THE 
 
 MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD 
 
THE 
 
 MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD 
 
 REPRINTED PIECES 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 WITH THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY L. FILDES, 
 E. G. DALZIEL, AND F. BARNARD 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL 
 
 Limited 
 i8q2 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 
 CHAP. 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Dawn i 
 
 A Dean, and a Chapter also • • • 3 
 
 The Nuns' House 8 
 
 Mr. Sapsea I4 
 
 JNIr. Durdles and Friend . . • . l8 
 
 Philanthropy in Elinor Canon Corner . . 21 
 
 More Confidences than One ... 25 
 
 Daggers drawn ...... 30 
 
 Birds in the Bush 35 
 
 Smoothing the Way 42 
 
 A Picture and a Ring ..... 48 
 
 A Night with Durdles • • • • 55 
 
 CHAP. PACE 
 
 XIII. Both at their best 62 
 
 XIV. When shall these Three meet again ? . 67 
 XV. Impeached 73 
 
 XVI. Devoted 77 
 
 XVII. Philanthropy, Professional and Unprofes- 
 sional ....... 82 
 
 XV-III. A Settler in Cloisterham .... 89 
 
 XIX. Shadow on the Sun-dial .... 93 
 
 XX. A Flight 97 
 
 XXI. A Recognition 102 
 
 XXII. A Gritty State of Things comes on . . 104 
 
 XXIII. The Dawn again 112 
 
 REPRINTED PIECES. 
 
 The Long Voyage . . . . . -123 
 
 The Begging-Letter Writer 128 
 
 A Child's Dream of a Star ..... 131 
 
 Our English Watering-Place .... 132 
 
 Our French Watering-Placa 136 
 
 Bill-Sticking 143 
 
 "Births. Mrs. Meek, of a Son" .... 148 
 
 Lying Awake 151 
 
 The Poor Relation's Story ..... 154 
 
 The Child's Story ....... 160 
 
 The School-Boy's Story 161 
 
 Nobody's Story . . . . . . .166 
 
 The Ghost of Art 168 
 
 Out of Town 172 
 
 Out of the Season 176 
 
 A Poor Man's Tale of a Patent .... 179 
 
 The Noble Savage 182 
 
 A Flight 185 
 
 The Detective Police 190 
 
 Three " Detective " Anecdotes .... 199 
 
 On Duty with Inspector Field .... 203 
 
 Down with the Tide 210 
 
 A Walk in a Workhouse 214 
 
 Prince Bull. A Fairy Tale 218 
 
 A Plated Article 220 
 
 Our Honourable Fiiend ..... 224 
 
 Our School 227 
 
 Our Vestry 231 
 
 Our Bore 235 
 
 A Monument of French Folly .... 238 
 
 A Christmas Tree ....... 244 
 
 Master Humphrey's Clock 253 
 
 Hunted Down 307 
 
 Holiday Romance 318 
 
 George Sil-verman's Explanation 33S 
 
 1 f«Vr» 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Up the River 
 
 Frontispiece' 
 
 "In another room were several ugly old women CROUCHrNG, WITCH-LIKE, ROUND A HEARTH, 
 
 AND CHATTERING AND NODDING, AFTER THE MANNER OF THE MONKEYS" . To face page 215 
 
 "At last THEY MADE A HALT AT THE OPENING OF A LONELY, DESOLATE SPACE, AND POINTING TO 
 
 A BLACK OBJECT AT SOME DISTANCE, ASKED WiLL IF HE SAW THAT YONDER" .... 281 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT. 
 
 Vignette. 
 
 In the Court . 
 
 Under the Trees 
 
 At the Piano 
 
 On Dangerous Ground 
 
 ^Ir. Crisparkle is overpaid 
 
 Durdles cautions Mr. Sapsea against Boasting 
 
 " Good-bye, Rosebud, darling ! " . 
 
 ;Mr.- Grewgious has h:s Suspicions . 
 
 Jasper's Sacrifices ..... 
 
 Mr. Grewgious experiences a new Sensation . 
 
 Sleeping it off 
 
 " The moment comes, the fire is dying — and the 
 child is dead " . ... 
 
 "Oh, git along with you, sir, \{ yoii please; me 
 and Mrs. Bigby don't want no male parties 
 here ! " . 
 
 " Look at the snivelling milksop ! " said my uncle 
 
 "Whether he was the Vicar, or Moses, or Mr. 
 Burchill, or the Squire, or a conglomeration of 
 all four, I knew not '' 
 
 " Are you from the country, young man ?" 
 I says, "I am " 
 
 ■Yes," 
 
 I 
 
 28 
 
 48 
 57 
 65 
 80 
 96 
 100 
 116 
 
 123 
 
 149 
 157 
 
 196 
 
 " In the midst of the kitchen .... sits a young, 
 modest, gentle-looking creature, with a beauti- 
 ful child in her lap " 209 
 
 " Mr. Blinkins, are you ill, sir .? " . . . 232 
 
 " He took her in his arms, and told her it was fancy "' 249 
 
 " At such times, or when the shouts of straggling 
 brawlers met her ear, the Bowyer's daughter 
 would look timidly back at Hugh, beseeching 
 him to draw nearer " 253 
 
 "As he sat upon a low seat beside my wife, I 
 would peer at him for hours together Irom 
 behind a tree" ...... 273 
 
 " Vith these vords he rushes into the shop, breaks 
 the dummy's nose vith a blow of his curlin'- 
 irons, melts him down at the parlour fire, 
 and never smiles artervards " .... 296 
 
 " You shall see me once again in the body, when 
 you are tried for your life. You shall see me 
 once again in the spirit, when the cord is round 
 yourneck, and the crowd are crj-ingagainstyou" 307 
 
 " With a look of scorn, she put into my hand a bit 
 of paper, and took another partner. On the 
 paper was pencilled, * Heavens ! Can I write 
 the word } Is my husband a cow .' ' " . • 31S 
 
 " What is the matter .'" asked Brother Hawkyard. 
 " Ay ! what is the matter ? '' asked Brother 
 
 Gimblet 335 
 
 Tail-piece . 348 
 
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 ■v?^ 
 
 ^^, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DAWN. 
 
 N ancient English Cathedral Tower? 
 How can the ancient English cathe- 
 dral tower be here? The well- 
 known massive grey square tower of 
 its old cathedral ? How can that 
 be here ? There is no spike of 
 rusty iron in the air, between the eye 
 and it, from any point of the real pros- 
 pect. What is the spike that intervenes, and 
 who has set it up ? Maybe it is set up by the 
 Sultan's orders for the impaling of a horde of 
 Turkish '-obbers, one by one. It is so, for 
 cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his 
 palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimi- 
 tars flash in the sun -light, and thrice ten thou- 
 Edwin Drood, I. 
 
 sand dancing girls strew flowers. Then, follow 
 white elephants caparisoned in countless gor- 
 geous colours, and infinite in number and 
 attendants. Still the Cathedral Tower rises in 
 the background, where it cannot be, and still no 
 writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay ! Is 
 the spike so low a thing as the rusty spike on 
 the top of a post of an old bedstead that has 
 tumbled all awry ? Some vague period of drowsy 
 laughter must be devoted to the consideration 
 of this possibihty. 
 
 Shaking from head to foot, the man whose 
 scattered consciousness has thus fantastically 
 pieced itself together, at length rises, supports 
 his tremblin_g frame upon his arms, and looks 
 around. He is in the meanest and closest of 
 small rooms. Through the ragged window cur- 
 tain the light of early day steals in from a mise- 
 
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 rable court. He lies, dressed, across a large 
 unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed 
 given way under the weight upon it. Lying, 
 also dressed, and also across the bed, not long- 
 wise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard 
 woman. Tlie two first are in a sleep or stupor; 
 the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle 
 it. And as she blows, and, shading it with her 
 lean hand, concentrates its red spark of light, it 
 serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show 
 him what he sees of her. 
 
 "Another?" says this woman in a querulous, 
 rattling whisper. " Have another ? " 
 
 He looks about him, with his hand to his 
 forehead. 
 
 "Ye've smoked as many as five since ye 
 come in at midnight," the woman goes on as she 
 chronically complains. " Poor me, poor me, 
 my head is so bad ! Them two come in after 
 ye. Ah, poor me, the business is slack, is 
 slack ! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and 
 fewer Lascars, and no ships coming in, these 
 say ! Here's another ready for ye, deary. Ye'll 
 remember like a good soul, won't ye, that the 
 market price is dreffle high just now ? More 
 nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimble- 
 ful ! And ye'll remember that nobody but me 
 (and Jack Chinaman t'other side the court ; but 
 he can't do it as well as me) has the true secret 
 of mixing it? Ye'll pay up according, deary, 
 won't ye ? " 
 
 She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, 
 occasionally bubbling at it, inhales mucli of its 
 contents. 
 
 " Oh me, oh me, my lungs is weak, my lungs 
 is bad ! It's nearly ready for ye, deary. Ah, 
 poor me, poor me, my poor hand shakes like to 
 drop off! I see ye coming to, ana x ses to rv 
 poor self, ' I'll have another ready for him, ana 
 he'll bear in mind the market price of opium, 
 and pay according.' Oh my poor head ! I 
 makes my pipes of old penny ink-bottles, ye 
 see, deary — this is one — and I fits in a mouth- 
 piece this way, and I takes my mixter out of 
 this thimble with this little horn spoon ; and so 
 I fills, deary. Ah, my poor nerves ! I got 
 Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen year afore ' 
 took to this ; but this don't hurt me, not tc 
 speak of. And it takes away the hunger as well 
 as wittles, deary." 
 
 She hands him the nearly-emptied pipe, and 
 sinks back, turning over on her face. 
 
 He rises unsteadily from the bed, lays the 
 pipe upon the hearth-stone, draws back the 
 ragged curtain, and looks with repugnance at 
 his three companions. He notices that the 
 woman has opium-smoked herself into a strange 
 
 likeness of the Chinaman. His form of cheek, 
 eye, and temple, and his colour, are repeated in 
 her. Said Chinaman convulsively wrestles with 
 one of his many Gods or Devils, perhaps, and 
 snarls horribly. The Lascar laughs and dribbles 
 at the mouth. The hostess is still. 
 
 " What visions can she have ? " the waking 
 man muses as he turns her face towards him, 
 and stands looking down at it. " Visions of 
 many butchers' shops, and public-houses, and 
 much credit ? Of an increase of hideous cus- 
 tomers, and this horrible bedstead set upright 
 again, and this horrible court swept clean ? 
 What can she rise to, under any quantity of 
 opium, higher than that ? — Eh ? " 
 
 He bends down his ear to listen to her 
 mutterings. 
 
 " Unintelligible ! " 
 
 As he watches the spasmodic shoots and darts 
 that break out of her face and limbs, like fitful 
 lightning out of a dark sky, some contagion in 
 them seizes upon him : insomuch that he has to 
 withdraw himself to a lean arm-chair by the 
 hearth — placed there, perhaps, for such emer- 
 gencies — and to sit in it, holding tight, until he 
 has got the better of this unclean spirit of 
 imitation. 
 
 Then he comes back, pounces on the China- 
 man, and, seizing him with both hands by the 
 throat, turns him violently on the bed. The 
 Chinaman clutches the aggressive hands, resists, 
 gasps, and protests. 
 
 " What do you say ? " 
 
 A watchful pause. 
 
 "Unintelligible !" 
 
 Slowly loosening his grasp as he listens to the 
 
 incoherent jargon with an attentive fro\m, he 
 
 'irns to the Lascar, and fairly drags him forth 
 
 on the floor. As he falls, the Lascar starts 
 
 CO a half-risen attitude, glares with his eyes, 
 shes about him fiercely with his arms, and 
 iraws a phantom knife. It then becomes appa- 
 rent that the woman has taken possession of 
 this knife, for safety's sake ; for, she too starting 
 up, and restraining and expostulating with him, 
 the knife is visible in her dress, not in his, 
 when they drowsily drop back, side by side. 
 
 There has been chattering and clattering 
 enough between them, but to no purpose. When 
 any distinct word has been flung into the air, it 
 has had no sense or sequence. Wherefore 
 " Unintelligible ! " is again the comment of the 
 watcher, made with some reassured nodding of 
 his head and a gloomy smile. He then lays 
 certain silver money on the table, finds his hat, 
 gropes his way down the broken stairs, gives a 
 good morning to some rat-ridden door-keeper. 
 
MR. JASPER IS TAKEN FOORL Y. 
 
 in bed in a black hutch beneath the stairs, and 
 passes out. 
 
 That same afternoon, the massive grey square 
 tower of an old cathedral rises before the sight 
 of a jaded traveller. The bells are going for 
 daily vesper service, and he must needs attend 
 it, one would say, from his haste to reach the 
 open cathedral door. The choir are getting on 
 their sullied white robes in a hurry, when he 
 arrives among them, gets on his own robe, and 
 falls into the procession filing in to service. 
 Then, the sacristan locks the iron-barred gates 
 that divide the sanctuary from the chancel, and 
 all of the procession, having scuttled into their 
 places, hide their faces ; and then the intoned 
 
 words, "When the Wicked Man " rise 
 
 among groins of arches and beams of roof, 
 awakening muttered thunder. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A DEAN, AND A CHAPTER ALSO. 
 
 TrHOSOEVER has observed that 
 ff^^WWlllm. ^^^^^^ ^'^'^ clerical bird, the rook, 
 wn\w|^^fl|^ may perhaps have noticed that 
 /i\w^>^\T/N3j y^\^QT^ he wings his way homeward 
 towards nightfall, in a sedate and 
 clerical company, two rooks will 
 suddenly detach themselves from the rest, 
 will retrace their flight for some distance, 
 and will there poise and linger ; conveying to 
 mere men the fancy that it is of some occult 
 importance to the body politic that this artful 
 couple should pretend to have renounced co''^ 
 nection with it. 
 
 Similarly, service being over in the old cathe- 
 dral with the square tower, and the choir scufifling 
 out again, and divers venerable persons of rook- 
 like aspect dispersing, two of these latter retrace 
 their steps, and walk together in the echoing 
 Close. 
 
 Not only is the day waning, but the year. 
 The low sun is fiery, and yet cold, behind the 
 monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the 
 cathedral wall has showered half its deep red 
 leaves down on the pavement. There has been 
 rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes 
 among the little pools on the cracked uneven 
 flagstones, and through the giant elm-trees as 
 they shed a gust of tears. Their fallen leaves 
 lie strewn thickly about. Some of these leaves, 
 in a timid rush, seek sanctuary within the low 
 arched cathedral door ; but two men coming out 
 
 resist them, and cast them forth again with their 
 feet \ this done, one of the two locks the door 
 with a goodly key, and the other flits away with 
 a folio music-book. 
 
 " Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?" 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Uean." 
 
 " He has stayed late." 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him, 
 your Reverence. He has been took a little 
 poorly." 
 
 "Say 'taken,' Tope — to the Dean," the 
 younger rook interposes in a low tone with this 
 touch of correction, as who should say : " You 
 may offer bad grammar to the laity, or the hum- 
 bler clergy, not to the Dean." 
 
 Mr. Tope, Chief Verger and Showman, and 
 accustomed to be high with excursion parties, 
 declines with a silent loftiness to perceive that 
 any suggestion has been tendered to him. 
 
 " And when and how has Mr. Jasper been 
 taken — for, as Mr. Crisparkle has remarked, it 
 is better to say taken — taken," repeats the 
 Dean ; " when and how has Mr. Jasper been 
 Taken " 
 
 " Taken, sir," Tope deferentially murmurs. 
 
 " —Poorly, Tope ? " 
 
 " Why, sir, Mr. Jasper was that breathed " 
 
 " I wouldn't say ' That breathed,' Tope," Mr. 
 Crisparkle interposes with the same touch as 
 before. " Not EngHsh — to the Dean." 
 
