledge of my wants and ways to decide whether I was usually ready to be pleased with any dinner, or—for the matter of that —with anything that was fair of its kind and really what it claimed to be. Bullfinch doing me the honour to respond in the affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as an able trencherman on board the Temeraire. ‘‘Now, our plan shall be this,” says Bullfinch, with his forefinger at his nose. “As soon as we get to Namelesston, we’ll drive straight to the Temeraire, and Order a little dinner in an hour. And as we shall not have more than enough time in which to dispose of it comfortably, what do you say to giving the house the best opportunities of serving it hot and quickly by dining in the coffee-room?” What I had to say was, Certainly. Bullfinch (who is by nature of a hopeful constitution) then began to bab- ble of green geese. But I checked him in that Falstaf- fian vein, urging considerations of time and cookery. In due sequence of events we drove up to the Teme- raire, and alighted. A youth in livery received us on the door-step. “Looks well,” said Bullfinch confidentially. And then aloud, “ Coffee-room!” The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) conducted us to the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bullfinch to send the waiter at once, as we wished to Order a little dinner in an hour. Then Bullfinch and I waited for the waiter, until, the waiter continuing to wait in some unknown and invisible sphere of action, we rang for the waiter; which ring produced the waiter, who announced himself as not the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and who didn’t wait a moment longer. So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melodiously pitching his voice into a bar where two young ladies were keeping the books of the Temeraire, apologetically explained that we wished to order a little dinner in an hour, and that we were debarred from the execution of Our inoffensive purpose by consignment to solitude. A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. - 327 Hereupon One of the young ladies rang a bell, which reproduced—at the bar this time—-the waiter who was flot the waiter who Qught to wait upon us; that extraordinary man, whose life seemed consumed in waiting upon people to say that he wouldn’t wait upon them, repeated his former protest with great indignation, and retired. Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about to say to me, “This won’t do,” when the waiter who Ought to wait upon us left off keeping us waiting at last. “Waiter,” said Bullfinch piteously, “we have been a long time waiting.” The waiter who ought to wait on us laid the blame upon the waiter who ought Fº wait upon us, and said it was all that waiter’s ault. “We wish,” said Bullfinch, much depressed, “to , Order a little dinner in an hour. What can we have?” - “What would you like to have, gentlemen?” Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech and action, and with a forlorn old fly-blown bill of fare in his hand which the waiter had given him, and which was a sort of general manuscript index to any cookery- book you please, moved the previous question. We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry, and roast duck. Agreed. At this table by this window. Punctually in an hour. I had been feigning to look out of this window; but I had been taking note of the crumbs on all the tables, the dirty table-cloths, the stuffy, Soupy, airless atmos- phere, the stale leavings everywhere about, the deep gloom of the waiter who Ought to wait upon us, and the stomach-ache with which a lonely traveller at a distant table in a corner was too evidently afflicted. I now pointed out to Bullfinch the alarming circum- stance that this traveller had dimed. We hurriedly debated whether, without infringement of good breed- ing, we could ask him to disclose if he had partaken of mock-turtle, sole, curry, or roast duck? We decided that the thing could not be politely done, and we had set our own stomachs on a cast, and they must stand the hazard of the die. I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be true; I am much of the same mind as to the subtler expressions of the hand; I hold physiognomy to be infallible; 328 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. thºugh all these sciences demand rare qualities in the student. But I also hold that there is no more certain index to personal character than the condition of a set of casters is to the character of any hotel. Knowing, and having often tested this theory of mine, Bullfinch resigned himself to the worst, when, laying aside any remaining veil of disguise, I held up j him in succession the cloudy oil and furry vinegar, the clogged cayenne, the dirty salt, the obscene dregs of soy, and the anchovy sauce in a flannel waiscoat of decom- position. - We went out to transact our business. So inspiriting was the relief of passing into the clean and windy streets of Namelesston from the heavy and vapid close- ness of the coffee-room of the Temeraire, that hope began to revive within us. We began to consider that perhaps the lonely traveller had taken physic, or done something injudicious to bring his complaint on. Bull- finch remarked that he thought the waiter who ought to wait upon us had brightened a little when suggesting curry; and although I knew him to have been at that moment the express image of despair, I allowed myself to become elevated in spirits. As we walked by the softly-lapping sea, all the notabilities of Namelesston, who are for ever going up and down with the change- lessness of the tides, passed to and fro in procession. Pretty girls on horseback, and with detested riding- masters; pretty girls on foot; mature ladies in hats, spectacled, strong-minded, and glaring at the Opposite or weaker sex. The Stock Exchange was strongly represented, Jerusalem was strongly represented, the bores of the prosier London clubs were strongly repre- sented. Fortune-hunters of all denominations were there, from hirsute insolvency, in a curricle, to closely- buttoned swindlery in doubtful boots, on the sharp look-out for any likely young gentleman disposed to play a game at billiards round the corner. Masters of languages, their lessons finished for the day, were going to their homes out of sight of the sea; mistresses of accomplishments, carrying small portfolios, likewise tripped homeward; pairs of scholastic pupils, two and two, went languidly along the beach, Surveying the face of the waters as if waiting for some Ark to come and take them off. Spectres of the George the Fourth A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 329 days flitted unsteadily among the crowd, bearing the outward semblance of ancient dandies, of every one of whom it might be said, not that he had one leg in the grave, or both legs, but that he was steeped in grave to the summit of his high shirt-collar, and had nothing real about him but his bones. Alone stationary in the midst of all the movements, the Namelesston boatmen leaned against the railings and yawned, and looked out to sea, or looked at the moored fishing- boats and at nothing. Such is the unchanging manner of life with this nursery of our hardy seamen; and very dry nurses they are, and always wanting some- thing to drink. The only two nautical personages detached from the railing were the two fortunate' possessors of the celebrated monstrous unknown barking fish, just caught (frequently just caught off Nameless- ton), who carried him about in a hamper, and pressed the scientific to look in at the lid. The sands of the hour had all run out when we got back to the Temeraire. Says Bullfinch, then, to the youth in livery, with boldness, “Lavatory!” When we arrived at the family vault with a skylight,' which the youth in livery presented as the institution sought, we had already whisked off our cravats and coats; but finding ourselves in the presence of an evil smell, and no linen but two crumpled towels newly damp from the countenances of two somebody elses, we put on Our cravats and coats again, and fled unwashed to the coffee-room. There the waiter who Ought to wait upon us had set forth our knives and forks and glasses, on the cloth whose dirty acquaintance we had already had the pleasure of making, and which we were pleased to recognise by the familiar expression of the stains. And now there occurred the truly surprising phenomenon, that the waiter who Ought not to wait upon us swooped down upon us, clutched our loaf of bread, and vanished with the same. Bullfinch, with distracted eyes, was following this unaccountable figure “out at the portal,” like the ghost in Hamlet, when the waiter who ought to wait upon us jostled against it, carrying a tureen. “Waiteriº said a severe diner, lately finished, perus- ing his bill fiercely through his eye-glass. 330 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. The waiter put down our tureen on a remote side-table, and went to see what was amiss in this new direction. “This is not right, you know, waiter. Look here! here's yesterday’s sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are again, two shillings. And what does sixpence mean?” So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the waiter protested that he didn’t know what anything meant. He wiped the perspiration from his clammy brow, and said it was impossible to do it, not particularising what, and the .kitchen was so far off. “Take the bill to the bar, and get it altered,” said Mr. Indignation Cocker, so to call him. The waiter took it, looked intensely at it, didn’t seem to like the idea of taking it to the bar, and submitted, as a new light upon the case, that perhaps sixpence meant sixpence. “I tell you again,” said Mr. Indignation Cocker, “here's yesterday’s sherry—can’t you see it?—one and eightpence, and here we are again, two shillings. What do you make of one and eightpence and two shillings?” - Totally unable to make anything of one and eight- pence and two shillings, the waiter went out to try if anybody else could; merely casting a helpless backward glance at Bullfinch, in acknowledgment of his pathetic entreaties for Our Soup-tureen. After a pause, during which Mr. Indignation Cocker read a newspaper and coughed defiant coughs, Bullfinch arose to get the tureen, when the waiter reappeared and brought it, dropping Mr. Indignation Cocker's altered bill on Mr. Indignation Cocker's table as he came along. “It’s quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,” murmured the waiter; “ and the kitchen is so far off.” - “Well, you don’t keep the house; it’s not your fault, we suppose. Bring some sherry.” “Waiter!” from Mr. Indignation Cocker, with a new and burning sense of injury upon him. The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry, stopped short, and came back to see what was wrong now. “Will you look here? This is worse than before. Do you understand? Here's yesterday’s sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are again two shillings. And what the devil does ninepence mean?” A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 331 This new portent utterly confounded the waiter. He wrung his napkin, and mutely appealed to the ceiling. “Waiter, fetch that sherry,” says Bullfinch, in open wrath and revolt. “I want to know,” persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, “the meaning of ninepence, I want to know the mean- ing of Sherry one and eightpence yesterday, and of here we are again two shillings. Send somebody.” The distracted waiter got out of the room on pretext of sending somebody, and by that means got our wine. But the instant he appeared with our decanter, Mr. In- dignation Cocker descended on him again. “Waiter | ?” - “You will now have the goodness to attend to our dinner, waiter,” said Bullfinch, sternly. “I am very sorry, but it’s quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,” pleaded the waiter; “ and the kitchen—” “Waiter!” said Mr. Indignation Cocker. “ —Is,” resumed the waiter, “so far off, that “Waiter!” persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, “send somebody.” We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out to hang himself; and we were much relieved by his fetching somebody, in graceful, flowing skirts and with a waist,--who very soon settled Mr. Indignation Cocker’s business. “Oh!” said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly uenched by this apparition; “I wished to ask about this bill of mine, because it appears to me that there’s a little mistake here. Let me show wou. Here's yes- terday’s sherry one and eightpence, and here we are again two shillings. And how do you explain nine- pence?” - However it was explained, in tones too soft to be Overheard. Mr. Cocker was heard to say nothing more than “Ah-h-h-l Indeed; thank you! Yes,” and shortly afterwards went out, a milder man. * The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this time suffered severely, drawing up a leg now and then, and sipping hot brandy-and-water with grated ginger in it. When we tasted our (very) mock-turtle Soup, and were instantly seized with symptoms of some disorder simulating apoplexy, and occasioned by the surcharge of nose and brain with lukewarm dish-water 55 332 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. holding in Solution sour flour, poisonous condiments, and (say) seventy-five per cent. of miscellaneous kitchen stuff rolled into balls, we were inclined to trace his disor- der to that Source. On the other hand, there was a silent anguish upon him too strongly resembling the results established within ourselves by the sherry, to be dis- carded from alarmed consideration. Again, we ob- served him, with terror, to be much overcome by our Sole's being aired in a temporary retreat close to him, while the waiter went out (as we conceived) to see his friends. And when the curry made its appearance he suddenly retired in great disorder. In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as contradistinguished from the undrinkable) we paid only seven shillings and sixpence each. And Bullfinch and I agreed unanimously, that no such ill-served, ill- appointed, ill-cooked, nasty little dinner could be got for the money anywhere else under the sun. With that comfort to our backs, we turned them on the dear old Temeraire, the charging Temeraire, and resolved (in the Scotch dialect) to gang nae mair to the flabby Tem- €Iſa,11’é, - CHAPTER XXXIII. MR. B.A.R.L.O.W. A GREAT reader of good fiction at an unusually early age, it seems to me as though I had been born under the superintendence of the estimable but terrific gentleman whose name stands at the head of my present reflections. The instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow, will be remembered as the tutor of Master Harry Sandford and Master Tommy Merton. He knew everything, and didactically improved all sorts of occa- sions, from the consumption of a plate of cherries to the contemplation of a starlight night. What youth came to without Mr. Barlow was displayed in the his- tory of Sandford and Merton, by the example of a cer- tain awful Master Mash. This young wretch wore buckles and powder, conducted himself with insupport- able levity at the theatre, had no idea of facing a mad bull single-handed (in which I think him less reprehen- MR. BARLOW. 333 sible, as remotely reflecting my own character), and was a frightful instance of the enervating effects of luxury upon the human race. Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow, to go down to posterity as childhood’s experience of a bore! Immor- tal Mr. Barlow, boring his way through the verdant freshness of ages! My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow is one of many counts. I will proceed to set forth a few of the injuries he has done me. In the first place, he never made or took a joke. This insensibility on Mr. Barlow’s part not only cast its own gloom over my boyhood, but blighted even the sixpenny jest-books of the time; for groaning under a moral spell constraining me to refer all things to Mr. Barlow, I could not choose but ask myself in a whisper when tickled by a printed jest, “What would he think of it? What would he see in it?” The point of the jest imme- diately became a sting, and stung my conscience. For my mind’s eye saw him stolid, frigid, perchance taking from its shelf some dreary Greek book, and translating at full length what some dismal sage said (and touched up afterwards, perhaps, for publication), when he ban- ished some unlucky joker from Athens. The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all other por- tions of my young life but himself, the adamantine inadaptability of the man to my favourite fancies and amusements, is the thing for which I hate him most. What right had he to bore his way into my Arabian Nights? Yet he did. He was always hinting doubts of the veracity of Sinbad the Sailor. If he could have got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, I knew he would have trimmed it and lighted it, and delivered a lecture over it on the qualities of sperm-oil, with a glance at the whale fisheries. He would so soon have found out—on mechanical principles—the peg in the neck of the En- chanted Horse, and would have turned it the right way in so workmanlike a manner, that the horse could never have got any height into the air, and the story couldn’t have been. He would have proved, by map and com- pass, that there was no such kingdom as the delightful kingdom of Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary. He would have caused that hypocritical young prig Harry to make an experiment—with the aid of a temporary 334 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. building in the garden and a dummy, Hdemonstrating that you couldn’t let a choked hunchback down an Eastern chimney with a cord, and leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the sultan’s purveyor. - The golden sounds of the overture to the first metro- politan pantomime, I remember, were alloyed by Mr. Barlow. Click, click, ting, ting, bang, bang, weedle, weedle, weedle, bang! I recal the chilling air that ran across my frame and cooled my hot delight, as the thought occurred to me, “This would never do for Mr. Barlow !” After the curtain drew up, dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow’s considering the costumes of the Nymphs of the Nebula as being sufficiently opaque, obtruded themselves on my enjoyment. In the clown I perceived two persons; one a fascinating unaccounta- ble creature of a hectic complexion, joyous in spirits though feeble in intellect, with flashes of brilliancy; the other a pupil for Mr. Barlow. I thought how Mr. Barlow would secretly rise early in the morning, and butter the pavement for him, and, when he had brought him down, would look severely out of his study win- dow and ask him how he enjoyed the fun. I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokers in the house, and singe him with the whole collec- tion, to bring him better acquainted with the proper- ties of incandescent iron, on which he (Barlow) would fully expatiate. I pictured Mr. Barlow’s instituting a Comparison between the clown’s conduct at his studies, ---drinking up the ink, licking his copy-book, and using his head for blotting-paper—and that of the already mentioned young prig of prigs, Harry, sitting at the Barlovian feet, Sneakingly pretending to be in a rapt- ure of youthful knowledge. I thought how soon Mr. Barlow would smooth the clown’s hair down, instead of letting it stand erect in three tall tufts; and how, after a couple of years or so with Mr. Barlow, he would keep his legs close together when he walked, and would take his hands out of his big loose pockets, and wouldn’t have a jump left in him. That I am particularly ignorant what most things in the universe are made of, and how they are made, is another of my charges against Mr. Barlow. With the dread upon me of developing into a Harry, and with a further dread upon me of being Barlowed if I made in- MR. BARLOW. 