 " Breathed to that extent," the Dean (not un- 
 flattered by this indirect homage) condescend- 
 ingly remarks, "would be preferable." 
 
 " Mr. Jasper's breathing was so remarkably 
 short " — thus discreetly does Mr. Tope work his 
 way round the sunken rock — " when he came 
 in, that it distressed him mightily to get his 
 '"''■tes out : vvhich was perhaps the cause of his 
 having a kind of fit on him after a Httle. His 
 memory grew Dazed : " Mr. Tope, with his 
 eyes on the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle, shoots 
 this word out, as defying him to improve upon 
 it : " and a dimness and giddiness crept over 
 him as strange as ever I saw: though he didn't 
 seem to mind it particularly himself However, 
 a little time and a little water brought him out 
 of his Daze." Mr. Tope repeats the word and 
 its emphasis, with the air of saying : " As I have 
 made a success, I'll make it again." 
 
 " And Mr. Jasper has gone home quite him- 
 self, has he ?" asked the Dean. 
 
 " Your Reverence, he has gone home quite 
 himself. And I'm glad to see he's having his 
 fire kindled up, for it's chilly after the wet, and 
 the cathedral had both a damp feel and a damp 
 touch this afternoon, and he was very shivery." 
 
 They all three look towards an old stone 
 
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 gatehouse crossing the Close, with an arched 
 thoroughfare passing beneath it. Through its 
 latticed window a fire shines out upon the fast- 
 darkening scene, involving in shadow the pend- 
 ent masses of ivy and creeper covering the 
 building's front. As the deep cathedral bell 
 strikes the hour, a ripple of wind goes through 
 these at their distance, like a rii)ple of the 
 solemn sound that hums through tomb and 
 tower, broken niche and defaced statue, in the 
 pile close at hand. 
 
 " Is Mr. Jasper's nephew with him ? " the 
 Dean asks. 
 
 '' No, sir," replied the verger, " but expected. 
 'J'hero's his own solitary shadow betwixt his two 
 windows — the one looking this way, and the 
 one looking down into the High Street — draw- 
 ing his own curtains now." 
 
 " Well, well," says the Dean with a sprightly 
 air of breaking up the little conference, " I hope 
 Mr. Jasper's heart may not be too much set 
 upon his nephew. Our affections, however laud- 
 able, in this transitory world, should never master 
 us ; Ave should guide them, guide them. I find 
 I am not disagreeably reminded of my dinner 
 by hearing my dinner bell. Perhaps, Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle, you will, before going home, look in on 
 Jasper ?" 
 
 " Certainly, ]\Ir. Dean. And tell him that 
 you had the kindness to desire to know how he 
 was?" 
 
 "Ay; do so, do so. Certainly. Wished to 
 know how he was. By all means. Wished to 
 know how he was." 
 
 With a pleasant air of patronage, the Dean as 
 nearly cocks his quaint hat as a Dean in good 
 spirits may, and directs his comely gaiters to- 
 wards the ruddy dining-room of the snug old 
 red brick house where he is at present " in resi- 
 dence" with Mrs. Dean and Miss Dean. 
 
 ]\Ir. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, fair and rosy, 
 and perpetually pitching himself head foremost 
 into all the deep running water in the surround- 
 ing country ; Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon, early 
 riser, musical, classical, cheerful, kind, good- 
 natured, social, contented, and boy-like ; Mr. 
 Crisparkle, Minor Canon and good man, lately 
 " Coach " upon the chief Pagan high-roads, but 
 since promoted by a patron (grateful for a well- 
 taught son) to his present Christian beat ; be- 
 takes himself to the gatehouse, on his way 
 home to his early tea. 
 
 " Sorry to hear from Tope that you have not 
 been well, Jasper." 
 
 " Oh, it was nothing, nothing ! " 
 
 " You look a little worn." 
 
 " Do I ? Oh ! I don't think so. What is 
 
 better, I don't feel so. Tope has made too 
 much of it, I suspect. It's his trade to make the 
 most of everything appertaining to the cathedral, 
 you know." 
 
 " I may tell the Dean — I call expressly from 
 the Dean — that you are all right again ? " 
 
 The reply, with a slight smile, is : " Certainly ; 
 with my respects and thanks to the Dean." 
 
 " I'm glad to hear that you expect young 
 Drood." 
 
 " I expect the dear fellow every moment." 
 
 " Ah ! He will do you more good than a 
 doctor, Jasper." 
 
 " More good than a dozen doctors. For I 
 love him dearly, and I don't love doctors, or 
 doctors' stuff." 
 
 Mr. Jasper is a dark man of some six-and- 
 twenty, with thick, lustrous, well-arranged black 
 hair and whiskers. He looks older than he is, 
 as dark men often do. His voice is deep and 
 good, his face and figure are good, his manner 
 is a little sombre. His room is a little sombre, 
 and may have had its influence in forming his 
 manner. It is mostly in shadow. Even when 
 the sun shines brilliantly, it seldom touches the 
 grand piano in the recess, or the folio music- 
 books on the stand, or the book-shelves on the 
 wall, or the unfinished picture of a blooming 
 school-girl hanging over the chimney-piece ; her 
 flowing brown hair tied with a blue ribbon, 
 and her beauty remarkable for a quite childish, 
 almost babyish, touch of saucy discontent, comi- 
 cally conscious of itself (There is not the least 
 artistic merit in this picture, which is a mere 
 daub ; but it is clear that the painter has made 
 it humorously — one might almost say, revenge- 
 fully — like the original.) 
 
 " We shall miss you, Jasper, at the * Alternate 
 Musical Wednesdays ' to-night ; but no doubt 
 you are best at home. Good night. God bless 
 you ! * Tell me, shep-herds, te-e-ell me ; tell 
 me-e-e, have you seen (have you seen, have you 
 seen, have you seen) niy-y-y Flo-o-ora-a pass 
 this way ? ' " Melodiously good IMinor Canon 
 the Reverend Septimus Crisparkle thus delivers 
 himself, in musical rhythm, as he withdraws his 
 amiable face from the doonvay, and conveys it 
 down-stairs. 
 
 Sounds of recognition and greeting pass be- 
 tween the Reverend Septimus and somebody 
 else at the stair-foot. Mr. Jasper listens, starts 
 from his chair, and catches a young fellow in 
 his arms, exclaiming : 
 
 " My dear Edwin ! " 
 
 " My dear Jack ! So glad to see you ! " 
 
 " Get off your great-coat, bright boy, and sit 
 down here in your own corner. Your feet are 
 
A LITTLE TALK ABOUT PUSSY. 
 
 not wet ? Pull your boots off. Uo pull your 
 boots off." 
 
 " My deai Jack, I am as dry as a bone. 
 Don't moddley-coddley, there's a good fellow. 
 I like anything better than being moddloy- 
 coddleyed." 
 
 With the check upon him of being unsympa- 
 thetically restrained in a genial outburst of en- 
 thusiasm, Mr. Jasper stands still, and looks on 
 intently at the young fellow, divesting himself 
 of his outward coat, hat, gloves, and so forth. 
 Once for all, a look of intentness and intensity 
 — a look of hungry, exacting, watchful, and yet 
 devoted affection — is always, now and ever 
 afterwards, on the Jasper face whenever the 
 Jasper face is addressed in this direction. And, 
 whenever it is so addressed, it is never, on this 
 occasion or on any other, dividedly addressed ; 
 it is always concentrated. 
 
 " Now I am right, and now I'll take my 
 corner. Jack. Any dinner, Jack ? " 
 
 Mr. Jasper opens a door at the upper end of 
 the room, and discloses a small inner room 
 pleasantly lighted and prepared, wherein a 
 comely dame is in the act of setting dishes on 
 the table. 
 
 " What a jolly old Jack it is ! " cries the 
 young fellow with a clap of his hands. '• Look 
 here, Jack ; tell me ; whose birthday is it ? " 
 
 " Not yours, I know," Mr. Jasper answers, 
 pausing to consider. 
 
 " Not mine, you know ? No ; not mine, / 
 know ! Pussy's I " 
 
 Fixed as the look the young fellow meets is, 
 there is yet in it some strange power of sud- 
 denly including the sketch over the chimney- 
 piece. 
 
 " Pussy's, Jack ! We must drink Many happy 
 returns to her. Come, uncle ; take your dutiful 
 and sharp-set nephew in to dinner." 
 
 As the boy (for he is little more) lays a hand 
 on Jasper's shoulder, Jasper cordially and gaily 
 lays a hand on his shoulder, and so Marseillaise- 
 wise they go in to dinner. 
 
 " And, Lord ! here's Mrs. Tope ! " cries the 
 boy. " Lovelier than ever ! " 
 
 " Never you mind me, Master Edwin," retorts 
 the verger's wife ; " I can take care of myself." 
 
 " You can't. You're much too handsome. 
 Give me a kiss because it's Pussy's birthday." 
 
 " I'd Pussy you, young man, if I was Pussy, 
 as you call her," Mrs. Tope blushingly retorts, 
 after being saluted. " Your uncle's too much 
 wrapped up in you, that's where it is. He makes 
 so much of you, that it's my opinion you think 
 you've only to call your Pussys by the dozen, 
 to make 'em come." 
 
 " You forget, Mrs. Tope," Mr. Jasper inter- 
 poses, taking his place at the table with a genial 
 smile, " and so do you, Ned, that Uncle and 
 Nei)hcw are words prohibited here by common 
 consent and express agreement. For what we 
 are going to receive His holy name be 
 praised ! " 
 
 " Done like the Dean ! Witness, Edwin 
 Drood ! Please to carve, Jack, for I can't." 
 
 This sally ushers in the dinner. Little to the 
 present purpose, or to any purpose, is said 
 while it is in course of being disposed of. At 
 length the cloth is drawn, and a dish of walnuts 
 and a decanter of rich-coloured sherry are placed 
 upon the table. 
 
 " I say ! Tell me, Jack,"' the young fellow 
 then flows on : " do you really and truly feel as 
 if the mention of our relationship divided us at 
 all ? / don't." 
 
 " Uncles as a rule, Ned, are so much older 
 than their nephews," is the reply, " that I have 
 that feeling instinctively." 
 
 " As a rule ! Ah, maybe ! But what is the 
 difference in age of half-a-dozen years or so ? 
 And some uncles, in large families, are even 
 younger than their nephews. By George, I 
 wish it was the case with us ! " 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Because, if it was, I'd take the lead with 
 you, Jack, and be as wise as Begone, dull Care ! 
 that turned a young man grey, and Begone, dull 
 Care ! that turned an old man to clay. — Halloa, 
 Jack ! Don't drink." 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " Asks why not on Pussy's birthday, and no 
 Happy returns proposed ! Pussy, Jack, and 
 many of 'em ! Happy returns, I mean." 
 
 Laying an affectionate and laughing touch on 
 the boy's extended hand, as if it were at once 
 his giddy head and his light heart, Mr. Jasper 
 drinks the toast in silence. 
 
 " Hip, hip, hip, and nine times nine, and one 
 to finish with, and all that, understood. Hooray, 
 hooray, hooray! — And now, Jack, let's have a 
 little talk about Pussy. Two pairs of nut- 
 crackers ? Pass me one, and take the other." 
 Crack ! " How's Pussy getting on. Jack ?" 
 
 " With her music ? Fairly." 
 
 " What a dreadfully conscientious fellow you 
 are. Jack ! But / know, Lord bless you ! In- 
 attentive, isn't she ? '' 
 
 " She can learn anything, if she will." 
 
 "7/" she will! Egad, that's it. But if she 
 won't ? " 
 
 Crack ! — on Mr. Jasper's part. 
 
 " How's she looking. Jack ? " 
 
 Mr. Jasper's concentrated face again includes 
 
THE MYSTERY OF ED WIN BROOD. 
 
 the portrait as he returns : " Very Hke your 
 sketch indeed." 
 
 " I am a Httle proud of it," says the young 
 fellow, glancing up at the sketch with compla- 
 cency, and then shutting one eye, and taking a 
 corrected prospect of it over a level bridge of 
 nut-crackers in the air. " Not badly hit off 
 from memory. But I ought to have caught that 
 expression pretty well, for I have seen it often 
 enough." 
 
 Crack ! — on Edwin Drood's part. 
 
 Crack ! — on Mr. Jasper's part. 
 
 " In point of fact," the former resumes after 
 some silent dipping among his fragments of 
 walnut with an air of pique, " I see it whenever 
 I go to see Pussy. If I don't find it on her 
 face, I leave it there. — You know I do. Miss 
 Scornful Pert. Booh ! " With a twirl of the 
 nut-crackers at the portrait. 
 
 Crack ! crack ! crack ! Slowly on Mr. 
 Jasper's part. 
 
 Crack ! Sharply on the part of Edwin Drood. 
 
 Silence on both sides. 
 
 " Have you lost your tongue, Jack ? " 
 
 " Have you found yours, Ned ? " 
 
 " No, but really ; — isn't it, you know, after 
 all " 
 
 Mr. Jasper lifts his dark eyebrows inquiringly. 
 
 " — Isn't it unsatisfactory to be cut off from 
 choice in such a matter ? There, Jack ! I tell 
 you ! If I could choose, I would choose Pussy 
 from all the pretty girls in the world." 
 
 " But you have not got to choose." 
 
 " That's what I complain of. My dead-and- 
 gone father and Pussy's dead-and-gone father 
 must needs marry us together by anticipation. 
 Why the — Devil, I was going to say, if it had 
 been respectful to their memory — couldn't they 
 leave us alone ? " 
 
 " Tut, tut, dear boy ! " Mr. Jasper remon- 
 strates in a tone of gentle deprecation. 
 
 ''Tut, tut? Yes, Jack, it's all very well for 
 you. You can take it easily. Your life is not 
 laid down to scale, and lined and dotted out 
 for you, like a surveyor's plan. You have no 
 uncomfortable suspicion that you are forced 
 upon anybody, nor has anybody an uncomfort- 
 able suspicion that she is forced upon you, or 
 that you are forced upon her. You can choose 
 for yourself. Life, for you, is a plum with the 
 natural bloom on ; it hasn't been over-carefuUy 
 wiped off for you " 
 
 " Don't stop, dear fellow. Go on." 
 
 " Can I anyhow have hurt your feelings. 
 Jack?" 
 
 " How can you have hurt my feelings ? " 
 
 " Good Heaven, Jack, you look frightfully 
 
 ill ! There's a strange film come over your 
 eyes." 
 
 Mr. Jasper, with a forced smile, stretches out 
 his right hand, as if at once to disarm appre- 
 hension and gain time to get better. After 
 awhile he says faintly : 
 
 " I have been taking opium for a pain — an 
 agony— that sometimes overcomes me. The 
 effects of the medicine steal over me like a 
 blight or a cloud, and pass. You see them in 
 the act of passing ; they will be gone directly. 
 Look away from me. They will go all the 
 sooner." 
 
 With a scared face the younger man complies 
 by casting his eyes downward at the ashes on 
 the hearth. Not relaxing his own gaze on the 
 fire, but rather strengthening it with a fierce, 
 firm grip upon his elbow-chair, the elder sits for 
 a few moments rigid, and then, with thick drops 
 standing on his forehead, and a sharp catch of 
 his breath, becomes as he was before. On his 
 so subsiding in his chair, his nephew gently and 
 assiduously tends him while he quite recovers. 
 When Jasper is restored, he lays a tender hand 
 upon his nephew's shoulder, and, in a tone of 
 voice less troubled than the purport of his 
 words — indeed, with something of raillery or 
 banter in it — thus addresses him : 
 
 " There is said to be a hidden skeleton in 
 every house ; but you thought there was none 
 in mine, dear Ned." 
 
 " Upon my life. Jack, I did think so. How- 
 ever, when I come to consider that even in 
 Pussy's house — if she had one — and in mine — 
 if I had one " 
 
 "You were going to say (but that I inter- 
 rupted you in spite of myself) what a quiet life 
 mine is. No whirl and uproar around me, no 
 distracting commerce or calculation, no risk, no 
 change of place, myself devoted to the art I 
 pursue, my business my pleasure." 
 