335 * quiries, by bringing down upon myself a cold shower- bath of explanations and experiments, I forbore en- lightenment in my youth, and became, as they say in melodramas, “the wreck you now behold.” That I consorted with idlers and dunces is another of the mel- ancholy facts for which I hold Mr. Barlow responsible. That pragmatical prig, Harry, became so detestable in my sight, that, he being reported studious in the South, I would have fled idle to the extremest North. Better to learn misconduct from a Master Mash than science and statistics from a Sanford! So I took the path, which, but for Mr. Barlow, I might never have trodden. Thought I, with a shudder, “Mr. Barlow is a bore, with an immense constructive power of mak- ing bores. His prize specimen is a bore. He seeks to make a bore of me. That knowledge is power I am not prepared to gainsay; but, with Mr. Barlow, knowledge is power to bore.” Therefore I took refuge in the caves of ignorance, wherein I have resided ever since, and which are still my private address. But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. Barlow is, that he still walks the earth in various disguises, seeking to make a Tommy of me, even in my maturity. Irrepressible, instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills my life with pitfalls, and lies hiding at the bottom to burst out upon me when I least expect him. A few of these dismal experiences of mine shall suffice. -> Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely in the moving panorama trade, and having on various Occa- sions identified him in the dark with a long wand in his hand; holding forth in his old way (made more ap- palling in this connection by his sometimes cracking a piece of Mr. Carlyle's own Dead-Sea fruit in mistake for a joke), I systematically shun pictorial entertain- ment on rollers. Similarly, I should demand respon- sible bail and guaranty against the appearance of Mr. Barlow, before committing myself to attendance at any assemblage of my fellow-creatures where a bottle of water and a note-book were conspicuous objects; for in either of those associations, I should expressly expect him. But such is the designing nature of the man, that he steals in where no reasoning precaution or pre- vision could expect him. As in the following case:— 33G THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country town. In this country town the Mississippi Momuses, nine in number, were announced to appear in the town-hall, for the general delectation, this last Christmas week. Knowing Mr. Barlow to be unconnected with the Mis- sissippi, though holding republican opinions, and deeming myself secure, I took a stall. My object was to hear and see the Mississippi Momuses in what the bills described as their “National ballads, plantation break-downs, nigger part-songs, choice conundrums, sparkling repartees, &c.” I found the nine dressed alike, in the black coat and trousers, white waistcoat, very large shirt-front, very large shirt-collar, and very large white tie and wristbands, which constitute the dress of the mass of the African race, and which has been observed by travellers to prevail over a vast num- ber of degrees of latitude. All the nine rolled their eyes exceedingly, and had very red lips. At the ex- tremities of the curve they formed, seated in their chairs, were the performers on the tambourine and bones. The centre Momus, a black of melancholy aspect (who inspired me with a vague uneasiness for which I could not then account), performed on a Missis- sippi instrument closely resembling what was once called in this island a hurdy-gurdy. The Momuses on either side of him had each another instrument pecu- liar to the Father of Waters, which may be likened to a stringed weather-glass held upside down. There were likewise a little flute and a violin. All went well for awhile, and we had had several sparkling repartees exchanged between the performers on the tambourine and bones, when the black of melancholy aspect, turn- ing to the latter, and addressing him in a deep and im- proving voice as “Bones, sir,” delivered certain grave remarks to him concerning the juveniles present, and the season of the year; whereupon I perceived that I was in the presence of Mr. Barlow, corked Another night—and this was in London—I attended the representation of a little comedy. As the char- acters were lifelike (and consequently not improving), and as they went upon their several ways and designs without personally addressing themselves to me, I felt rather confident of coming through it without being regarded as Tommy, the more so, as we were clearly MR. BARLOW. 33% getting close to the end. But I deceived myself. All of a sudden, and apropos of nothing, everybody con- cerned came to a check and halt, advanced to the foot- lights in a general rally to take dead aim at me, and brought me down with a moral homily, in which I de- tected the dread hand of Barlow. Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of this hunter, that on the very next night after that, I was again entrapped, where no vestige of a spring could have been apprehended by the timidest. It was a bur- lesque that I saw performed; an uncompromising burlesque, where everybody concerned, but especially the ladies, carried on at a very considerable rate indeed. Most prominent and active among the corps of per- formers was what I took to be (and she really gave me very fair opportunities of coming to a right conclusion) a young lady of a pretty figure. She was dressed as a Fº young gentleman, whose pantaloons had een cut off in their infancy; and she had very neat knees and very meat satin boots. Immediately after singing a slang Song and dancing a slang dance, this engaging figure approached the fatal lamps, and, bend- ing over them, delivered in a thrilling voice a random eulogium on, and exhortation to pursue, the virtues. “Great Heaven!” was my exclamation; “Barlow !” There is still another aspect in which Mr. Barlow perpetually insists on my sustaining the character of Tommy, which is more unendurable yet, on account of its extreme aggressiveness. For the purposes of a re- view or a newspaper, he will get up an abstruse subject with infinite pains, will Barlow, utterly regardless of the price of midnight oil, and indeed of everything else, Save cramming himself to the eyes. But mark. When Mr. Barlow blows his information off, he is not contented with having rammed it home, and discharging it upon me, Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was always in possession of it, and made nothing of it—that he imbibed it with mother's milk—and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most ab- jectly behind hand in not having done the same. I ask, why is Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent? What Mr. Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my fingers' WOI. I. 22 33S THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. ends to-day! And yet Mr. Barlow systematically carries it over me with a high hand, and will tauntingly ask me, in his articles, whether it is possible that I am not aware that every school-boy knows that the fourteenth turning on the left in the steppes of Russia will con- duct to such and such a wandering tribe? with other disparaging questions of like nature. So, when Mr. Barlow addresses a letter to any journal as a vol- unteer correspondent (which I frequently find him doing), he will previously have gotten somebody to tell him some tremendous technicality, and will write in the coolest manner, ‘‘Now, sir, I may assume that every reader of your columns, possessing average in- formation and intelligence, knows as well as I do that’” —say that the draught from the touch-hole of a cannon of such a calibre bears such a proportion in the nicest fractions to the draught from the muzzle; or some equally familiar little fact. But whatever it is, be certain that it always tends to the exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and the depression of his enforced and enslaved ) U10] I. - | §. Barlow's knowledge of my own pursuits I find to be so profound, that my own knowledge of them becomes as nothing. Mr. Barlow (disguised and bear- ing a feigned name, but detected by me) has occasion- ally taught me, in a sonorous voice, from end to end of a long dinner-table, trifles that I took the liberty of teaching him five-and-twenty years ago. My closing article