 " I really was going to say something of the 
 kind. Jack ; but you see, you, speaking of your- 
 self, almost necessarily leave out much that I 
 should have put in. For instance : I should 
 have put in the foreground your being so much 
 respected as Lay Precentor, or Lay Clerk, or 
 whatever you call it, of this cathedral ; your 
 enjoying the reputation of having done such 
 wonders with the choir, your choosing your 
 society, and holding such an independent posi- 
 tion in this queer old place ; your gift of teach- 
 ing (why, even Pussy, who don't like being 
 taught, says there never was such a ALister as 
 you are !), and your connection." 
 
 "Yes; I saw what you were tending to. I 
 hate it." 
 
MUTUAL CONFIDENCES. 
 
 "Hate it, Jack?" (Much bewildered.) 
 
 " I hate it. The cramped monotony of my 
 existence grinds me away by the grain. How 
 does our service sound to 3 ou ? " 
 
 " Beautiful ! Quite celestial ! " 
 
 '* It often sounds to me quite devilish. I am 
 so weary of it. The echoes of my own voice 
 among the arches seem to mock me with my 
 daily drudging round. No wretched monk who 
 droned his life away in that gloomy place, be- 
 fore me, can have been more tired of it than I 
 am. He could take for relief (and did take) to 
 carving demons out of the stalls and seats and 
 desks. What shall I do? Must I take to 
 carving them out of my heart ? " 
 
 " I thought you had so exactly found your 
 niche in life, Jack," Edwin Drood returns, 
 astonished, bending forward in his chair to lay 
 a sympathetic hand on Jasper's knee, and look- 
 ing at him with an anxious face. 
 
 " I know you thought so. They all think 
 so." 
 
 "Well, I suppose they do," says Edwin, 
 meditating aloud. " Pussy thinks so." 
 
 '• When did she tell you that ?" 
 
 " The last time I w-as here. You remember 
 when. Three months ago." 
 
 " How did she phrase it ? " 
 
 " Oh ! she only said that she had become 
 your pupil, and that you were made for your 
 vocation." 
 
 The younger man glances at the portrait. 
 The elder sees it in him. 
 
 " Anyhow, my dear Ned," Jasper resumes as 
 he shakes his head with a grave cheerfulness, 
 " I must subdue myself to my vocation : which 
 is much the same thing outwardly. It's too 
 late to find another now. This is a confidence 
 between us." 
 
 " It shall be sacredly preserved. Jack." 
 
 " I have reposed it in you because " 
 
 " I feel it, I assure you. Because we are 
 fast friends, and because you love and trust me, 
 as I love and trust you. Both hands, Jack." 
 
 As each stands looking into the other's eyes, 
 and as the uncle holds the nephew's hands, the 
 uncle thus proceeds : 
 
 " You know now, don't you, that even a poor 
 monotonous chorister and grinder of music — in 
 his niche — may be troubled with some stray 
 sort of ambition, aspiration, restlessness, dis- 
 satisfaction, what shall we call it ? " 
 
 " Yes, dear Jack." 
 
 " And you will remember? " 
 
 " My dear Jack, I only ask you, am I likely 
 to forget what you have said with so much 
 feelinsj: ? " 
 
 " Take it as a warning, then." 
 
 In the act of having his hands released, and 
 of moving a step back, Edwin pauses for an 
 instant to consider the application of these last 
 words. The instant over, he says, sensibly 
 touched : 
 
 " I am afraid I am but a shallow, surface 
 kind of fellow, Jack, and that my head-piece is 
 none of the best. But I needn't say I am 
 young ; and perhaps I shall not grow worse as 
 I grow older. At all events, I hope I have 
 something impressible within me which feels — 
 deeply feels — the disinterestedness of your pain- 
 fully laying your inner self bare, as a warning to 
 me." 
 
 Mr. Jasper's steadiness of face and figure be- 
 comes so marvellous that his breathing seems 
 to have stopped. 
 
 " I couldn't fail to notice, Jack, that it cost 
 you a great effort, and that you were very much 
 moved, and very unlike your usual self. Of 
 course I knew that you were extremely fond of 
 me, but I really was not prepared for your, as I 
 may say, sacrificing yourself to me in that 
 way." 
 
 Mr. Jasper, becoming a breathing man again 
 without the smallest stage of transition between 
 the two extreme states, lifts his shoulders, 
 laughs, and waves his right arm. 
 
 " No ; don't put the sentiment away. Jack ; 
 please don't ; for I am very much in earnest. 
 I have no doubt that that unhealthy state of 
 mind which you have so powerfully described 
 is attended with some real suffering, and is hard 
 to bear. But let me reassure you, Jack, as to 
 the chances of its overcoming me. I don't 
 think I am in the way of it. In some few 
 months less than another year, you know, I 
 shall carry Pussy oft" from school as Mrs. 
 Edwin Drood. I shall then go engineering 
 into the East, and Pussy with me. And 
 although we have our little tiffs now, arising 
 out of a certain unavoidable flatness that at- 
 tends our love-making, owing to its end being 
 all settled beforehand, still I have no doubt of 
 our getting on capitally then, when it's done 
 and can't be helped. In short. Jack, to go 
 back to the old song I was freely quoting at 
 dinner (and who knows old songs better than 
 you ?), my wife shall dance, and I will sing, so 
 merrily pass the day. Of Pussy's being beau- 
 tiful there cannot be a doubt ; — and when you 
 are good besides, Little Miss Impudence," once 
 more apostrophizing the portrait, " I'll burn 
 your comic likeness, and paint your music- 
 master another." 
 
 Mr. Jasper, with his hand to his chin, and 
 
8 
 
 THE MYSTEHY of EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 with an expression of musing benevolence on 
 his face, has attentively watched every ani- 
 mated look and gesture attending the delivery 
 of these words. He remains in that attitude 
 after they are spoken, as if in a kind of fascina- 
 tion attendant on his strong interest in the 
 youthful spirit that he loves so well. Then he 
 says with a quiet smile : 
 
 " You won't be warned, then ? " 
 
 " No, Jack." 
 
 " You can't be warned, then ? " 
 
 " No, Jack, not by you. Besides that I don't 
 really consider myself in danger, I don't like 
 your putting yourself in that position." 
 
 " Shall we go and walk in the churchyard ? " 
 
 " By all means. You won't mind my slipping 
 out of it for half a moment to the Nuns' House, 
 and leaving a parcel there? Only gloves for 
 Pussy ; as many pairs of gloves as she is years 
 old to-day. Rather poetical, Jack ? " 
 
 Mr. Jasper, still in the same attitude, mur- 
 murs : " ' Nothing half so sweet in life,' 
 Ned ! " 
 
 " Here's the parcel in my great-coat pocket. 
 They must be presented to-night, or the poetry 
 is gone. It's against regulations for me to call 
 at night, but not to leave a packet. I am 
 ready, Jack ! " 
 
 Mr. Jasper dissolves his attitude, and they go 
 out together. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 THE nuns' house. 
 
 lOR sufficient reasons, which this 
 narrative will itself unfold as it 
 advances, a fictitious name must be 
 bestowed upon the old cathedral 
 town. Let it stand in these pages 
 as Cloisterham. It was once pos- 
 sibly known to the Druids by another 
 name, and certainly to the Romans by 
 another, and to the Saxons by another, and to 
 the Normans by another ; and a name more or 
 less in the course of many centuries can be of 
 little moment to its dusty chronicles. 
 
 An ancient city, Cloisterham, and no meet 
 dwelling-place for any one with hankerings after 
 the noisy world. A monotonous, silent city, 
 deriving an earthy flavour throughout from its 
 cathedral crypt, and so abounding in vestiges 
 of monastic graves, that the Cloisterham chil- 
 dren grow small salad in the dust of abbots and 
 abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars ; 
 while every ploughman in its outlying fields 
 
 renders to once puissant Lord Treasurers, 
 Archbishops, Bishops, and such-like, the atten- 
 tion which the ogre in the story book desired to 
 render to his unbidden visitor, and grinds their 
 bones to make his bread. 
 
 A drowsy city, Cloisterham, whose inhabit- 
 ants seem to suppose, with an inconsistency- 
 more strange than rare, that all its changes lie 
 behind it, and that there are no more to come. 
 A queer moral to derive from antiquity, yet 
 older than any traceable anti(iuity. So silent 
 are the streets of Cloisterham (though prone to 
 echo on the smallest provocation), that of a 
 summer day the sun-blinds of its shops scarce 
 dare to flap in the south wind ; while the sun- 
 browned tramps, who pass along and stare, 
 quicken their limp a little, that they may the 
 sooner get beyond the confines of its oppressive 
 respectability. This is a feat not difficult of 
 achievement, seeing that the streets of Cloister- 
 ham city are little more than one narrow street 
 by which you get into it and get out of it : the 
 rest being mostly disappointing yards with 
 pumps in them, and no thoroughfare — excep- 
 tion made of the Cathedral Close, and a paved 
 Quaker settlement, in colour and general con- 
 formation very like a Quakeress's bonnet, up in 
 a shady corner. 
 
 In a word, a city of another and a bygone 
 time is Cloisterham, with its hoarse cathedral 
 bell, its hoarse rooks hovering about the cathe- 
 dral tower, its hoarser and less distinct rooks 
 in the stalls far beneath. Fragments of old 
 wall, saint's chapel, chapter-house, convent and 
 monastery, have got incongruously or obstruc- 
 tively built into many of its houses and gardens, 
 much as kindred jumbled notions have become 
 incorporated into many of its citizens' minds. 
 All things in it are of the past. Even its single 
 pawnbroker takes in no pledges, nor has he for 
 a long time, but offers vainly an unredeemed 
 stock for sale, of which the costlier articles are 
 dim and pale old watches apparently in a slow 
 perspiration, tarnished sugar-tongs with ineft'ec- 
 tual legs, and odd volumes of dismal books. 
 The most abundant and the most agreeable evi- 
 dences of progressing life in Cloisterham are 
 the evidences of vegetable life in many gardens ; 
 even its drooping and despondent little theatre 
 las its poor strip of garden, receiving the foul 
 fiend, when he ducks from its stage into the 
 infernal regions, among scarlet-beans or oyster 
 shells, according to the season of the year. 
 
 In the midst of Cloisterham stands the Nuns' 
 House : a venerable brick edifice, whose present 
 appellation is doubtless derived from the legend 
 of its conventual uses. On the trim gate en- 
 
MISS TWINKLETON'S SEMINAR Y. 
 
 closing its old courtyard is a resplendent brass 
 plate flashing forth the legend : " Seminary for 
 Young Ladies. Miss Twinkleton." The house- 
 front is so old and worn, and the brass plate is 
 so shining and staring, that the general result 
 has reminded imaginative strangers of a battered 
 old beau with a large modern eye-glass stuck in 
 his blind eye. 
 
 Whether the nuns of yore, being of a submis- 
 sive rather than a stiff-necked generation, habi- 
 tually bent their contemplative heads to avoid 
 collision with the beams in the low ceilings of 
 the many chambers of their House ; whether 
 they sat in its long low windows telling their 
 beads for their mortification, instead of making 
 necklaces of tliem for their adornment ; whether , 
 they were ever walled up alive in odd angles 
 and jutting gables of the building for having 
 some ineradicable leaven of busy mother Nature 
 in them which has kept the fermenting world 
 alive ever since; these may be matters of interest 
 to its haunting ghosts (if any), but constitute no 
 item in Miss Twinkleton's half-yearly accounts. 
 They are neither of Miss Twinkleton's inclusive 
 regulars, nor of her extras. The lady who 
 undertakes the poetical department of the esta- 
 blishment at so much (or so little) a quarter 
 has no pieces in her list of recitals bearing on 
 such unprofitable questions. 
 
 As, in some cases of drunkenness, and in 
 others of animal magnetism, there are two states 
 of consciousness which never clash, but each of 
 which pursues its separate course as though it 
 were continuous instead of broken (thus if 1 hide 
 my watch when I am drunk, I must be drunk 
 again before I can remember where), so Miss 
 Twinkleton has two distinct and separate phases 
 of being. Every night, the moment the young 
 ladies have retired to rest, does Miss Twinkle- 
 ton smarten up her curls a little, brighten up 
 her eyes a little, and become a sprightlier Miss 
 Twinkleton than the young ladies have ever 
 seen. Every night, at the same hour, does INIiss 
 Twinkleton resume the topics of the previous 
 night, comprehending the tenderer scandal of 
 Cloisterham, of which she has no knowledge 
 whatever by day, and references to a certain 
 season at Tunbridge Wells (airily called by Miss 
 Twinkleton, in this state of her existence, " The 
 Wells "), notably the season wherein a certain 
 finished gentleman (compassionately called by 
 Miss Twinkleton, in this stage of her existence, 
 " Foolish Mr. Porters ") revealed a homage of 
 the heart, whereof Miss Twinkleton, in her 
 scholastic state of existence, is as ignorant as a 
 granite pillar. Miss Twinkleton's companion 
 in both states of existence, and equally adapt- 
 
 able to either, is one Mrs. Tisher : a deferential 
 widow with a weak back, a chronic sigh, and a 
 suppressed voice, who looks after the young 
 ladies' wardrobes, and leads them to infer that 
 she has seen better days. Perhaps this is the 
 reason why it is an article of faith with the ser- 
 vants, handed down from race to race, that the 
 departed Tisher was a hairdresser. 
 
 The pet pupil of the Nuns' House is Miss 
 Rosa Bud, of course called Rosebud ; wonder- 
 fully pretty, wonderfully childish, wonderfully 
 whimsical. An awkward interest (awkward be- 
 cause romantic) attaches to ]\Iiss Bud in the 
 minds of the young ladies, on account of its 
 being known to them that a husband has been 
 chosen for her by will and bequest, and that her 
 guardian is bound down to bestow her on that 
 husband when he comes of age. Miss Twinkle- 
 ton, in her seminarial state of existence, has 
 combated the romantic aspect of this destiny by 
 affecting to shake her head over it behind Miss 
 Bud's dimpled shoulders, and to brood on the 
 unhappy lot of that doomed litde victim. But 
 with no better effect — possibly some unfelt touch 
 of foolish Mr. Porters has undermined the en- 
 deavour — than to evoke from the young ladies 
 a unanimous bedchamber cry of '' Oh, what a 
 pretending old thing Miss Twinkleton is, my 
 dear ! " 
 
 The Nuns' House is never in such a state of 
 flutter as when this allotted husband calls to see 
 little Rosebud. (It is unanimously understood 
 by the young ladies that he is lawfully entitled 
 to this privilege, and that, if Miss Twinkleton 
 disputed it, she would be instantly taken up 
 and transported.) When his ring at the gate 
 bell is expected, or takes place, every young 
 lady who can, under any pretence, look out of 
 window, looks out of window; while every young 
 lady who is " practising," practises out of time ; 
 and the French class becomes so demoralised 
 that the mark goes round as briskly as the 
 bottle at a convivial party in the last century. 
 
 On the afternoon of the day next after the 
 dinner of two at the gatehouse, the bell is rung 
 with the usual fluttering results. 
 
 " Mr. Edwin Drood to see Miss Rosa." 
 
 This is the announcement of the parlour-maid 
 in chief. Miss Twinkleton, with an exemplary 
 air of melancholy on her, turns to the sacrifice, 
 and says : " You may go down, my dear." Miss 
 Bud goes down, followed by all eyes. 
 
 ]\Ir. Edwin Drood is waiting in Miss Twinkle- 
 ton's own parlour : a dainty room, with nothing 
 more directly scholastic in it than a terrestrial 
 and a celestial globe. These expressive machines 
 imply (to parents and guardians) that even when 
 
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 Miss Twinkleton retires into the bosom of pri- 
 vacy, duty may at any moment compel her to 
 become a sort of Wandering Jewess, scouring 
 the earth and soaring through the skies in search 
 of knowledge for her pupils. 
 