of impeachment against Mr. Barlow is, that he goes out to breakfast, goes out to dinner, goes out everywhere, high and low, and that he WILL preach to me, and that I CAN'T get rid of him. He makes of me a Promethean Tommy, bound; and he is the vulture #a gorges itself upon the liver of my uninstructed IIll]].C. CHAPTER XXXIV. O N AN A M A T E U R B E A T. - IT is one of my fancies, that even my idlest walk must always have its appointed destination. I set myself a task before I leave my lodging in Covent-gar- ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 339 den on a street expedition, and should no more think of altering my route by the way, or turning back and leaving a part of it unachieved, than I should think of fraudulently violating an agreement entered into with somebody else. The other day, finding myself under this kind of obligation to proceed to Limehouse, I started punctually at , noon, in compliance with the terms of the contract with myself to which my good faith was pledged. On Such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk as my beat, and myself as a higher sort of police- constable doing duty on the same. There is many a ruffian in the streets whom I mentally collar and clear Out of them, who would see mighty little of London, I can tell him, if I could deal with him physically. Issuing forth upon this very beat, and following with my eyes three hulking garrotters on their way home, which home I could confidently swear to be within so many yards of Drury Lane, in such a narrow and re- stricted direction (though they live in their lodging Quite as undisturbed as I in mine), I went on duty with a consideration which I respectfully offer to the new Chief Commissioner, in whom I thoroughly con- fide as a tried and efficient public servant. How often (thought I) have I been forced to swallow, in police-re- ports, the intolerable stereotyped pill of nonsense, how that the police-constable informed the worthy magis- trate how that the associates of the prisoner did, at that present speaking, dwell in a street or court which no man dared go down, and how that the worthy magis- trate had heard of the dark reputation of such street or court, and how that our readers would doubtless remem- ber that it was always the same street or court which . thus edifyingly discoursed about, say once a fort- night. Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent round a circular to every division of police employed in London, requiring instantly the names in all districts of all such much-puffed streets or courts which no man durst go down; and suppose that in such circular he gave plain warning, “If those places really exist, they are a proof of police inefficiency which I mean to punish; and if they do not exist, but are a conventional fiction, then they are a proof of lazy tacit police connivance with 340 THE UN COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. professional crime, which I also mean to punish ’— what them? Fictions or realities, could they survive the touchstone of this atom of common sense? To tellº us in open court, until it has become as trite a feature of news as the great gooseberry, that a costly police- system such as was never before heard of, has left in London, in the days of steam and gas and photographs of thieves and electric telegraphs, the sanctuaries and stews of the Stuarts! Why, a parity of practice, in all departments, would bring back the Plague in two summers, and the Druids in a century! Walking faster under my share of this public injury, I overturned a wretched little creature, who, clutching at the rags of a pair of trousers with one of its claws, and at its ragged hair with the other, pattered with bare feet over the muddy stones. I stopped to raise and succour this poor weeping wretch, and fifty like it, but of both sexes, were about me in a moment, begging, tumbling, fighting, clamouring, yelling, Shivering in their nakedness and hunger. The piece of money I had put into the claw of the child I }. overturned was clawed out of it, and was again clawed out of that wolfish gripe, and again out of that, and Soon I had no notion in what part of the obscene scuffle in the mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt, the money might be. In raising the child, I had drawn it aside out of the main thoroughfare, and this took place among Some wooden hoardings and barriers and ruins of demolished buildings, hard by Temple Bar. Unexpectedly, from among them emerged a genuine police constable, before whom the dreadful brood dis- persed in various directions, he making feints and darts in this direction and in that, and catching nothing. When all were frightened away, he took off his hat, pulled out a handkerchief from it, wiped his heated brow, and restored the handkerchief and hat to their places, with the air of a man who had discharged a great moral duty, as indeed he had, in doing what was set down for him. I looked at him, and I looked about at the disorderly traces in the mud, and I thought of the drops of rain and the footprints of an extinct creature, hoary ages upon ages old, that geologists have identified on the face of a clift; and this speculation came over me: If this mud could petrify at this moment, and could ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 341 lie concealed here for ten thousand years, I wonder whether the race of men then to be our successors on the earth could, from these or any marks, by the utmost force of the human intellect, unassisted by tradition, deduce such an astounding inference as the existence of a polished state of society that bore with the public savagery of neglected, children in the Streets of its capital city, and was proud of its power by sea and land, and never used its power to seize and save them! After this, when I came to the Old Bailey and glanced up it towards Newgate, I found that the prison had an inconsistent look. There seemed to be some unlucky inconsistency in the atmosphere that day; for though the proportions of St. Paul’s Cathedral are very beauti- ful, it had an air of being somewhat Out of drawing, in my eyes. I felt as though the cross were too high up, and perched upon the intervening golden ball too far away. . Facing eastward, I left behind me Smithfield and Old Bailey, fire and fagot, condemned hold, public hanging, whipping through the city at the cart-tail, pillory, brand- ing-iron, and other beautiful ancestral landmarks, which rude hands have rooted up, without bringing the stars Quite down upon us as yet,_and went my way upon my beat, noting how Oddly characteristic neighbour- hoods are divided from one another, hereabout, as though by an invisible line across the way. Here shall cease the bankers and the money-changers; here shall begin the shipping interest and the nautical-instrument shops; here shall follow a scarcely perceptible flavour- ing of groceries and drugs; here shall come a strong infusion of butchers; now, small hosiers shall be in the ascendant; henceforth, everything exposed for sale shall have its ticketed price attached. All this as if Specially ordered and appointed. - A single stride at Houndsditch Church, no wider than sufficed to cross the kennel at the bottom of the Canon-gate, which the debtors in Holyrood sanctuary were wont to relieve their minds by skipping over, as Scott relates, and standing in delightful daring of catch- poles on the free side,-a single stride, and everything is entirely changed in grain and character. West of the stride, a table, or a chest of drawers on sale, shall be of mahogany and French-polished; east of the stride, 342 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. it shall be of deal, smeared with a cheap counterfeit resembling lip-salve. West of the stride, a penny loaf or bun shall be compact and self-contained; east of the stride, it shall be of a sprawling and splay-footed character, as seeking to make more of itself for the money. My beat lying round by Whitechapel Church, and the adjacent Sugar refineries,—great buildings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being nearly related to the dock-warehouses at Liverpool, T turned off to my right, and, passing round the awkward corner on my left, came suddenly on an apparition familiar to London streets afar off. What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the woman who has fallen forward, double, through some affection of the spine, and whose head has of late taken a turn to one side, so that it now droops over the back of one of her arms at about the wrist? Who does not know her staff, and her shawl, and her basket, as she gropes her way along, capable of seeing nothing but the pavement, never begging, never stopping, for ever going somewhere on no business? How does she live, whence does she come, whither does she go and why? I mind the time when her yellow arms were naught but bone and parchment. Slight changes steal over her; for there is a shadowy suggestion of human skin on them now. The Strand may be taken as the central point about which she revolves in a half-mile orbit. How comes she so far east as this? And coming back too! Having been how much farther? She is a rare spectacle in this neighbourhood. I receive intelli- gent information to this effect from a dog, a lop-sided mongrel with a foolish tail, plodding along with his tail up, and his ears pricked, and displaying an amiable interest in the ways of his fellow-men,_if I may be allowed the expression. After pausing at a pork-shop, he is jogging eastward like myself, with a benevolent countenance and a watery mouth, as though musing on the many excellences of pork, when he beholds this doubled-up bundle approaching. He is not so much astonished at the bundle (though amazed by that), as the circumstance that it has within itself the means of locomotion. He stops, pricks his ears higher, makes a slight point, stares, utters a short, low growl, and glistens at the nose, -as I conceive with terror. The tº " | * * tº Zºº,” % º 5 * * * * * ,” # , , Ø, ſº - { - c. iſ * t gº º | g | º & º o || || > W º & º | - : it t * C § ~ d - s | º º G & 5-º tº ſ º - *s º º s * ... •º , º º § as . - | ſ d l & º ſº º ºt t º % : Ż g i º' | º } l # W | | -*-as-s-s-s-smºs-ºsmºs--- |†"|\º fºr-a- §§§ º º "|Nº|| t; * : * jºi | |||}|\; º º | ſº 4}} ‘...tº -|º tt . : |º | . § * * ºr º, ºr £4% º §§ N ºf ºf ºſſº º "...w -- Nº) | || º, ſ ſd || * H2. 㺠s 3. ~~~ 2 POODLES GOING THE ROUND. Unconanmercial Traveller. ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 343 bundle continuing to approach, he barks, turns tail, and is about to fly, when, arguing with himself that flight is not becoming in a dog, he turns, and Once more faces the advancing heap of clothes. After much hesi- tation, it occurs to him that there may be a face in it , somewhere. Desperately resolving to undertake the adventure, and pursue the inquiry, he goes slowly up to the bundle, goes slowly round it, and coming at length upon the human countenance down there where never human countenance should be, gives a yelp of horror, and flies for the East India Docks. Being now in the Commercial Road district of my beat, and bethinking myself that Stepney station is near, I quicken my pace that I may turn out of the road at that point, and see how my small eastern star is shining. The Children's Hospital, to which I gave that name, is in full force. All its beds are occupied. There is a new face on the bed where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet little child is now at rest for ever. Much kind sympathy has been here since my former visit, and it is good to see the walls profusely garnished with dolls. I wonder what Poodles may think of thems; as they stretch out their arms above the beds, and stare, and display their splendid dresses. Poodles has a greater interest in the patients. I find him making the round of the beds, like a house-surgeon, attended by another dog, a friend,-who appears to trot about with him in the character of his pupil dresser. Poodles is anxious to make me known to a pretty little girl looking wonderfully healthy, who had had a leg taken off for cancer of the knee. A difficult operation, Poodles intimates, wagging his tail on the counterpane, but perfectly successful, as you see, dear sir! The patient, patting Poodles, adds with a smile, “The leg was so much trouble to me, that I am glad it’s gone.” I never saw anything in doggery finer than the deport- ment of Poodles, when another little girl opens her mouth to show a peculiar enlargement of the tongue. Poodles (at that time on a table, to be on a level with the occasion), looks at the tongue (with his own sympa- thetically out) so very gravely and knowingly, that I feel inclined to put my hand in my waistcoat-pocket, and give him a guinea, wrapped in paper. 344 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. On my beat again, and close to Limehouse Church, its termination, I found myself near to certain “Lead- Mills.” Struck by the name, which was fresh in my memory, and finding, on inquiry, that these same lead- mills were identified with those same lead-mills of . which, I made mention when I first visited the East . London Children’s Hospital and its neighbourhood as Uncommercial Traveller, I resolved to have a look at them. *- Received by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, and partners with their father in the concern, and who testified every desire to show their works to me freely, I went over the lead-mills. The purport of such works is the conversion of pig-lead into white-lead. This conversion is brought about by the slow and gradual effecting of certain successive chemical changes in the lead itself. The processes are picturesque and inter- esting, the most so, being the burying of the lead, at a certain stage of preparation, in pots, each pot con- taining a certain quantity of acid besides, and all the pots being buried in vast numbers, in layers, under tan, for some ten weeks. Rºpping up ladders, and across planks, and on elevated perches, until I was uncertain whether to liken myself to a bird or a bricklayer, I became con- scious of standing On nothing particular, looking down into one of a series of large cocklofts, with the outer day peeping in through the Chinks in the tiled roof above. A number of women were ascending to, and descend- ing from, this cockloft, each carrying on the upward journey a pot of prepared lead and acid, for deposition under the smoking tan. When one layer of pots was completely filled, it was carefully covered in with planks, and those were carefully covered with tan again, and then another layer of pots was begun above; sufficient means of ventilation being preserved through wooden tubes. Going down into the cockloft then fill- ing, I found the heat of the tan to be surprisingly great, and also the odour of the lead and acid to be not abso- lutely exquisite, though I believe not noxious at that stage. In other cocklofts, where the pots were being exhumed, the heat of the Steaming tan was much greater, and the smell was penetrating and peculiar. There were cocklofts in all stages; full and empty, half filled ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 345 and half emptied; strong, active women were clambering about them busily; and the whole thing had rather the air of the upper part of the house of some immensely rich old Turk, whose faithful seraglio were hiding his money because the Sultan Or the pasha was coming. As is the case with most pulps Or pigments, so in the instance of this white-lead, processes of stirring, sepa- rating, washing, grinding, rolling, and pressing succeed. Some of these are unquestionably inimical to health, the danger arising from inhalation of particles of lead, or from contact between the lead and the touch, or both. Against these dangers, I found good respirators pro- vided (simply made of flannel and muslin, so as to be inexpensively renewed, and in some instances washed with scented soap), and gauntlet gloves, and loose gowns. Everywhere, there was as much fresh air as windows, well placed and opened, could possibly admit. And it was explained that the precaution of frequently changing the women employed in the worst parts of the work (a precaution originating in their own experience or apprehension of its ill effects) was found salutary. They had a mysterious and singular appearance, with the mouth and nose, covered, and the loose gown on, and yet bore out the simile of the old Turk and the seraglio all the better for the disguise. At last this vexed white-lead, having been buried and resuscitated, and heated and cooled and stirred, and separated and washed and ground, and rolled and pressed, is subjected to the action of intense fiery heat. A row of women, dressed as above described, stood, let us say, in a large stone bake-house, passing on the baking- dishes as they were given out by the cooks, from hand to hand, into the Ovens. The oven, or stove, cold as yet, looked as high as an ordinary house, and was full of men and women one trnporary footholds, briskly passing up and stowing away the dishes. The door of another oven, or stove, about to be cooled and emptied, was opened from above, for the uncommercial countenance to peer down into. The uncommercial countenance withdrew itself, with expedition and a sense of Suffoca- tion, from the dull-glowing heat and the overpowering Smell. On the whole, perhaps the going into these stoves to work, when they are freshly opened, may be the worst part of the occupation, - | 346 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. But I made it out to be indubitable that the owners of these lead-mills honestely and sedulously try to re- duce the dangers of the occupation to the lowest point. A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought there might have been more towels), and a room in- which they hang their clothes, and take their meals, and where they have a good fire-range and fire, and a female attendant to help them, and to watch that they do not neglect the cleansing of their hands before touching their food. An experienced medical attend- ant is provided for them, and any premonitory symp- toms of lead-poisoning are carefully treated. Their teapots and such things were set out on tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I saw their room; and it had a homely look. It is found that they bear the work much better than men: some few of them have been at it for years, and the great majority of those I observed were strong and active. On the other hand, it should be remembered that most of them are very capricious and irregular in their attendance. American inventiveness would seem to indicate that before very long white-lead may be made entirely by machinery. The sooner the better. In the meantime, I parted from my two frank conductors over the mills, by telling them that they had nothing there to be con- cealed, and nothing to be blamed for. . As to the rest, the