 The last new maid, who has never seen the 
 young gentleman Miss Rosa is engaged to, and 
 who is making his acquaintance between the 
 hinges of the open door, left open for the pur- 
 pose, stumbles guiltily down the kitchen stairs, 
 as a charming little apparition, with its face 
 concealed by a little silk apron thrown over its 
 head, glides into the parlour. 
 
 " Oh ! it is so ridiculous ! " says the appa- 
 rition, stopping and shrinking. " Don't, 
 Eddy ! " 
 
 " Don't what, Rosa ? " 
 
 " Don't come any nearer, please. It is so 
 absurd." 
 
 " What is absurd, Rosa ? " 
 
 " The whole thing is. It is so absurd to be 
 an engaged orphan ; and it is so absurd to have 
 the girls and the servants scuttling about after ' 
 one, like mice in the wainscot ; and it is so 
 absurd to be called upon ! " 
 
 The apparition appears to have a thumb in 
 the corner of its mouth while making this com- 
 plaint. 
 
 " You give me an affectionate reception. 
 Pussy, I must say." 
 
 " Well, I will in a minute, Eddy, but I can't 
 just yet. How are you ? " (very shortly.) 
 
 " I am unable to reply that I am much the. 
 better for seeing you. Pussy, inasmuch as I see 
 nothing of you." 
 
 This second remonstrance brings a dark bright 
 pouting eye out from a corner of the apron ; but 
 it swiftly becomes invisible again as the appari- 
 tion exclaims : " Oh, good gracious ! you have 
 had half your hair cut off ! " 
 
 " I should have done better to have had my 
 head cut off, I think," says Edwin, rumpling the 
 hair in question, with a fierce glance at the 
 looking-glass, and giving an impatient stamp. 
 " Shall I go ? " 
 
 " No ; you needn't go just yet, Eddy. The 
 girls would all be asking questions why you 
 went." 
 
 " Once for all, Rosa, will you uncover that 
 ridiculous little head of yours and give me a 
 welcome ? " 
 
 The apron is pulled off the childish head as 
 its wearer replies : " You're very welcome, 
 Eddy. There ! I'm sure that's nice. Shake 
 hands. No, I can't kiss you, because 'I've got 
 an acidulated drop in my mouth." 
 
 " Are you at allglad to see me, Pussy?" 
 
 *' Oh yes, I'm dreadfully glad ! — Go and sit 
 down. — Miss Twinkleton." 
 
 It is the custom of that excellent lady, when 
 these visits occur, to appear every three minutes, 
 either in her own person or in that of Mrs. 
 Tisher, and lay an offering on the shrine of 
 Propriety by affecting to look for some desi- 
 derated article. On the present occasion Miss 
 Twinkleton, gracefully gliding in and out, says 
 in passing : " How do you do, Mr. Drood ? 
 Very glad indeed to have the pleasure. Pray 
 excuse me. Tweezers. Thank you ! " 
 
 " I got the gloves last evening, Eddy, and I 
 like them very much. They are beauties." 
 
 " Well, that's something," the affianced re- 
 plies, half grumbling. " The smallest encourage- 
 ment thankfully received. And how did you 
 pass your birthday, Pussy?" 
 
 " Delightfully ! Everybody gave me a pre- 
 sent. And we had a feast. And we had a ball 
 at night." 
 
 "A feast and a ball, eh? These occasions 
 seem to go off tolerably well without me. Pussy." 
 
 " De-lightfully ! " cries Rosa in a quite spon- 
 taneous manner, and without the least pretence 
 of reserve. 
 
 " Hah ! And what was the feast ?" 
 
 " Tarts, oranges, jellies, and shrimps." 
 
 " Any partners at the ball ?" 
 
 '' We danced with one another, of course, sir. 
 But some of the girls made game to be their 
 brothers. It was so droll ! " 
 
 " Did anybody make game to be " 
 
 " To be you ? Oh dear yes ! " cries Rosa, 
 laughing with great enjoyment. " That was the 
 first thing done." 
 
 " I hope she did it pretty well," says Edwin 
 rather doubtfully. 
 
 " Oh, it was excellent ! — I wouldn't dance 
 with you, you know." 
 
 Edwin scarcely seems to see the force of this ; 
 begs to know if he may take the liberty to askw^hy? 
 
 " Because I was so tired of you," returns 
 Rosa. But she quickly adds, and pleadingly 
 too, seeing displeasure in his face : " Dear 
 Eddy, you were just as tired of me, you know." 
 
 " Did I say so, Rosa ? " 
 
 " Say so ! Do you ever say so ? No, you 
 only showed it. Oh, she did it so well ! " cries 
 Rosa in a sudden ecstasy with her counterfeit 
 betrothed. 
 
 " It strikes me that she must be a devilish 
 impudent girl," says Edwin Drood. "And so, 
 Pussy, you have passed your last birthday in this 
 old house." 
 
 "Ah, yes!" Rosa clasps her hands, looks 
 down with a sigh, and shakes her head. 
 
LUMPS OF DELIGHT. 
 
 II 
 
 " You seem to be sorry, Rosa." 
 
 " I am sorry for the poor old place. Some- 
 how, I feel as if it would miss me when I am 
 gone so far away, so young." 
 
 " Perhaps we had better stop short, Rosa?" 
 
 She looks up at him with a swift bright look ; 
 next moment shakes her head, sighs, and looks 
 down again. 
 
 " That is to say, is it, Pussy, that we are both 
 resigned ? " 
 
 She nods her head again, and, after a short 
 silence, quaintly bursts out with : " You know 
 we must be married, and married from here, 
 Eddy, or the poor girls will be so dreadfully 
 disappointed ! " 
 
 For the moment there is more of compassion, 
 both for her and for himself, in her affianced 
 husband's face, than there is of love. He checks 
 the look, and asks : " Shall I take you out for a 
 walk, Rosa dear ? " 
 
 Rosa dear does not seem at all clear on this 
 point, until her face, which has been comically 
 reflective, brightens. " Oh yes, Eddy ; let us 
 go for a walk ! And I tell you what we'll do. 
 You shall pretend that you are engaged to 
 somebody else, and I'll pretend that I am not 
 engaged to anybody, and then we shan't 
 quarrel." 
 
 " Do you think that will prevent our faUing 
 out, Rosa?" 
 
 " I know it will. Hush ! Pretend to look 
 out of window. — Mrs. Tisher ! " 
 
 Through a fortuitous concourse of accidents, 
 the matronly Tisher heaves in sight, says, in 
 rustling through the room like the legendary 
 ghost of a dowager in silken skirts : " I hope I 
 see Mr. Drood well ; though I needn't ask, if I 
 may judge from his complexion. I trust I dis- 
 turb no one, but there ivas a paper-knife — Oh, 
 thank you, I am sure ! " and disappears with 
 her prize. 
 
 " One other thing you must do, Eddy, to 
 oblige me," says Rosebud. "■ The moment we 
 get into the street, you must put me outside, 
 and keep close to the house yourself — squeeze 
 and graze yourself against it." 
 
 " By all means, Rosa, if you wish it. Might 
 I ask why ?" 
 
 " Oh ! because I don't want the girls to see 
 you." 
 
 " It's a fine day; but would you like me to 
 carry an umbrella up ? " 
 
 "Don't be foolish, sir. You haven't got 
 polished leather boots on," pouting, with one 
 shoulder raised. 
 
 " Perhaps that might escape the notice of the 
 girls, even if they did see me," remarks Edwin, 
 
 looking down at his boots with a sudden distaste 
 for them. 
 
 " Nothing escapes their notice, sir. And 
 then I know what would happen. Some of 
 them would begin reflecting on me by saying 
 (for they are free) that they never will on any 
 account engage themselves to lovers without 
 polished leather boots. Hark ! Miss Twinkle- 
 ton. I'll ask for leave." 
 
 That discreet lady being indeed heard with- 
 out, inquiring of nobody in a blandly conversa- 
 tional tone as she advances : " Eh ? Indeed ! 
 Are you quite sure you saw my mother-of-pearl 
 button-holder on the work-table in my room ? " 
 is at once solicited for walking leave, and gra- 
 ciously accords it. And soon the young couple 
 go out of the Nuns' House, taking all precau- 
 tions against the discovery of the so vitally 
 defective boots of Mr. Edwin Drood : precau- 
 tions, let us hope, effective for the peace of 
 Mrs. Edwin Drood that is to be. 
 
 '' Which way shall we take, Rosa ? " 
 
 Rosa replies, " I want to go to the Lumps-of- 
 Delight shop." 
 
 "To the ?" 
 
 "A Turkish sweetmeat, sir. My gracious 
 me, don't you understand anything? Call 
 yourself an Engineer, and not know that V 
 
 " Why, how should I know it, Rosa ?" 
 
 " Because I am very fond of them. But oh ! I 
 forgot what we are to pretend. No, you needn't 
 know anything about them ; never mind." 
 
 So he is gloomily borne off to the Lumps-of- 
 Delight shop, where Rosa makes her purchase, 
 and, after offering some to him (which he rather 
 indignantly declines), begins to partake of it 
 with great zest : previously taking off and rolling 
 up a pair of little pink gloves, like rose-leaves, 
 and occasionally putting her little pink fingers 
 to her rosy lips, to cleanse them from the Dust 
 of Delight that comes oft" the Lumps. 
 
 " Now, be a good-tempered Eddy, and pre- 
 tend. And so you are engaged ? " 
 
 " And so I am engaged." 
 
 " Is she nice ? " 
 
 " Charming." 
 
 "Tall?" 
 
 " Immensely tall ! " (Rosa being short.) 
 
 " Must be gawky, I should think," is Rosa's 
 quiet commentary. 
 
 " I beg your pardon ; not at all," contradic- 
 tion rising in him. "What is termed a fine 
 woman ; a splendid woman." 
 
 " Big nose, no doubt," is the quiet commen- 
 tary again. 
 
 " Not a little one, certainly," is the quick 
 reply. (Rosa's being a little one.) 
 
12 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 " Long pale nose, with a red knob in the 
 middle. / know the sort of nose," says Rosa 
 with a satisfied nod, and tranquilly enjoying the 
 Lumps. 
 
 " You doiit know the sort of nose, Rosa," 
 with some warmth; "because it's nothing of 
 the kind." 
 
 " Not a pale nose, Eddy?" 
 
 " No." Determined not to assent. 
 
 "A red nose? Oh! I don't like red noses. 
 However, to be sure she can always powder 
 it." 
 
 " She would scorn to powder it," says Edwin, 
 becoming heated. 
 
 " Would she? What a stupid thing she must 
 be ! Is she stupid in everything ? " 
 
 " No ; in nothing." 
 
 Alter a pause, in which the whimsically 
 wicked face has not been unobservant of him, 
 Rosa says : 
 
 " And this most sensible of creatures likes 
 the idea of being carried off to Eg>'pt ; does she, 
 Eddy ? " 
 
 " Yes. She takes a sensible interest in 
 triumphs of engineering skill : especially when 
 they are to change the whole condition of an 
 undeveloped country." 
 
 " Lor!" says Rosa, shrugging her shoulders, 
 with a little laugh of wonder. 
 
 " Do you object," Edwin inquires, with a 
 majestic turn of his eyes downward upon the 
 fairy figure : " do you object, Rosa, to her 
 feeling that interest ? "' 
 
 "Object? My dear Eddy! But really, 
 doesn't she hate boilers and things ?" 
 
 " I can answer for her not being so idiotic as 
 to hate Boilers," he returns with angry em- 
 phasis ; " though I cannot answer for her views 
 about Things ; really not understanding what 
 Things are meant." 
 
 " But don't she hate Arabs, and Turks, and 
 Fellahs, and people ? " 
 
 " Certainly not." Very firmly. 
 
 " At least she must hate the Pyramids ? 
 Come, Eddy ? " 
 
 "Why should she be such a little — tall, I 
 mean — goose, as to hate the Pyramids, Rosa?" 
 
 " Ah ! you should hear Miss Twinkleton," 
 often nodding her head, and much enjoying 
 the Lumps, " bore about them, and then you 
 wouldn't ask. Tiresome old burying-grounds ! 
 Isises, and Ibises, and Cheopses, and Pha- 
 raohses ; who cares about them ? And then 
 there was Belzoni, or somebody, dragged out 
 by the legs, half choked with bats and dust. 
 All the girls say : Serve him right, and hope it 
 hurt him, anJ wish he had been quite choked." 
 
 The two youthful figures, side by side, but 
 not now arm in-arm, wander discontentedly 
 about the old Close ; and each sometimes stops 
 and slowly imprints a deeper footstep in the 
 fallen leaves. 
 
 " Well ! " says Edwin after a lengthy silence. 
 "According to custom. We can't get on, 
 Rosa." 
 
 Rosa tosses her head, and says she don't 
 want to get on. 
 
 "That's a pretty sentiment, Rosa, consider- 
 ing." 
 
 " Considering what ? " 
 
 " If I say what, you'll go wrong again." 
 
 " K'//"ll go wrong, you mean, Eddy. Don't 
 be ungenerous." 
 
 " Ungenerous ! I like that ! " 
 
 "Then I doiit like that, and so I tell you 
 plainly," Rosa pouts. 
 
 " Now, Rosa, I put it to you. Who dis- 
 paraged my profession, my destination " 
 
 " You are not going to be buried in the 
 Pyramids, I hope ? " she interrupts, arching her 
 delicate eyebrows. " You never said you were. 
 If ycu are, why haven't you mentioned it to 
 me ? I can't find out your plans by instinct." 
 
 " Now, Rosa, you know very well what I 
 mean, my dear." 
 
 " Well, then, why did you begin with your 
 detestable red-nosed giantesses ? And she 
 would, she would, she would, she would, she 
 WOULD powder it ! " cries Rosa, in a little burst 
 of comical contradictory spleen. 
 
 " Somehow or other, I never can come right 
 in these discussions," says Edwin, sighing and 
 becoming resigned. 
 
 " How is it possible, sir, that you ever can 
 come right when you're always wrong? And 
 as to Belzoni, I suppose he's dead ; — I'm sure I 
 hope he is ; — and how can his legs or his chokes 
 concern you ? " 
 
 " It is nearly time for your return, Rosa. We 
 have not had a very happy walk, have we?" 
 
 "A happy walk? A detestably unhappy 
 walk, sir. If I go up-stairs the moment I get 
 in, and cry till I can't take my dancing lesson, 
 you are responsible, mind !" 
 
 " Let us be friends, Rosa." 
 
 " Ah ! " cries Rosa, shaking her head and 
 bursting into real tears, " I wish we could be 
 friends ! It's because we can't be friends that 
 we try one another so. I am a young little 
 thing, Eddy, to have an old heartache ; but I 
 really, really have, sometimes. Don't be angry. 
 I know you have one yourself too often. We 
 should both of us have done better if What is to 
 be had been left What miiiht have been. I am 
 
TRYING TO COME TO AN UNDERSTANDING, 
 
 U 
 
 quite a little serious thing now, and not teasing 
 you. Let each of us forbear, this one time, on 
 our own account, anil on the other's ! " 
 " Disarmeil by this glimpse of a woman's nature 
 in the spoilt child, though for an instant disposed 
 to resent it as seeming to involve the enforced 
 infliction of himself upon her, Edwin Drood 
 stands watching her as she childishly cries and 
 sobs, with both hands to the handkerchief at 
 her eyes, and then — she becoming more com- 
 
 posed, and indeed beginning, in her young 
 inconstancy, to laugh at herself for having been 
 so moved — leads her to a seat hard by, under 
 the elm-trees. 
 