philosophy of the matter of lead-poisoning and workpeople seems to me to have been pretty fairly summed up by the Irishwoman whom I had quoted in my former paper: “Some of them gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; and ’tis all according to the constitooshun, Sur; and Some Constitooshuns is strong and some is weak.” lºracing my footsteps over my beat, I went off duty. - - A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 34% CHAPTER XXXV. A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. ONº. day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o'clock in the forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view commanded by the windows of my lodging an equestrian phenomenon. It was a fellow- creature on horseback, dressed in the absurdest man- ner. The fellow-creature wore high boots; some other (and much larger) fellow-creature’s breeches, of a slack- baked doughy colour and a baggy form; a blue shirt, . whereof the skirt, or tail, was puffily tucked into the waist- band of the said breeches; no coat; a red shoulder-belt, and a demi-semi military-Scarlet hat, with a feathered ornament in front, which, to the uninstructed human vision, had the appearance of a moulting shuttlecock. I laid down the newspaper with which I had been occu- pied, and surveyed the fellow-man in question with astonishment. Whether he had been sitting to any . painter as a frontispiece for a new edition of “Sartor Resartus; ” whether “the husk or shell of him,” as the esteemed Herr Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a jockey, on a circus, on General Garibaldi, On cheap porcelain, on a toy-shop, on Guy Fawkes, on wax-work, on gold-digging, on Bedlam, or on all,—— were doubts that greatly exercised my mind. Mean- while, my fellow-man stumbled and slided, excessively against his will, on the slippery stones of my Covent- garden street, and elicited shrieks from several sym- pathetic females, by convulsively restraining himself from pitching over his horse's head. In the very crisis of these evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment when his charger's tail was in a tobacconist’s shop, and his head anywhere about town, this cavalier was joined by two similar portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him to stumble and slide the more distressingly. At length this Gilpinian triumvirate 348 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their three right hands as commanding unseen troops, to “ Up, guards! and at 'em.” Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused them to be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the direction of the Surrey Hills. Judging from these appearances that a procession was under way, I threw up my window, and, craning Out, had the satisfaction of beholding it advancing along the streets. It was a Teetotal procession, as I learnt from its banners, and was long enough to con- Sume twenty minutes in passing. There were a great number of children in it, some of them so very young in their mothers' arms as to be in the act of practically exemplifying their abstinence from fermented liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating drink, while the procession defiled. The display was, on the whole, pleasant to see, as any good-humoured holiday assem- blage of clean, cheerful, and well-conducted people should be. It was bright with ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts, and abounded in flowers, as if those latter trophies had come up in profusion under much watering. The day being breezy, the insubordination of the large banners was very reprehensible. Each of these being borne aloft on two poles and stayed with Some half-dozen lines, was carried, as polite books in the last century used to be written, by “various hands,” and the anxiety expressed in the upturned faces of those officers, something between the anxiety attend- ant on the balancing art, and that inseparable from the pastime of kite-flying, with a touch of the angler's Quality in landing his scaly prey, much impressed me. Suddenly, too, a iºn: would shiver in the wind, and go about in the most inconvenient manner. This always happened oftenest with such gorgeous standards as those representing a gentleman in black, corpulent with tea and water, in the laudable act of Summarily reform- ing a family, feeble and pinched with beer. The gentle- man in black distended by wind would then conduct himself with the most unbecoming levity, while the beery family, growing beerier, would frantically try to tear themselves away from his ministration. Some of the inscriptions accompanying the banners were of a highly determined character, as “We never, never will A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 349 give up the temperance cause,” with similar sound resolutions rather suggestive to the profane mind of Mrs. Micawber’s “I never will desert Mr. Micawber,” and of Mr. Micawber's retort, “Really, my dear, I am not aware that you were ever required by any human being to do anything of the sort.” *g At intervals, a gloom would fall on the passing mem- bers of the procession, for which I was at first unable to account. But this I discovered, after a little obser- vation, to be occasioned by the coming on of the executioners, the terrible official beings who were to make the speeches by-and-by, -who were distributed in open carriages at various points of the cavalcade. A dark cloud and a sensation of dampness, as from many wet blankets, invariably preceded the rolling on of the dreadful cars containing these headsmen; and I noticed that the wretched people who closely followed them, and who were in a manner forced to contemplate their folded arms, complacent countenances, and threaten- ing lips, were more overshadowed by the cloud and damp than those in front. Indeed, I perceived in some of these so moody an implacability towards the mag- nates of the scaffold, and so plain a desire to tear them limb from limb, that I would respectfully suggest to the managers the expediency of conveying the exe- cutioners to the scene of their dismal labours by un- frequented ways, and in closely-tilted carts next Whitsuntide. The procession was composed of a series of smaller processions, which had come together, each from its own metropolitan district. An infusion of allegory . became perceptible when patriotic Peckham advanced. So I judged, *. the circumstance of Peckham's un- furling a silken banner that fanned heaven and earth with the words, “The Peckham Lifeboat.” No boat being in attendance, though life, in the likeness of “a, gallant, gallant crew,” in nautical uniform, followed the flag, I was led to meditate on the fact that Peckham is described by geographers as an inland settlement, with no larger or nearer shore-line than the towing- path of the Surrey Canal, on which stormy station I had been given to understand no life-boat exists. Thus I deduced an allegorical meaning, and came to the con- clusion, that if patriotic Peckham picked a peck of 350 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. pickled poetry, this was the peck of pickled poetry which patriotic Peckham picked. w I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the whole pleasant to see. I made use of that qualified expression with a direct meaning, which I will now explain. It involves the title of this paper, and a little fair trying of teetotalism by its own tests. There were many people on foot, and many people in vehicles of various kinds. The former were pleasant to see, and the latter were not pleasant to see; for the reason that I never, on any occasion or under any circumstances, have beheld heavier overloading of horses than in this public show. Unless the imposition of a great van laden with from ten to twenty people on a single horse be a moderate tasking of the poor creature, then the temperate use of horses was immoderate and cruel. From the smallest and lightest horse to the largest and heaviest, there were many instances in which the beast of burden was so shamefully overladen, that the Society. for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have fre- quently interposed in less gross cases. - Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there unquestionably is, such a thing as use without abuse, and that therefore the total abolitionists are irra- tional and wrong-headed. But the procession com- pletely converted me. For so large a number of the people using draught-horses in it were so clearly unable to use them without abusing them, that I perceived total abstinence from horseflesh to be the only remedy of which the case admitted. As it is all one to teeto- tallers whether you take half a pint of beer or half a gallon, so it was all one here whether the beast of burden were a pony or a cart-horse. Indeed, my case had the special strength that the half-pint quadruped underwent as much suffering as the half-gallon quad- ruped. Moral: total abstinence from horseflesh through the whole length and breadth of the scale. This pledge will be in course of adminstrations to all teetotal processionists, not pedestrians, at the publishing office of “All the Year Round,” on the 1st day of April, 1870. Observe a point for consideration. This procession comprised many persons in their gigs, broughams, tax- carts, barouches, chaises, and what not, who were merciful to the dumb beasts that drew them, and did A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 35]. not overcharge their strength. What is to be done with those unoffending persons? I will not run a muck and vilify and defame them, as teetotal tracts and platforms would most assuredly do, if the question were one of drinking instead of driving: I merely ask what is to be done with them? The reply admits of no dispute whatever. Manifestly, in strict accordance with teetotal doctrines, THEY must come in too, and take the total abstinence from horseflesh pledge. It is not pretended that those members of the procession misused certain auxiliaries which in most countries and all ages have been bestowed upon man for his use, but it is undeniable that other members of the procession did. Teetotal mathematics demonstrate that the less includes the greater; that the guilty include the inno- cent, the blind the seeing, the deaf the hearing, the dumb the speaking, the drunken the sober. If any of the moderate users of draught-cattle in question should deem that there is any gentle violence done to their reason by these elements of logic, they are invited to come out of the procession next Whitsuntide, and look at it from my window. - CHAPTER XXXVI THE RUFFIAN. T ENTERTAIN so strong an objection to the euphoni- ous softening of Ruffian into Rough, which has lately become popular, that I restore the right word to the heading of this paper; the rather, as my object is to dwell upon the fact that the 'Ruffian is tolerated among us to an extent that goes beyond all unruffianly endur- ance. I take the liberty to believe that if the Ruffian besets my life, a professional Ruffian at large in the open streets of a great city, notoriously having no other calling than that of Ruffian, and of disquieting and despoiling me as I go peacefully about my lawful business, interfering with no one, then the Government under which I have the great constitutional privilege, supreme honour and happiness, and all the rest of it, 352 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. to exist, breaks down in the discharge of any Govern- ment's most simple elementary duty. What did I read in the London daily papers, in the early days of this last September? That the Police had “AT LENGTH SUCCEEDED IN CAPTURING TWO OF THE NOTO- RIOUS GANG THAT HAVE SO LONG INFESTED THE WATER- LOO ROAD.” Is it possible? What a wonderful Police! Here is a straight i. public thoroughfare of immense resort; half a mile long; gas-lighted by night; with a great gas-lighted railway station in it, extra the street lamps; full of shops; traversed by two popular cross thoroughfares of considerable traffic; itself the main road to the South of London; and the admirable Police have, after long infestment of this dark and lonely spot by a gang of Ruffians, actually got hold of two of them. Why, can it be doubted that any man of fair London knowledge and common resolution, armed with the powers of the Law, could have captured the whole confederacy in a week? - It is to the saving up of the Ruffian class by the !Magistracy and Police—to the conventional preserving of them, as if they were Partridges—that their number and audacity must be in great part referred. Why is a notorious Thief and Ruffian ever left at large? He never turns his liberty to any account but violence and plunder, he never did a day’s work out of gaol, he never will do a day’s work out of gaol. As a proved notorious Thief he is always consignable to prison for three months. When he comes out, he is Surely as notorious a Thief as he was when he went in. Then send him back again. “Just Heaven!” cries the Society for the protection of remonstrant Ruffians. “This is equiva- lent to a sentence of perpetual imprisonment!” Pre- cisely for that reason it has my advocacy. I demand to have the Ruffian kept out of my way, and Out of the way of all decent people. I demand to have the Ruffian employed, perforce, in , hewing wood and drawing water somewhere for the general Service, instead of hewing at her Majesty's subjects and drawing their watches out of their pockets. If this be termed an un- reasonable demand, then the tax-gatherer's demand on me must be far more unreasonable, and cannot be other- wise than extortionate and unjust. * It will be seen that I treat of the Thief and Ruffian THE RUFFIAN. 353 as one. I do so, because I know the two characters to be one, in the vast majority of cases, just as well as the Police know it. (As to the Magistracy, with a few exceptions, they know nothing about it but what the Police choose to tell them.) There are disorderly classes of men who are not thieves; as railway naviga- tors, brickmakers, wood-sawyers, costermongers. These classes are often disorderly and troublesome; but it is mostly among themselves, and at any rate they have their industrious avocations, they work early and late, and work hard. The generic Ruffian—honourable mem- ber for what is tenderly called the Rough Element—is either a Thief, or the companion of Thieves. When he infamously molests women coming out of chapel on Sunday evenings (for which I would have his back scarified often and deep) it is not only for the gratifica- tion of his pleasant instincts, but that there may be a confusion raised by which either he or his friends may profit in the commission of highway robberies or in picking pockets. When he gets a police-constable down and kicks him helpless for life, it is because that constable once did his duty in bringing him to justice. When he rushes into the bar of a public-house, and scoops an eye out of one of the company there, or bites his ear off, it is because the man he maims gave evidence against him. When he and a line of comrades extend- ing across the footway—say of that solitary mountain- spur of the Abruzzi, the Waterloo Road—advance to- wards me “skylarking ” among themselves, my purse or shirt-pin is in predestined peril from his playfulness. Always a Ruffian, always a Thief. Always a Thief, always a Ruffian. O Now, when I, who am not paid to know these things, know them daily on the evidence of my senses and experience; when I know that the Ruffian never jostles a lady in the street, or knocks a hat off, but in order that the Thief may profit, is it surprising that I should require from those who are paid to know these things, prevention of them? Look at this group at a street corner. Number one is a shirking fellow of five-and-twenty, in an ill- favoured and ill-savoured suit, his trousers of corduroy, his coat. of some indiscernible groundwork for the deposition of grease, his neckerchief like an eel, his VOL. I. 23 * 354 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, complexion like dirty dough, his mangy fur cap pulled low upon his beetle brows to hide the prison cut of his hair. His hands are in his pockets. He puts them there when they are idle, as naturally as in other peo- ple's pockets when they are busy, for he knows that they are not roughened by work, and that they tell a tale. Hence, whenever he takes one out to draw a sleeve across his nose—which is often, for he has weak eyes and a constitutional cold in his head—he restores it to its pocket immediately afterwards. Number two is a burly brute of five-and-thirty, in a tall stiff hat; is a composite as to his clothes of betting-man and fighting- man; is whiskered; has a staring pin in his Threast, along with his right hand; has insolent and cruel eyes; large shoulders; strong legs, booted and tipped for kicking. Number three is forty years of age; is short, thick-set, strong, and bow-legged; wears knee cords and white stockings, a very long-sleeved waistcoat, a very large neckerchief doubled or trebled round his throat, and a crumpled white hat crowns his ghastly parchment face. This fellow looks like an executed postboy of other days, cut down from the gallows too soon, and restored and preserved by express diabolical agency. Numbers five, six, and seven, are hulking, idle, slouching young men, patched and Shabby, too short in the sleeves and too tight in the legs, Slimily clothed, foul-spoken, repulsive wretches inside and out. In all the party there obtains a certain twitching Char- acter of mouth and furtiveness of eye, that hint how the coward is lurking under the bully. The hint is quite correct, for they are a slinking sneaking set, far more prone to lie down on their backs and kick out, when in difficulty, than to make a stand for it. (This may account for the street mud on the backs of Num- bers five, six, and seven, being much fresher than the stale splashes on their legs.) These engaging gentry a Police-constable stands contemplating. is Station, with a Reserve of assist- ance, is very near at hand. They cannot pretend to any trade, not even to be porters or messengers. It would be idle if they did, for he knows them, and they know that he knows them, to be nothing but professed Thieves and Ruffians. He knows where they resort, knows by what slang names they call One another, THE RUFFIAN. 