 " One clear word of understanding. Pussy 
 dear. I am not clever out of my own line — 
 now I come to think of it, I don't know that I 
 am particularly clever in it — but I want to do 
 right. There is not — there may be — I really 
 don't see my way to what I want to say, but I 
 
 V/--^/.^^// 
 
 V//N 
 
 UNDER THE TREES. 
 
 must say it before we part— there is not any 
 other young " 
 
 " Oh no, Eddy ! It's generous of you to ask 
 me ; but no, no, no ! " 
 
 They have come very near to the cathedral 
 windows, and at this moment the organ and the 
 choir sound out sublimely. As they sit listen- 
 ing to the solemn swell, the confidence of last 
 night rises in young Edwin Drood's mind, and 
 he thinks how unlike this music is to that dis- 
 cordance. 
 
 " I fancy I can distinguish Jack's voice," is 
 his remark in a low tone in connection with the 
 train of thought. 
 
 " Take me back at once, please," urges his 
 affianced, quickly laying her light hand upon 
 his wrist. " They will all be coming out 
 directly ; let us get away. Oh, what a re- 
 sounding chord ! But don't let us stop to listen 
 to it ; let us get away ! " 
 
 Her hurry is over as soon as they have passed 
 out of the Close. They go arm-in-arm now, 
 gravely and deliberately enough, along the old 
 High Street, to tlie Nuns' House. At the gate, 
 the street being within sight empty, Edwin 
 bends down his face to Rosebud's. 
 
 She remonstrates, laughing, and is a childish 
 school-girl again. v 
 
14 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 " Eddy, no ! I'm too sticky to be kissed. 
 But give me your hand, and I'll blow a kiss into 
 that." 
 
 He does so. She breathes a light breath 
 into it, and asks, retaining it and looking 
 into it : 
 
 " Now say, what do you see ?" 
 
 '" See, Rosa ? " 
 
 " Why, I thought you p:gyptian boys could 
 look into a hand and see all sorts of phantoms. 
 Can't you see a happy Future ? " 
 
 For certain, neither of them sees a happy 
 Present, as the gate opens and closes, and one 
 goes in, and the other goes away. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MR. SAPSEA. 
 
 'CCEPTING the Jackass as the type 
 of self-sufficient stupidity and con- 
 ceit — a custom, perhaps, like some 
 few other customs, more conven- 
 tional than fair — then the purest 
 Jackass in Cloisterham is Mr. Tho- 
 mas Sapsea, Auctioneer. 
 Mr. Sapsea "dresses at" the Dean; 
 been bowed to for the Dean in mistake ; 
 has even been spoken to in the street as My 
 Lord, under the impression that he was the 
 Bishop come down unexpectedly, without his 
 chaplain. Mr. Sapsea is very proud of this, and 
 of his voice, and of his style. He has even (in 
 selling landed property) tried the experiment of 
 slightly intoning in his pulpit, to make himself 
 more like what he takes to be the genuine eccle- 
 siastical article. So, in ending a Sale by Public 
 Auction, Mr. Sapsea finishes off with an air of 
 bestowing a benediction on the assembled bro- 
 kers, which leaves the real Dean — a modest and 
 worthy gentleman — far behind. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea has many admirers ; indeed, the 
 proposition is carried by a large local majority, 
 even including non-believers in his wisdom, that 
 he is a credit to Cloisterham. He possesses the 
 great qualities of being portentous and dull, and 
 of having a roll in his speech, and another roll 
 in his gait ; not to mention a certain gravely- 
 flowing action with his hands, as if he were pre- 
 sently going to Confirm the individual with 
 whom he holds discourse. Much nearer sixty 
 years of age than fifty, with a flowing outline of 
 stomach, and horizontal creases in his waistcoat ; 
 reputed to be rich ; voting at elections in the 
 strictly respectable interest; morally satisfied 
 
 that nothing but he himself has grown since he 
 was a baby ; how can dunder-headed Mr. Sapsea 
 be otherwise than a credit to Cloisterham, and 
 society ? ^ 
 
 Mr. Sapsea's premises are in the High Street, 
 over against the Nuns' House. They are of 
 about the period of the Nuns' House, irregu- 
 larly modernised here and there, as steadily- 
 deteriorating generations found, more and more, 
 that they preferred air and light to Fever and 
 the Plague. Over the doorway is a wooden 
 eftigy, about half life-size, representing Mr. Sap- 
 sea's father, in a curly wig and toga, in the act 
 of selling. The chastity of the idea, and the 
 natural appearance of the little finger, hammer, 
 and pulpit, have been much admired. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea sits in his dull ground-floor sit- 
 ting-room, giving first on his paved back-yard ; 
 and then on his railed-off garden. Mr. Sapsea 
 has a bottle of port wine on a table before the 
 fire — the fire is an early luxury, but pleasant on 
 the cool, chilly autumn evening — and is charac- 
 teristically attended by his portrait, his eight- 
 day clock, and his weather-glass. Characteris- 
 tically, because he would uphold himself against 
 mankind, his weather-glass against weather, and 
 his clock against time. 
 
 By Mr. Sapsea's side on^ the table are a writ- 
 ing-desk and writing materials. Glancing at a 
 scrap of manuscript, Mr. Sapsea reads it to him- 
 self with a lofty air, and then, slowly pacing the 
 room with his thumbs in the armholes of his 
 waistcoat, repeats it, from memory : so inter- 
 nally, though with much dignity, that the word 
 " Ethelinda " is alone audible. 
 
 There are three clean wine-glasses in a tray 
 on the table. His servant-maid entering and 
 announcing " Mr. Jasper is come, sir," Mr. 
 Sapsea waves " Admit him," and draws two 
 wine-glasses from the rank, as being claimed. 
 
 " Glad to see you, sir. I congratulate myself 
 on having the honour of receiving you here for 
 the first time." Mr. Sapsea does the honours 
 of his house in this wise. 
 
 " You are very good. The honour is mine, 
 and the self- congratulation is mine." 
 
 " You are pleased to say so, sir. But I do 
 assure you that it is a satisfaction to me to re- 
 ceive you in my humble home. And that is 
 what I would not say to everybody." Ineffable 
 loftiness on Mr. Sapsea's part accompanies these 
 words, as leaving the sentence to be understood : 
 " You will not easily believe that your society 
 can be a satisfaction to a man like myself; 
 nevertheless, it is." 
 
 " I have for some time desired to know you, 
 Mr. Sapsea." 
 
THE LATE MRS. S APSE A. 
 
 15 
 
 " And I, sir, have long known you by reputa- 
 tion as a man of taste. Let me fill your glass. 
 I will give you, sir," says Mr. Sapsea, filling his 
 own ; 
 
 " ' When the French come over, 
 May we meet them at Dover ! ' " 
 
 This was a patriotic toast in Mr. Sapsea's in- 
 fancy, and he is therefore fully convinced of its 
 being appropriate to any subsequent era. 
 
 " You can scarcely be ignorant, Mr. Sapsea," 
 observes Jasper, watching the auctioneer with a 
 smile as the latter stretches out his legs before 
 the fire, " that you know tlic world." 
 
 " Well, sir," is the chuckling reply, " I think 
 I know something of it ; something of it." 
 
 " Your reputation for that knowledge has 
 always interested and surprised me, and made 
 me wish to know you. For Cloisterham is a 
 Httle place. Cooped up in it myself, I know 
 nothing beyond it, and feel it to be a very little 
 place." 
 
 " If I have not gone to foreign countries, 
 
 young man " Mr. Sapsea begins, and then 
 
 stops. " You will excuse me calling you young 
 man, Mr. Jasper ? You are much my junior." 
 
 " By all means." 
 
 " — If I have not gone to foreign countries, 
 young man, foreign countries have come to me. 
 They have come to me in the way of business, 
 and I have improved upon my opportunities. 
 Put it that I take an inventory, or make a cata- 
 logue. I see a French clock. I never saw him 
 before in my life, but I instantly lay my finger 
 on him and say, ' Paris ! ' I see some cups and 
 saucers of Chinese make, equally strangers to 
 me personally : I put my finger on them, then 
 and there, and I say, ' Pekin, Nankin, and Can- 
 ton.' It is the same with Japan, with Egypt, 
 and with bamboo and sandal-wood from the 
 East Indies ; I put my finger on them all. I 
 have put my finger on the North Pole before 
 now, and said, ' Spear of Esquimaux make, for 
 half a pint of pale sherry ! ' " 
 
 " Really ? A very remarkable way, Mr. Sap- 
 sea, of acquiring a knowledge of men and things." 
 
 " I mention it, sir," Mr. Sapsea rejoins with 
 unspeakable complacency, "because, as I say, 
 it don't do to boast of what you are ; but show 
 how you came to be it, and then you prove it." 
 
 " Most interesting. We were to speak of the 
 late Mrs. Sapsea." 
 
 " We were, sir." Mr. Sapsea fills both glasses, 
 and takes the decanter into safe keeping again. 
 "Before I consult your opinion as a man of 
 laste on this little trifle " — holding it up — 
 ''which is but a trifle, and still has required 
 
 some thought, sir, some little fever of the brow, 
 I ought perhaps to describe the character of 
 the late Mrs. Sapsea, now dead three-quarters 
 of a year." 
 
 Mr. Jasper, in the act of yawning behind his 
 wine-glass, puts down that screen and calls up a 
 look of interest. It is a little impaired in its 
 expressiveness by his having a shut-up gape still 
 to dispose of, with watering eyes. 
 
 " Haifa-dozen years ago, or so," Mr. Sapsea 
 proceeds, " when I had enlarged my mind up to 
 — I will not say to what it now is, for that might 
 seem to aim at too much, but up to the pitch of 
 wanting another mind to be absorbed in it — I cast 
 my eye about me for a nuptial partner. Because, 
 as I say, it is not good for man to be alone." 
 
 Mr. Jasper appears to commit this original 
 idea to memory. 
 
 " Miss Brobity at that time kept, I will not 
 call it the rival estabHshment to the establish- 
 ment at the Nuns' House opposite, but I will 
 call it the other parallel establishment down 
 town. The world did have it that she showed 
 a passion for attending my sales, when they took 
 place on half-holidays, or in vacation-time. The 
 world did put it about that she admired my 
 style. The world did notice that, as time flowed 
 by, my style became traceable in the dictation 
 exercises of Miss Brobity's pupils. Young man, 
 a whisper even sprang up in obscure malignity, 
 that one ignorant and besotted Churl (a parent) 
 so committed himself as to object to it by name. 
 But I do not believe this. For is it likely that 
 any human creature in his right senses would so 
 lay himself open to be pointed at by what I call 
 the finger of scorn ? " 
 
 Mr. Jasper shakes his head. Not in the least 
 likely. Mr. Sapsea, in a grandiloquent state of 
 absence of mind, seems to refill his visitor's 
 glass, which is full already ; and does really re- 
 fill his own, which is empty. 
 
 " Miss Brobity's Being, young man, was 
 deeply imbued with homage to Mind. She 
 revered Mind, when launched, or, as I say, pre- 
 cipitated, on an extensive knowledge of the 
 world. When I made my proposal, she did me 
 the honour to be so overshadowed with a species 
 of Awe as to be able to articulate only the two 
 words, " O Thou ! " meaning myself. Her 
 limpid blue eyes were fixed upon me, her semi- 
 transparent hands were clasped together, pallor 
 overspread her aquiline features, and, though 
 encouraged to proceed, she never did proceed a 
 word further. I disposed of the parallel esta- 
 blishment by private contract, and we became 
 as nearly one as could be expected under the 
 circumstances. But she never could, and she 
 
i6 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 never did, find a phrase satisfactory to her 
 perhaps-too-favourable estimate of my intellect. 
 To the very last (feeble action of liver), she 
 addressed me in the same unfinished terms." 
 
 Mr. Jasper has closed his eyes as the auc- 
 tioneer has deepened his voice. He now ab- 
 ruptly opens them, and says, in unison with the 
 deepened voice, " Ah ! " — rather as if stopping 
 himself on the extreme verge of adding — 
 "men ! " 
 
 " I have been since," says Mr. Sapsea, with 
 his legs stretched out, and solemnly enjoying 
 himself with the wine and the fire, " what you 
 behold me ; I have been since a solitary 
 mourner ; I have been since, as I say, wasting 
 my evening conversation on the desert air. I 
 will not say that I have reproached myself; but 
 there have been times when I have asked myself 
 the question : What if her husband had been 
 nearer on a level with her ? If she had not had 
 to look up quite so high, what might the stimu- 
 lating action have been upon the liver ? " 
 
 Mr. Jasper says, with an appearance of having 
 fallen into dreadfully low spirits, that he " sup- 
 poses it was to be." 
 
 " We can only suppose so, sir," Mr. Sapsea 
 coincides. " As I say, Man proposes. Heaven 
 disposes. It may or may not be putting the 
 same thought in another form ; but taat is the 
 way I put it." 
 
 ^Ir, Jasper murmurs assent. 
 
 " And now, Mr. Jasper," resumes the auc- 
 tioneer, producing his scrap of manuscript, "Mrs. 
 Sapsea's monument having had full time to settle 
 and dry, let me take your opinion, as a man of 
 taste, on the inscription 1 have (as I before 
 remarked, not without some little fever of the 
 brow) drawn out for it. Take it in your own 
 hand. The setting out of the lines requires to 
 be followed with the eye, as well as the contents 
 with the mind." 
 
 ]\Ir. Jasper, complying, sees and reads as 
 follows : 
 
 ETHELINDA, 
 Reverential Wife of 
 
 MR. T H O ^^ A S SAPSEA, 
 AUCTIONEER, VAL ^R, ESTATE AGENT, &c., 
 
 OF THIS CITY. 
 
 Whose Knowledge of the World, 
 
 Though somewhat extensive, 
 
 Never brought him acquainted with 
 
 A SPIRIT 
 
 More capable of 
 
 LOOKING UP TO HIM. 
 
 STRANGER, PAUSE 
 
 And ask thyself the Question, 
 
 CANST THOU DO ^LIKEWISE? 
 
 If Not, 
 
 WITH A BLUSH RETIRE. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea having risen and stationed himself 
 with his back to the fire, for the purpose of 
 observing the effect of these lines on the coun- 
 tenance of a man of taste, consequently has his 
 face towards the door, when his serving- maid, 
 again appearing, announces, " Durdles is come, 
 sir ! " He promptly draws forth and fills the 
 third wine-glass, as being now claimed, and 
 replies, "Show Durdles in." 
 
 " Admirable ! " quoth Mr. Jasper, handing 
 back the paper. 
 
 " You approve, sir ? " 
 
 "Impossible not to approve. Striking, cha- 
 racteristic, and complete." 
 
 The auctioneer inclines his head, as one 
 accepting his due and giving a receipt ; and 
 invites the entering Durdles to take off that 
 glass of wine (handing the same), for it will 
 warm him. 
 
 Durdles is a stonemason ; chiefly in the grave- 
 stone, tomb, and monument way, and wholly of 
 their colour from head to foot. No man is 
 better known in Cloisterham. He is the char- 
 tered libertine of the place. Fame trumpets 
 him a wonderful workman — which, for aught 
 that anybody knows, he may be (as he never 
 works) ; and a wonderful sot — which everybody 
 knows he is. With the cathedral cryj^t he is 
 better acquainted than any living authority; it 
 may even be than any dead one. It is said 
 that the intimacy of this acquaintance began in 
 his habitually resorting to that secret place, to 
 lock out the Cloisterham boy-populace, and 
 sleep oft' the fumes of liquor : he having ready 
 access to the cathedral, as contractor for rough 
 repairs. Be this as it may, he does know much 
 about it, and, in the demolition of impedimental 
 fragments of wall, buttress, and pavement, has 
 seen strange sights. He often speaks of himself 
 in the third person ; perhaps being a little misty 
 as to his own identity when he narrates; perhaps 
 impartially adopting the Cloisterham nomen- 
 clature in reference to a character of acknow- 
 ledged distinction. Thus he will say, touching 
 his strange sights : " Durdles come upon the 
 old chap," in reference to a buried magnate of 
 ancient time and high degree, " by striking right 
 into the coftin with his pick. The old chap 
 gave Durdles a look with his open eyes, as much 
 as to say, * Is your name Durdles ? Why, my 
 man, I've been waiting for you a devil of a 
 time ! ' And then he turned to powder." With 
 a two-foot rule always in his pocket, and a 
 mason's hammer all but always in his hand, 
 Durdles goes continually sounding and tapping 
 all about and about the cathedral ; and when- 
 ever he says to Tope, " Tope, here's another 
 
DURDLES. 
 
 17 
 
 okl 'un in liere ! " To] e announces it to the 
 Dean as an established discovery. 
 
 In a suit of coarse flannel witli horn buttons, 
 a yellow neckerchief with draggled ends, an old 
 hat more russet-coloured than black, and laced 
 boots of the hue of his stony calling, Durdles 
 leads a lazy, gipsy sort of life, carrying his 
 dinner about with him in a small bundle, and 
 sitting on all manner of tombstones to dine. 
 This dinner of Durdles's has become quite a 
 Cloisterham institution : not only because of his 
 never appearing in public without it, but because 
 of its having been, on certain renowned occa- 
 sions, taken into custody along with Durdles (as 
 drunk and incapable), and exhibited before the 
 Bench of Justices at the Town-hall. These 
 occasions, however, have been few and far apart ; 
 Durdles being as seldom drunk as sober. For 
 the rest, he is an old bachelor, and he lives in a 
 little antiquated hole of a house that was never 
 finished : supposed to be built, so far, of stones 
 stolen from the city wall. To this abode there 
 is an approach, ankle deep in stone chips, 
 resembling a petrified grove of tombstones, urns, 
 draperies, and broken columns in ail stages of 
 sculpture. Herein two journeymen incessantly 
 chip, while other two journeymen, who face 
 each other, incessantly saw stone ; dipping as 
 regularly in and out of their sheltering sentry- 
 bo.xes as if they were mechanical figures em- 
 blematical of Time and Death. 
 
 To Durdles, when he had consumed his glass 
 of port, Mr. Sapsea intrusts that precious effort 
 of his Muse. Durdles unfeelingly takes out his 
 two-foot rule, and measures the lines calmly, 
 alloying them with stone grit. 
 
 "This is for the monument, is it, Mr. Sap- 
 sea ? " 
 
 " The inscription. Yes." Mr. Sapsea waits 
 for its effect on a common mind. 
 
 " It'll come in to a eighth of a inch," says 
 Durdles. " Your servant, Mr. Jasper. Hope I 
 see you well." 
 
 " How are you, Durdles ?" 
 
 " I've got a touch of the Tombatism on me, 
 Mr. Jasper, but that I must expect." 
 
 " You mean the Rheumatism," says Sapsea 
 in a sharp tone. (He is nettled by having his 
 composition so mechanically received.) 
 
 " No, I don't. I mean, Mr. Sapsea, the 
 Tombatism. It's another sort from Rheumatism. 
 Mr. Jasper knows what Durdles means. You 
 get among them tombs afore it's well light 
 on a winter morning, and keep on, as the 
 Catechism says, a walking in the same all the 
 days of your life, and jw/11 know what Durdles 
 means." 
 
 Edwin Drood, 2. 
 
 " It is a bitter cold place," Mr. Jasper assents 
 with an antipathetic shiver. 
 
 " And if it's bitter cold for you, up in the 
 chancel, with a lot of live breath smoking out 
 about you, what the bitterness is to Durdles, 
 down in the crypt among the earthy damps 
 there, and the dead breath of the old 'uns," 
 returns that individual, " Durdles leaves you to 
 judge. — Is this to be put in hand at once, Mr. 
 Sapsea?" 
 
 Mr. Sapsea, with an Author's anxiety to rush 
 into publication, replies that it cannot be out of 
 hand too soon. 
 
 " You had better let me have the key, then," 
 says Durdles. 
 
 " Why, man, it is not to be put inside the 
 monument ! " 
 
 "Durdles knows, yher^ it's to be put, Mr. 
 Sapsea ; no man better. Ask 'ere a man in 
 Cloisterham whether Durdles knor.vs his work;'-*' 
 
 Mr. Sapsea rises, takes a key from a drawer, 
 unlocks an iron safe let into the wall, and takes 
 from it another key. 
 
 '• When Durdles puts a touch or a finish 
 upon his work, no matter where, inside or out- 
 side, Durdles likes to look at his work all round, 
 and see that his work is a doing him credit," 
 Durdles explains doggedly. 
 
 The key proffered him by the bereaved 
 widower being a large one, he slips his two-foot 
 rule into a side-pocket of his flannel trousers 
 made for it, and deliberately opens his flannel 
 coat, and opens the mouth of a large breast 
 pocket within it, before taking the key to place 
 it in that repository. 
 
 " Why, Durdles ! " exclaims Jasper, looking 
 on amused, " you are undermined with pockets!" 
 
 " And I carries weight in 'em too, Mr. Ja^^per. 
 Feel those !" producing two other large keV''. 
 
 " Hand me Mr. Sapsea's likewise. Surely this 
 is the heaviest of the three." 
 
 " You'll find 'em much of a muchness, I ex- 
 pect," says Durdles. "They all belong to 
 monuments. They all open Durdles's work. 
 Durdles keeps the keys of his work mostly. 
 Not that they're much used." 
 
 " By-the-bye," it comes into Jasper's mind to 
 say as he idly examines the keys, " I have been 
 going to ask you, many a day, and have always 
 lorgotten. You know they sometimes call you 
 Stony Durdles, don't you ?" 
 
 " Cloisterham knows me as Durdles, Mr. 
 Jasper." 
 
 " I am aware of that, of course. But the boys 
 sometimes " 
 
 " Oh ! if you mind them young imps of 
 boys " Durdles gruffly interrupts. 
 
i8 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 " I don't mind them any more than you do. 
 
 But there was a discussion the other day among 
 
 the Choir whether Stony stood for Tony " 
 
 dinking one key against another. 
 
 (" Take care of the wards, Mr, Jasper.") - 
 
 " — Or whether Stony stood for Stephen " 
 
 cHnking with a change of keys. 
 
 (" You can't make a pitch-pipe of 'em, Mr. 
 Jasper.") 
 
 " — Or whether the name comes from your 
 trade. How stands the fact ? " 
 
 Mr. Jasper weighs the three keys in his hand, 
 hfts his head from his idly-stooping attitude over 
 the fire, and deUvers the keys to Durdles with 
 an ingenuous and friendly face. 
 
 But the stony one is a gruff one likewise, and 
 that hazy state of his is always an uncertain 
 state, highly conscious of its dignity, and prone 
 to take offence. He drops his two keys back 
 into his pocket one by one, and buttons them 
 up ; he takes his dinner-bundle from the chair- 
 back on which he hung it when he came in ; he 
 distributes the weight he carries, by tying the 
 third key up in it, as though he were an ostrich, 
 and liked to dine oft' cold iron; and he gets 
 out of the room, deigning no word of answer. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea then proposes a hit at back- 
 gammon, which, seasoned with his own improv- 
 ing conversation, and terminating in a supper 
 of cold roast beef and salad, beguiles the golden 
 evening until pretty late. Mr. Sapsea's wisdom 
 being, in its delivery to mortals, rather of the 
 diffuse than the epigrammatic order, is by no 
 means expended even then ; but his visitor 
 intimates that he will come back for more of 
 the precious commodity on future occasions, 
 and Mr. Sapsea lets him off" for the present, to 
 ponder on the instalment he carries away. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MR. DURDLES AND FRIEND. 
 
 OHN JASPER, on his way home 
 through the Close, is brought to a 
 stand-still by the spectacle of Stony 
 Durdles, dinner-bundle and all, lean- 
 y^"^ ing his back against the iron railing 
 of the burial-ground enclosing it from 
 the old cloister arches ; and a hideous 
 small boy, in rags, flinging stones at him 
 as a well-defined mark in the moonlight. Some- 
 times the stones hit him, and sometimes they 
 miss him, but Durdles seems indifferent to either 
 fortune. The hideous small boy, on the con- 
 trary, whenever he hits Durdles, blows a whistle 
 
 of triumph through a jagged gap, convenient for 
 the purpose, in the front of his mouth, where 
 half his teeth are wanting; and, whenever he 
 misses him, yelps out, " Mulled agin ! " and 
 tries to atone for the failure by taking a more 
 correct and vicious aim. 
 
 " What are you doing to the man ?" demands 
 Jasper, stepping out into the moonlight from the 
 shade. 
 
 " Making a cockshy of him," replies the 
 hideous small boy. 
 
 " Give me those stones in your hand." 
 
 " Yes, I'll give 'em you down your throat, if 
 you come a ketching hold of me," says the small 
 boy, shaking himself loose, and backing. " I'll 
 smash your eye if you don't look out ! " 
 
 " Baby-Devil that you are, what has the man 
 done to you ? " 
 
 " He won't go home." 
 
 " What is that to you ? " 
 
 " He gives me a 'apenny to pelt him home if 
 I ketches him out too late," says the boy. And 
 then chants, like a little savage, half stumbling 
 and half dancing among the rags and laces of 
 his dilapidated boots : 
 
 " * Widdy widdy wen ! 
 
 I — ket — ches — Im — out — ar — ter — ten, 
 Widdy widdy wy ! 
 
 Then — E — don't — go — then — I — shy — 
 Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning ! ' " 
 
 — with a comprehensive sweep on the last word, 
 and one more delivery at Durdles. 
 
 This would seem to be a poetical note of pre- 
 paration, agreed upon, as a caution to Durdles 
 to stand clear if he can, or to betake himself 
 homeward. 
 
 John Jasper invites the boy with a beck of his 
 head to follow him (feeling it hopeless to drag 
 him, or coax him), and crosses to the iron railing 
 where the Stony (and stoned) One is profoundly 
 meditating. 
 
 '* Do you know this thing, this child ? " asks 
 Jasper, at a loss for a word that will define this 
 thing. 
 
 " Deputy," says Durdles with a nod. 
 r " Is that its — his — name ? "' 
 
 " Deputy," assents Durdles. 
 
 " I'm man-servant up at the Travellers' Two- 
 penny in Gas Works Carding," this thing ex- 
 plains. "All us man -servants at Travellers' 
 Lodgings is named Deputy. When we're chock- 
 full, and the Travellers is all abed, I come out 
 for my 'elth. Then, withdrawing into the road, 
 and taking aim, he resumes : 
 
 " ' Widdy widdy wen ! 
 
 I — ket — ches — Im — out — ar — ter ' " 
 
AN OBJECT IN LIFE. 
 
 *9 
 
 " Hold your hand," cries Jasper, " and don't 
 throw while I stand so near him, or I'll kill 
 you ! Come, Durdles ; let me walk home with 
 you to-night. Shall I carry your bundle ? " 
 
 " Not on any account," replies Durdles, ad- 
 justing it. " Durdles was making his reflections 
 here when you come up, sir, surrounded by 
 his works, like a popular Author. — Your own 
 brother-in-law ; " introducing a sarcophagus within 
 the railing, white and cold in the moonlight. 
 " Mrs. Sapsea;" introducing the monument of 
 that devoted wife. " Late Incumbent ; " in- 
 troducing the Reverend Gentleman's broken 
 column. "Departed Assessed Taxes;" intro- 
 ducing a vase and towel, standing on what 
 might represent the cake of soap. " Former 
 Pastrycook and Muffin-maker, much respected ;" 
 introducing gravestone. " All safe and sound 
 here, sir, and all Durdles's work. Of the com- 
 mon folk, that is merely bundled up in turf and 
 brambles, the less said the better. A poor lot, 
 soon forgot." 
 
 " This creature, Deputy, is behind us," says 
 Jasper, looking back. " Is he to follow us ? " 
 
 The relations between Durdles and Deputy 
 are of a capricious kind ; for, on Durdles turning 
 himself about with the slow gravity of beery 
 soddenness. Deputy makes a pretty wide circuit 
 into the road, and stands on the defensive. 
 
 " You never cried Widdy warning before you 
 begun to-night," says Durdles, unexpectedly re- 
 minded of, or imagining, an injury. 
 
 " Yer lie, I did," says Deputy in his only 
 form of polite contradiction. 
 
 " Own brother, sir," observes Durdles, turning 
 himself about again, and as unexpectedly forget- 
 ting his offence as he had recalled or conceived 
 it ; " own brother to Peter the Wild Boy ! But 
 I gave him an object in life." 
 
 " At which he takes aim ? " Mr. Jasper 
 suggests. 
 
 " That's it, sir," returns Durdles, quite satis- 
 fied ; " at which he takes aim. I took him in 
 hand, and gave him an object. What was he 
 before ? A destroyer. What work did he do ? 
 Nothing but destruction. What did he earn by 
 it ? Short terms in Cloisterham Gaol. Not a 
 person, not a piece of property, not a winder, not 
 a horse, nor a dog, nor a cat, nor a bird, nor a fowl, 
 nor a pig, but what he stoned, for want of an en- 
 lightened object. I put that enlightened object 
 before him, and now he can turn his honest 
 halfpenny by the three-penn'orth a week." 
 
 " I wonder he has no competitors." 
 
 " He has plenty, Mr. Jasper, but he stones 
 'em all away. Now, I don't know what this 
 scheme of mine comes to," pursues Durdles, con- 
 
 sidering about it with the same sodden gravity ; 
 " I don't know what you may precisely call it. 
 It ain't a sort of a — scheme of a National 
 Education ? " 
 
 " I should say not," replies Jasper. 
 
 " /should say not," assents Durdles; " then 
 we won't try to give it a name." 
 
 " He still keeps behind us," repeats Jasper, 
 looking over his shoulder. " Is he to follow us ?" 
 
 " We can't help going round by the Travel- 
 lers' Twopenny, if we go the short way, which 
 is the back-way," Durdles answers, " and we'll 
 drop him there.'' 
 
 So they go on ; Deputy, as a rear rank one. 
 taking open order, and invading the silence of 
 the hour and place by stoning every wall, post, 
 pillar, and other inanimate object by the deserted 
 way. 
 
 " Is there anything new down in the crypt, 
 Durdles?" asks John Jasper. 
 
 " Anything old, I think you mean," growls 
 Durdles. " It ain't a spot for novelty." 
 
 " Any new discovery on your part, I meant." 
 
 " There's a old 'un under the seventh pillar 
 on the left as you go down the broken steps 
 of the little underground chapel as formerly 
 was ; I make him out (so fur as I've made 
 him out yet) to be one of them old 'uns with a 
 crook. To judge from the size of the passages 
 in the walls, and of the steps and doors, by 
 which they come and went, them crooks must 
 have been a good deal in the way of the old 
 'uns ! Two on 'em meeting promiscuous must 
 have hitched one another by the mitre pretty 
 often, I should say." 
 
 Without any endeavour to correct the literality 
 of this opinion, Jasper surveys his companion 
 — covered from head to foot with old mortar, 
 lime, and stone grit — as though he, Jasper, were 
 getting imbued with a romantic interest in his 
 weird life. 
 
 " Yours is a curious existence." 
 
 Without furnishing the least clue to the ques- 
 tion, whether he receives this as a compliment 
 or as quite the reverse, Durdles gruffly answers : 
 " Yours is another." 
 
 " Well ! inasmuch as my lot is cast in the 
 same old earthy, chilly, never-changing place. 
 Yes. But there is much more mystery and in- 
 terest in your connection with the cathedral 
 than in mine. Indeed, I am beginning to have 
 some idea of asking you to take me on as a sort 
 of student, or free 'prentice, under you, and to 
 let me go about with you sometimes, and see 
 some of these odd nooks in which you pass 
 your days." 
 
 The Stony One replies, in a general way, "All 
 
20 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD 
 
 right. Everybody knows where to find Durdles 
 when he's wanted." Which, if not strictly true, 
 is approximately so, if taken to express that 
 Durdles may always be found in a state of 
 vagabondage somewhere. 
 