355 knows how often they have been in prison, and how long, and for what. All this is known at his Station, too, and is (or Ought to be) known at Scotland Yard, too. But does he know, or does his Station know, or does Scotland Yard know, or does anybody know, why these fellows should be here at liberty, when, as re- puted Thieves to whom a whole Division of Police could swear, they might all be under lock and key at hard labour? Not he; truly he would be a wise man if he did! He only knows that these are members of the “notorious gang,” which, according to the newspaper Police-office reports of this last past September, “ have so long infested ” the awful solitudes of the Waterloo Road, and Out of which almost impregnable fastnesses the Police have at length dragged Two, to the unspeak. able admiration of all good civilians. - The consequences of this contemplative habit on the art of the Executive—a habit to be looked for in a ermit, but not in a Police System—are familiar to us all. The Ruffian becomes one of the established orders of the body politic. Under the playful name of Rough (as if he were merely a practical joker) his move- ments and successes are recorded on public occasions. Whether he mustered in large numbers or small; whether he was in good spirits or depressed; whether he turned his generous exertions to very prosperous ac- count, or Fortune was against him; whether he was in a sanguinary mood, or robbed with amiable horse-play and a gracious consideration for life and limb; all this is chronicled as if he were an Institution. Is there any city in Europe, out of England, in which these terms are held with the pests of Society? Or in which, at this day, such violent robberies from the person are constantly committed as in London? The Preparatory Schools of Ruffianism are similarly borne with. The young Ruffians of London—not Thieves yet, but training for scholarships and fellow- ships in the Criminal Court Universities—molest quiet people and their property to an extent that is hardly credible. The throwing of stones in the streets has become a dangerous and destructive offence, which surely could have got to no greater height though we had had no Police but our own riding-whips and walk- ing-sticks—the Police to which I myself appeal on these 350 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Occasions. The throwing of stones at the windows of railway carriages in motion—an act of wanton wicked- ness with the very Arch-Fiend’s hand in it—had become a crying evil, when the railway companies forced it on Police notice. Constabular contemplation had until then been the order of the day. Within these twelve months, there arose among the young gentlemen of London aspiring to Ruffianism, and cultivating that much-encouraged social art, a facetious cry of “I’ll have this!” accompanied with a clutch at some article of a passing lady’s dress. I have known a lady’s veil to be thus humourously torn from her face and carried off in the open streets at noon; and I have had the honour of myself giving chase, on Westminster Bridge, to another young Ruffian, who, in full daylight early on a summer evening, had nearly thrown a modest young woman into a Swoon of indignation and confu- sion, by his shameful manner of attacking her with this cry as she harmlessly passed along before me. Mr. CARLYLE, some time since, awakened a little pleasantry by writing of his own experience of the Ruffian of the streets. I have seen the Ruffian act in exact accordance with Mr. Carlyle’s description, innumerable times, and I never saw him checked. e The blaring use of the very worst language possible, in our public thoroughfares—especially in those set apart for recreation—is another disgrace to us, and another result of constabular contemplation, the like of which I have never heard in any other country to which my uncommercial travels have extended. Years ago, when I had a near interest in certain children who were sent with their nurses, for air and exercise, into the Regent's Park, I found this evil to be so abhorrent and horrible there, that I called public attention to it, and also to its contemplative reception by the Police. Look- ing afterwards into the newest Police Act, and finding that the offence was punishable under it, I resolved, when striking occasion should arise, to try my hand as prosecutor. The occasion arose soon enough, and I ran the following gauntlet. The utterer of the base coin in question was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, who, with a suitable attendance of blackguards, youths, and boys, was flaunting along the streets, returning from an Irish funeral, in a prog- THE RUFFIAN. 357 ress interspersed with singing and dancing. She had turned round to me and expressed herself in the most audible manner, to the great delight of that Select circle. I attended the party, on the opposite side of the way, for a mile further, and then encountered a Police- constable. The party had made themselves merry at my expense until now, but seeing me speak to the con- stable, its male members instantly took to their heels, leaving the girl alone. , I asked the constable did he know my name P Yes, he did. “Take that girl into custody, on my charge, for using bad language in the streets.” He had never heard of such a charge. I had. Would he take my word that he should get into no trouble P Yes, sir, he would do that. So he took the girl, and I went home for my Police Act. With this potent instrument in my pocket, I literally as well as figuratively “returned to the charge,” and º myself at the Police Station of the district. here, I found on duty a very intelligent inspector (they are all intelligent men), who, likewise, had never heard of such a charge. I showed him my clause, and we went over it together twice or thrice. It was plain, and I engaged to wait upon the suburban Magistrate to- morrow morning at ten o’clock. - In the morning I put my Police Act in my pocket again, and waited on the suburban Magistrate. I was not quite so courteously received by him as I should have been by the Lord Chancellor or The Lord Chief Justice, but that was a question of good breeding on the suburban Magistrate’s part, and I had my clause º with its leaf turned down. Which was enough Ol' F2,9. Conference took place between the Magistrate and clerk respecting the charge. During conference I was evidently regarded as a much more objectionable person than the prisoner;-one giving trouble by coming there voluntarily, which the prisoner could not be accused of doing. The prisoner had been got up, since I last had the pleasure of seeing her, with a great effect of white apron and straw bounet. She reminded me of an elder sister of Red Riding Hood, and I seemed to remind the sympathising Chimney Sweep by whom she was attended, of the Wolf. The Magistrate was doubtful, Mr. Uncommercial 35S THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. Traveller, whether this charge could be entertained. It was not known. Mr. Uncommercial Traveller replied that he wished it were better known, and that, if he could afford the leisure, he would use his endeavours to make it so. There was no question about it, however, he contended. Here was the clause. The clause was handed in, and more conference resulted. After which I was asked the extraordinary question: “Mr. Uncommercial, do you really wish this girl to be sent to prison?” To which I grimly answered, staring: “If I didn’t, why should I take the trouble to come here?” . Finally, I was sworn, and gave my agreeable evidence in detail, and White Riding Hood was fined ten shillings, under the clause, or sent to prison for so many days. “Why, Lord bless you, sir,” said the Police-officer, who showed me out, with a great enjoyment of the jest of her having been got up so effectively, and caused so much hesitation: “if she goes to prison, that will be nothing new to her. She comes from Charles Street, Drury Lane!” The Police, all things considered, are an excellent force, and I have borne my small testimony to their merits. Constabular contemplation is the result of a bad system ; a system which is administered, not in- vented, by the man in constable's uniform, employed at twenty shillings a week. He has his orders, and would be marked for discouragement if he overstepped them. That the system is bad, there needs no lengthened argu- ment to prove, because the fact is self-evident. If it were anything else, the results that have attended it could not possibly have come to pass. Who will say that under a good system, Our Streets could have got into their present state? - The objection to the whole Police system, as concern- ing the Ruffian, may be stated, and its failure exempli- fied, as follows. It is well known that on all great occa- sions, when they come together in numbers, the mass of the English people are their own trustworthy Police. It is well known that wheresoever there is collected together any fair general representation of the people, a respect for law and order, and a determination to dis- countenance lawlessness and disorder, may be relied upon. As to one another, the people are a very good Police, and yet are quite willing in their good-nature THE RUFFIAN. 359 that the stipendiary Police should have the credit of the people's moderation. But we are all of us powerless against the Ruffian, because we submit to the law, and it is his only trade, by Superior force and by violence, to defy it. Moreover, we are constantly admonished from high places (like so many Sunday-school children out for a holiday of buns and milk-and-water) that we are not to take the law into our own hands, but are to hand our defence over to it. It is clear that the common enemy to be punished and exterminated first of all is the Ruffian. It is clear that he is, of all others, the offender for whose repressal we maintain a costly system of Police. Him, therefore, we expressly present to the Police to deal with, conscious that, on the whole, we can, and do, deal reasonably well with one another. 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