 " What I dwell upon most," says Jasper, pur- 
 suing his subject of romantic interest, " is the 
 remarkable accuracy with which you would seem 
 to find out where people are buried. — What is 
 the matter ? That bundle is in your way ; let 
 me hold it." 
 
 Durdles had stopped and backed a little 
 (Deputy, attentive to all his movements, imme- 
 diately skirmishing into the road), and was look- 
 ing about for some ledge or corner to place his 
 bundle on, when thus relieved of it. 
 
 "Just you give me my hammer out of that," 
 says Durdles, " and I'll show you." 
 
 Clink, clink ! And his hammer is handed 
 him. 
 
 " Now, lookee here. You pitch your note, 
 don't you, Mr. Jasper ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " So I sound for mine. I take my hammer, 
 and I tap." (Here he strikes the pavement, 
 and the attentive Deputy skirmishes at a rather 
 wider range, as supposing that his head may be 
 in requisition.) " I tap, tap, tap. Solid ! I go 
 on tapping. Solid still ! Tap again. Holloa ! 
 Hollow ! Tap again, persevering. Solid in 
 hollow ! Tap, tap, tap, to try it better. Solid in 
 hollow ; and inside solid, ho'low again ! There 
 you are ! Old 'un crumbled away in stone coffin 
 m vault ! " 
 
 " Astonishing ! " 
 
 " I have even done this," says Durdles, draw- 
 ing out his two-foot rule (Deputy meanwhile 
 skirmishing nearer, as suspecting that Treasure 
 may be about to be discovered, which may some- 
 how lead to his own enrichment, and the deli- 
 cious treat of the discoverers being hanged by 
 the neck, on his evidence, until they are dead). 
 " Say that hammer of mine's a wall — my work. 
 Two ; four ; and two is six," measuring on the 
 pavement. " Six foot inside that wall is Mrs. 
 Sapsea." 
 
 " Not really Mrs. Sapsea ? " 
 
 " Say Mrs. Sapsea. Her wall's thicker, but 
 say Mrs. Sapsea. Durdles taps that wall repre- 
 sented by that hammer, and says, after good 
 sounding: * Something betwixt us! ' Sure enough, 
 some rubbish has been left in that same six-foot 
 space by Durdles's men 1 " 
 
 Jasper opines that such accuracy " is a gift." 
 
 " 1 wouldn't havQ it at a gift," returns Durdles, 
 by no means receiving the observation in good 
 part. " I worked it out for myself. Durdles 
 
 comes by his knowledge through grubbing deep 
 for it, and having it up by the roots when it 
 don't want to come. — Holloa, you Deputy ! " 
 
 " Widdy ! " is Deputy's shrill response, stand- 
 ing off again. 
 
 " Catch that ha'penny. And don't let me see 
 any more of you to-night, after we come to the 
 Travellers' Twopenny." 
 
 "Warning!" returns Deputy, having caught 
 the halfpenny, and appearing by this mystic 
 word to express his assent to the arrangement. 
 
 They have but to cro?s what was once the 
 vineyard, belonging to what was once the Monas- 
 tery, to come into the narrow back-lane wherein 
 stands the crazy wooden house of two low stories 
 currently known as the Travellers' Twopenny : 
 a house all warped and distorted, like the morals 
 of the travellers, with scant remains of a lattice- 
 work porch over the door, and also of a rustic 
 fence before its stamped-out garden, by reason 
 of the travellers being so bound to the premises 
 by a tender sentiment (or so fond of having a 
 fire by the roadside in the course of the day), 
 that they can never be persuaded or threatened 
 into departure, without violently possessing them- 
 selves of some wooden forget-me-not, and bear- 
 ing it off. 
 
 The semblance of an inn is attempted to be 
 given to this wretched place by fragments of 
 conventional red curtaining in the windows, 
 which rags are made muddily transparent in the 
 night season by feeble lights of rush or cotton 
 dip burning dully in the close air of the inside. 
 As Durdles and Jasper come near, they are ad- 
 dressed by an inscribed paper lantern over the 
 door, setting forth the purport of the house. 
 They are also addressed by some half-dozen 
 other hideous small boys — whether twopenny 
 lodgers or followers, or hangers-on of such, who 
 knows ? — who, as if attracted by some carrion 
 scent of Deputy in the air, start into the moon- 
 light, as vultures might gather in the desert, and 
 instantly fall to stoning him and one another. 
 
 " Stop, you young brutes," cries Jasper 
 angrily, " and let us go by ! " 
 
 This remonstrance being received with yells 
 and flying stones, according to a custom of late 
 years comfortably established among the police 
 regulations of our English communities, where 
 Christians are stoned on all sides, as if the days 
 of St. Stephen were revived, Durdles remarks of 
 the young savages, with some point, that " they 
 haven't got an object," and leads the way down 
 the lane. 
 
 At the corner of the lane, Jasper, hotly 
 enraged, checks his companion and looks back. 
 All is silent. Next moment, a stone coming 
 
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 21 
 
 rattling at his hat, and a distant yell of " Wake- 
 Cock ! Warning ! " followed by a crow, as from 
 some infernally-hatched Chanticleer, apprising 
 him under whose victorious fire he stands, he 
 turns the corner into safety, and takes Durdles 
 home : Durdles stumbling among the litter of 
 his stony yard as if he were going to turn head 
 foremost into one of the unfinished tombs. ■ 
 
 John Jasper returns by another way to his 
 gatehouse, and, entering sot'tly with his key, 
 finds his fire still burning. He takes from a 
 locked press a peculiar-looking pipe, which he 
 fills — but not with tobacco — and, having ad- 
 justed the contents of the bowl very carefully 
 with a little instrument, ascends an inner stair- 
 case of only a few steps, leading to two rooms. 
 One of these is his own sleeping-chamber ; the 
 other is his nephew's. There is a light in 
 each. 
 
 His nephew lies asleep, calm and untroubled. 
 John Jasper stands looking down upon him, his 
 unlighted pipe in his hand, for some time, with 
 a fixed and deep attention. Then, hushing his 
 footsteps, he passes to his own room, lights his 
 pipe, and delivers himself to the Spectres it 
 invokes at midnisht. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PHILANTHROPY IN MINOR CANON CORNER. 
 
 %^HE Reverend Septmius Crisparkle 
 (Septimus, because six little brother 
 Crisparkles before him went out, one 
 by one, as they were born, like six 
 weak little rushlights, as they were 
 ^^) lighted), having broken the thin morning 
 ice near Cloisterham Weir with his ami- 
 able head, much to the invigoration of his 
 frame, was now assisting his circulation by box- 
 ing at a looking-glass with great science and 
 prowess. A fresh and healthy portrait the look- 
 ing-glass presented of the Reverend Septimus, 
 feinting and dodging with the utmost artfulness, 
 and hitting out from the shoulder with the ut- 
 most straightness, while his radiant features 
 teemed with innocence, and soft-hearted bene- 
 volence beamed from his boxing gloves. 
 
 It was scarcely breakfast-time yet, for Mrs. 
 Crisparkle — mother, not wife of the Reverend 
 Septimus — was only just down, and waiting for 
 the urn. Indeed, the Reverend Septimus left 
 off at this very moment to take the pretty old 
 lady's entering face between his boxing gloves 
 and kiss it. Having done so with tenderness, 
 
 the Reverend Septimus turned to again, counter- 
 ing with his left, and putting in his right, in a 
 tremendous manner. 
 
 " I say, every morning of my life, that you'll 
 do it at last. Sept," remarked the old lady, 
 looking on ; " and so you will." 
 
 " Do what, ma dear ? " 
 
 *' Break the pier-glass, or burst a blood- 
 vessel." 
 
 " Neither, please God, ma dear. Here's 
 wind, ma ! Look at this 1 " 
 
 In a concluding round of great severity, the 
 Reverend Septimus administered and escaped 
 all sorts of punishment, and wound up by 
 getting the old lady's cap into Chancery — such 
 is the technical term used in scientific circles by 
 the learned in the Noble Art — with a lightness 
 of touch that hardly stirred the lightest lavender 
 or cherry ribbon on it. Magnanimously releas- 
 ing the defeated, just in time to get his gloves 
 into a drawer and feign to be looking out of 
 window in a contemplative state of mind whea 
 a servant entered, the Reverend Septimus then 
 gave place to the urn and other preparations for 
 breakfast. These completed, and the two alone 
 again, it was pleasant to see (or would have 
 been, if there had been any one to see it, which 
 there never was) the old lady standing to say 
 the Lord's Prayer aloud, and her son, Minor 
 Canon nevertheless, standing with bent head tO' 
 hear it, he being within five years of forty : 
 much as he had stood to hear the same words 
 from the same lips when he was within five 
 months of four. 
 
 What is prettier than an old lady — except a 
 young lady — when her eyes are bright, when 
 her figure is trim and compact, when her face is 
 cheerful and calm, when her dress is as the 
 dress of a china shepherdess : so dainty in its 
 colours, so individually assorted to herself, so 
 neatly moulded on her? Nothing is prettier, 
 thought the good Minor Canon frequently, when 
 taking his seat at table opposite his long-widowed 
 mother. Her thought at such times may be 
 condensed into the two words that oftenest did 
 duty together in all her conversations : " My 
 Sept ! " 
 
 They were a good pair to sit breakfasting 
 together in Minor Canon Corner, Cloisterham. 
 For Minor Canon Corner was a quiet place in 
 the shadow of the cathedral, which the cawing 
 of the rooks, the echoing footsteps of rare 
 passers, the sound of the cathedral bell, or the 
 roll of the cathedral organ, seemed to render 
 more quiet than absolute silence. Swaggering 
 fighting-men had had their centuries of ramping 
 and raving about Minor Canon Corner, and 
 
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 beaten serfs had had their centuries of drudging 
 and dying there, and powerful monks had had 
 their centuries of being sometimes useful and 
 sometimes harmful there, and behold they were 
 all gone out of Minor Canon Corner, and so 
 much the better. Perhaps one of the highest 
 uses of their ever having been there was, that 
 there might be left behind that blessed air of 
 tranquillity which pervaded Minor Canon 
 Corner, and that serenely romantic state of 
 the mind — productive, for the most part, of 
 pity and forbearance — which is engendered by 
 a sorrowful story that is all told, or a pathetic 
 play that is played out. 
 
 Ked brick walls harmoniously toned down in 
 colour by time, strong-rooted ivy, latticed win- 
 dows, panelled rooms, big oaken beams in little 
 places, and stone-walled gardens where annual 
 fruit yet ripened upon monkish trees, were the 
 principal surroundings of pretty old Mrs. Cri- 
 sparkle and the Reverend Septimus as they sat 
 at breakfast. 
 
 " And what, ma dear," inquired the Minor 
 Canon, giving proof of a wholesome and vigo- 
 rous appetite, " does the letter say ? " 
 
 The pretty old lady, after reading it, had just 
 laid it down upon the breakfast-cloth. She 
 handed it over to her son. 
 
 Now, the old lady was exceedingly proud of 
 her bright eyes being so clear that she could 
 read writing without spectacles. Her son was 
 also so proud of the circumstance, and so duti- 
 lully bent on her deriving the utmost possible 
 gratification from it, that he had invented the 
 l^retence that he himself could not read writing 
 without spectacles. Therefore he now assumed 
 a pair, of grave and prodigious proportions, 
 which not only seriously inconvenienced his 
 nose and his breakfast, but seriously impeded 
 his perusal of the letter. For, he had the eyes 
 of a microscope and a telescope combined, when 
 they were unassisted. 
 
 " It's from Mr. Honeythunder, of course," 
 said the old lady, folding her arms. 
 
 " Of course," assented her son. He then 
 lamely read on : 
 
 " 'Haven of Philanthropy, 
 " ' Chief Offices, London, Wednesday, 
 
 " ' Dear Madam, 
 
 " ' I write in the ' In the what's this } 
 
 What does he write in ? " 
 
 " In the chair," said the old lady. 
 
 The Reverend Septimus took oft his spec- 
 tacles, that he might see her face, as he ex- 
 claimed : 
 
 " Why, what should he write in?" 
 
 " Bless me, bless me, Sept," returned the old 
 
 lady, " you don't see the context ! Give it 
 back to me, my dear," 
 
 Glad to get his spectacles off (for they 
 always made his eyes water), her son obeyed : 
 murmuring that his sight for reading manuscript 
 got worse and worse daily, 
 
 " ' I write,' " his mother went on, reading 
 very perspicuously and precisely, '"from the 
 chair, to which I shall probably be confined for 
 some hours,' " 
 
 Septimus looked at the row of chairs against 
 the wall with a half-protesting and half-appeal- 
 ing countenance, 
 
 " ' We have,' " the old lady read on with a 
 little extra emphasis, " ' a meeting of our Con- 
 vened Chief Composite Committee of Central 
 and District Philanthropists, at our Head Haven 
 as above ; and it is their unanimous pleasure 
 that I take the chair.' " 
 
 Septimus breathed more freely, and mut- 
 tered : " Oh ! if he comes to that, let him." 
 
 " ' Not to lose a day's post, I take the oppor- 
 tunity of a long report being read, denouncing 
 a public miscreant — — ' " 
 
 " It is a most extraordinary thing," interposed 
 the gentle Minor Canon, laying down his knife 
 and fork to rub his ear in a vexed manner, 
 " that these Philanthropists are always denounc- 
 ing somebody. And it is another most extra- 
 ordinary thing that they are always so violently 
 flush of miscreants ! " 
 
 " ' Denouncing a public miscreant,' " the old 
 lady resumed, " ' to get our httle affair of busi- 
 ness off my mind. I have spoken with my 
 two wards, Neville and Plelena Landless, on 
 the subject of their defective education, and 
 they give in to the plan proposed ; as I should 
 have taken good care they did, whether they 
 liked it or not.' " 
 
 " And it is another most extraordinary thing," 
 remarked the Minor Canon in the same tone as 
 before, " that these philanthropists are so given 
 to seizing their fellow-creatures by the scrufl" of 
 the neck, and (as one may say) bumping them 
 into the paths of peace. — I beg your pardon, 
 ma dear, for interrupting." 
 
 " ' Therefore, dear madam, you will please 
 prepare your son, the Reverend Mr. Septimus, 
 to expect Neville as an inmate to be read with, 
 on Monday next. On the same day Helena 
 will accompany him to Cloisterham, to take up 
 her quarters at the Nuns' House, the establish- 
 ment recommended by yourself and son jointly. 
 Please likewise to prepare for her reception and 
 tuition there. The terms in both cases are 
 understood to be exactly as stated to me in 
 writing by yourself, when I opened a corre- 
 
A DINNER FOR EIGHT. 
 
 23 
 
 spondence with you on this subject, after the 
 honour of being introduced to you at your 
 sister's house in town here. With compliments 
 to the Reverend Mr. Septimus, I am, Dear 
 Madam, Your affectionate brother (in Philan- 
 thropy), LUKK HONEYTHUNDER.' " 
 
 " Well, ma," said Septimus after a little more 
 rubbing of his ear, " we must try it. There can 
 be no doubt that we have room for an inmate, 
 and that I have time to bestow upon him, and 
 inclination too. I must confess to feeling rather 
 glad that he is not Mr. Honeythunder himself. 
 Though that seems wretchedly prejudiced — 
 does it not? — for I never saw him. Is he a 
 large man, ma ? " 
 
 " I should call him a large man, my dear," 
 the old lady repHed after some hesitation, "but 
 that his voice is so much larger." 
 
 "Than himself?" 
 
 "Than anybody." 
 
 " Hah ! " said Septimus. And finished his 
 breakfast as if the flavour of the Superior 
 Family Souchong, and also of the ham and 
 toast and eggs, were a little on the wane. 
 
 Mrs. Crisparkle's sister, another piece of 
 Dresden china, and matching her so neatly 
 that they would have made a delightful pair of 
 ornaments for the two ends of any capacious 
 old-fashioned chimney-piece, and by right should 
 never have been seen apart, was the childless 
 wife of a clergyman holding Corporation pre- 
 ferment in London City. Mr. Honeythunder, 
 in his public character of Professor of Philan- 
 thropy, had come to know Mrs. Crisparkle 
 during the last re-matching of the china orna- 
 ments (in other Avords, during her last annual 
 visit to her sister), after a public occasion of a 
 philanthropic nature, when certain devoted 
 orphans of tender years had been glutted with 
 plum buns and plump bumptiousness. These 
 were all the antecedents known in Minor Canon 
 Corner of the coming pupils. 
 
 " I am sure you will agree with me, ma," 
 said Mr. Crisparkle after thinking the matter 
 over, " that the first thing to be done is, to put 
 these young people as much at their ease as 
 possible. There is nothing disinterested in the 
 notion, because we cannot be at our ease with 
 them unless they are at their ease with us. 
 Now, Jasper's nephew is down here at present ; 
 and like takes to like, and youth takes to youth. 
 He is a cordial young fellow, and we will have 
 him to meet the brother and sister at dinner. 
 That's three. We can't think of asking him 
 without asking Jasper. That's four. Add Miss 
 Twinkleton and the fairy bride that is to be, and 
 that's six. Add our two selves, and that's eight. 
 
 Would eight at a friendly dinner at all put you 
 out, ma ? " 
 
 " Nine would, Sept," returned the old lady, 
 visibly nervous. 
 
 " My dear ma, I particularise eight." 
 
 " The exact size of the table and the room, 
 my dear." 
 
 So it was settled that way; and when Mr. 
 Crisparkle called with his mother upon Miss 
 Twinkleton, to arrange for the reception of 
 Miss Helena Landless at the Nuns' House, the 
 two other invitations having reference to that 
 establishment were proffered and accepted. 
 Miss Twinkleton did, indeed, glance at the 
 globes, as regretting that they were not formed 
 to be taken out into society ; but became re- 
 conciled to leaving them behind. Instructions 
 were then dispatched to the Philanthropist for 
 the departure and arrival, in good time for 
 dinner, of Mr. Neville and Miss Helena; and 
 stock for soup became fragrant in the air of 
 Minor Canon Corner. 
 
 In those days there was no railway to Clois- 
 terham, and ]\Ir. Sapsea said there never would 
 be. Mr, Sapsea said more ; he said there never 
 should be. And yet, marvellous to consider, it 
 has come to pass, in these days, that Express 
 Trains don't think Cloisterham worth stopping 
 at, but yell and whirl through it on their larger 
 errands, casting the dust off their wheels as a 
 testimony against its insignificance. Some re- 
 mote fragment of Main Line to somewhere else, 
 there was, which was going to ruin the Money 
 Market if it failed, and Church and State if it 
 succeeded, and (of course) the Constitution, 
 whether or no ; but even that had already so 
 unsettled Cloisterham traffic, that the traffic, 
 deserting the high-road, came sneaking in from 
 an unprecedented part of the country by a back 
 stable-way, for many years labelled at the corner : 
 " Beware of the Dog." 
 
 To this ignominious avenue of approach Mr. 
 Crisparkle repaired, awaiting the arrival of a 
 short squat omnibus, with a disproportionate 
 heap of luggage on the roof — like a little Ele- 
 phant with infinitely too much Castle— which 
 was then the daily service between Cloisterham 
 and external mankind. As this vehicle lum- 
 bered up, Mr. Crisparkle could hardly see any- 
 thing else of it for a large outside passenger 
 seated on the box, with his elbows squared, and 
 his hands on his knees, compressing the driver 
 into a most uncomfortably small compass, and 
 glowering about him with a strongly-marked 
 face. 
 
 "Is this Cloisterham?" demanded the pas- 
 senger in a tremendous voice. 
 
«4 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 " It is," replied the driver, rubbing himself as 
 if he ached, after throwing the reins to the 
 hostler, "And I never was so glad to see it." 
 
 "Tell your master to make his box-seat 
 wider, then," returned the passenger. " Your 
 master is morally bound — and ought to be 
 legally, under ruinous penalties — to provide for 
 the comfort of his fellow-man." 
 
 The driver instituted, with the palms of his 
 hands, a superficial perquisition into the state 
 of his skeleton ; which seemed to make him 
 anxious. 
 
 " Have I sat upon you ? " asked the pas- 
 senger. 
 
 " You have," said the driver, as if he didn't 
 like it at all. 
 
 "Take that card, my friend." 
 
 " I think I won't deprive you on it," returned 
 the driver, casting his eyes over it with no great 
 favour, without taking it. " What's the good of 
 it to me ? " 
 
 ** Be a Member of that Society," said the 
 passenger. 
 
 "What shall I get by it?" asked the driver. 
 
 " Brotherhood," returned the passenger in a 
 ferocious voice. 
 
 " Thankee," said the driver very deliberately, 
 as he got down; "my mother was contented 
 with myself, and so am I. I don't want no 
 brothers." 
 
 " But you must have them," replied the pas- 
 senger, also descending, " whether you like it or 
 not. I am your brother." 
 
 " I say ! " expostulated the driver, becoming 
 more chafed in temper, "not too fur ! The 
 worm 7c>t// when " 
 
 But here Mr. Crisparkle interposed, remon- 
 strating aside, in a friendly voice : " Joe, Joe, 
 Joe ! don't forget yourself, Joe, my good fel- 
 low ! " and then, when Joe peaceably touched 
 his hat, accosting the passenger with : " Mr. 
 Honeythunder?" 
 
 " That is my name, sir." 
 
 " My name is Crisparkle." 
 
 " Reverend Mr. Septimus ? Glad to see you, 
 sir. Neville and Helena are inside. Having a 
 little succumbed of late, under the pressure of 
 my public labours, I thought I would take a 
 mouthful of fresh air, and come down with 
 them, and return at night. So you are the 
 Reverend Mr. Septimus, are you ?" surveying 
 him on the whole with disappointment, and 
 twisting a double eye-glass by its ribbon, as if 
 he were roasting it, but not otherwise using it. 
 " Hah ! I expected to see you older, sir." 
 
 " I hope you will," was the good-humoured 
 reply. 
 
 " Eh ?" demanded Mr. Honeythunder. 
 
 " Only a poor little joke. Not worth repeat- 
 ing." 
 
 " Joke ? Ay ; I never see a joke," Mr. 
 Honeythunder frowningly retorted. " A joke 
 is wasted upon me, sir. Where are they? 
 Helena and Neville, come here ! Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle has come down to meet you." 
 
 An unusually handsome lithe young fellow, 
 and an unusually handsome lithe girl; much 
 alike ; both very dark, and very rich in colour ; 
 she of almost the gipsy type ; something un- 
 tamed about them both ; a certain air upon 
 them of hunter and huntress ; yet withal a cer- 
 tain air of being the objects of the chase, rather 
 than the followers. Slender, supple, quick of 
 eye and limb ; half shy, half defiant ; fierce of 
 look ; an indefinable kind of pause coming and 
 going on their whole expression, both of face 
 and form, which might be equally likened to 
 the pause before a crouch or a bound. The 
 rough mental notes made in the first five 
 minutes by Mr. Crisparkle would have read 
 thus verbatim. 
 
 He invited Mr. Honeythunder to dinner with 
 a troubled mind (for the discomfiture of the 
 dear old china shepherdess lay heavy on it), 
 and gave his arm to Helena Landless. Both 
 she and her brother, as they walked all together 
 through the ancient streets, took great delight 
 in what he pointed out of the Cathedral and the 
 Monastery ruin, and wondered — so his notes 
 ran on — much as if they were beautiful barbaric 
 captives brought from some wild tropical do- 
 minion. Mr. Honeythunder walked in the 
 middle of the road, shouldering the natives out 
 of his way, and loudly develoi)ing a scheme he 
 had for making a raid on all the unemployed 
 persons in the United Kingdom, laying them 
 every one by the heels in gaol, and forcing 
 them, on pain of prompt extermination, to 
 become philanthropists. 
 
 Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own share of 
 philanthropy when she beheld this very large 
 and very loud excrescence on the little party. 
 Always something in the nature of a Boil upon 
 the face of society, Mr. Honeythunder expanded 
 into an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon 
 Corner. Though it was not literally true, as 
 was facetiously charged against him by public 
 unbelievers, that he called aloud to his fellow- 
 creatures : " Curse your souls and bodies, come 
 here and be blessed ! " still his philanthropy 
 was of that gunpowderous sort, that the differ- 
 ence between it and animosity was hard to 
 determine. You were to abolish military force, 
 but you were first to bring all commanding 
 
A MODEL PHILANTHROPIST. 
 
 25 
 
 officers who had done their duty to trial by 
 court-martial for that offence, and shoot them. 
 You were to abolish war, but were to make 
 converts by making war upon them, and charg- 
 ing them with loving war as the apple of tlieir 
 eye. You were to have no capital punishment, 
 but were first to sweep off the face of the earth 
 all legislators, jurists, and judges who were of 
 the contrary opinion. You were to have uni- 
 versal concord, and were to get it by eliminating 
 all the people who wouldn't, or conscientiously 
 couldn't, be concordant. You were to love 
 your brother as yourself, but after an indefinite 
 interval of maligning him (very much as if you 
 hated him), and calling him all manner of 
 names. Above all things, you were to do 
 nothing in private, or on your own account. 
 You were to go to the offices of the Haven of 
 Philanthropy, and put your name down as a 
 Member and a Professing Philanthropist. Then, 
 you were to pay up your subscription, get your 
 card of membership and your ribbon and medal, 
 and were evermore to live upon a platform, and 
 evermore to say what Mr. Honeythunder said, 
 and what the Treasurer said, and what the Sub- 
 Treasurer said, and what the Committee said, 
 and what the Sub-Committee said, and what 
 the Secretary said, and what the Vice-Secretary 
 said. And this was usually said in the unani- 
 mously-carried resolution under hand and seal, 
 to the effect : " That this assembled Body of 
 Professing Philanthropists views, with indignant 
 scorn and contempt, not unmixed with utter 
 
 detestation and loathing abhorrence " in 
 
 short, the baseness of all those who do not 
 belong to it, and pledges itself to make as 
 many obnoxious statements as possible about 
 them, without being at all particular as to facts. 
 The dinner was a most doleful break-down. 
 The philanthropist deranged the symmetry of 
 the table, sat himself in the way of the waiting, 
 blocked up the thoroughfare, and drove Mr. 
 Tope (who assisted the parlour-maid) to the 
 verge of distraction by passing plates and dishes 
 on over his own head. Nobody could talk to 
 anybody, because he held forth to everybody at 
 once, as if the company had no individual exist- 
 ence, but were a Meeting. He impounded the 
 Reverend ISIr. Septimus, as an official personage 
 to be addressed, or kind of human peg to hang 
 his oratorical hat on, and fell into the exasperat- 
 ing habit, common among such orators, of im- 
 personating him as a wicked and weak opponent. 
 Thus, he would ask : " And will you, sir, now 
 
 stultify yourself by telling me " and so forth, 
 
 when the innocent man ^.z<^ not opened his lips, 
 nor meant to open them. Or he would say : 
 
 " Now see, sir, to what a position you are re- 
 duced. I will leave you no escape. After 
 exhausting all the resources of fraud and false- 
 hood (luring years upon years ; after exhibiting 
 a combination of dastardly meanness with en- 
 sanguined daring, such as the world has not 
 often witnessed ; you have now the hypocrisy 
 to bend the knee before the most degraded of 
 mankind, and to sue and whine and howl for 
 mercy ! " Whereat the unfortunate Minor Canon 
 would look, in part indignant and in part per- 
 plexed ; while his worthy mother sat bridling, 
 with tears in her eyes, and the remainder of the 
 party lapsed into a sort of gelatinous state, in 
 whi^h there was no flavour or solidity, and very 
 lit'.le resistance. 
 
 v_/ Bat the gush of philanthropy that burst forth 
 when the departure of Mr. Honeythunder began 
 to impend must have been highly gratifying to 
 the <^celin^3 of that distinguished man. His 
 coffee was produced, by the special activity of 
 ]\Ir. Tope, a full hour before he wanted it. Mr. 
 Crisparkle sat with his watch in his hand for 
 about the same period, lest he should overstay 
 his time. The four young people were unani- 
 mous in believing that the cathedral clock 
 struck three-quarters, when it actually struck 
 but one. Miss Twinkleton estimated the dis- 
 tance to the omnibus at five-and-twenty minutes' 
 walk, when it was really five. The affectionate 
 kindness of the whole circle hustled him into 
 his great-coat, and shoved him out into the 
 moonlight, as if he were a fugitive traitor with 
 whom they sympathised, and a troop of horse 
 were at the back-door. Mr. Crisparkle and his 
 new charge, who took him to the omnibus, were 
 so fervent in their apprehensions of his catch- 
 ing cold, that they shut him up in it instantly 
 and left him, with still half an hour to spare. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE. 
 
 ^^ 
 
 KNOW very little of that gentle- 
 man, sir," said Neville to the Minor 
 Canon as they turned back. 
 
 " You know very Httle of your 
 guardian ? " the Minor Canon re- 
 peated. 
 
 " Almost nothing ! " 
 
 " How came he " 
 
 " To be my guardian ? I'll tell you, sir. I 
 suppose you know that we come (my sister and 
 1} from Ceylon ? " 
 
26 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 " Indeed, no." 
 
 " I wonder at that. We lived with a step- 
 father there. Our mother died there, when we 
 were Uttle children. We have had a wretched 
 existence. She made him our guardian, and he 
 was a miserly wretch who grudged us food to 
 eat, and clothes to wear. At his death, he 
 passed us over to this man ; for no better reason, 
 that I know of, than his being a friend or con- 
 nection of his, whose name was always in print 
 and catching his attention." 
 
 " That was lately, I suppose ?" 
 
 " Quite lately, sir. This step-father of ours 
 was a cruel brute as well as a grinding one. It 
 is well he died when he did, or I might have 
 killed him." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle stopped short in the moon- 
 light, and looked at his hopeful pupil in con- 
 sternation. 
 
 " I suri)rise you, sir?" he said, with a quick 
 change to a submissive manner. 
 
 '•' You sliock me ; unspeakably shock me." 
 
 The pupil hung his head for a little while as 
 they walked on, and then said : " You never 
 saw him beat your sister. I have seen him 
 beat mine, more than once or twice, and I never 
 forgot it." 
 
 " Nothing," said Mr. Crisparkle, " not even a 
 beloved and beautiful sister's tears under das- 
 tardly ill-usage ;" he became less severe, in spite 
 of himself, as his indignation rose ; " could 
 justify those horrible expressions that you used." 
 
 " I am sorry I used them, and especially to 
 you, sir. I beg to recall them. But permit me 
 to set you right on one point. You spoke of 
 my sister's tears. My sister would have let 
 him tear her to pieces before she would have 
 let him believe that he could make her shed a 
 tear." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle reviewed those mental notes 
 of his, and was neither at all surprised to hear 
 it, nor at all disposed to question it. 
 
 '' Perhaps you will think it strange, sir," — this 
 was said in a hesitating voice, — " that I should 
 so soon ask you to allow me to confide in you, 
 and to have the kindness to hear a word or two 
 from me in my defence ?" 
 
 "Defence?" Mr. Crisparkle repeated. "You 
 are not on your defence, Mr. Neville." 
 
 " I think I am, sir. At least, I know I should 
 be, if you were better acquainted with my cha- 
 racter." 
 
 "Well, Mr. Neville," was the rejoinder. 
 " What if you leave me to find it out ?" 
 
 " Since it is your pleasure, sir," answered the 
 young man, with a quick change in his manner 
 to sullen disappointment ; " since it is your 
 
 pleasure to check me in my impulse, I must 
 
 submit." 
 
 There was that in the tone of this short speech 
 which made the conscientious man to whom it 
 was addressed uneasy. It hinted to him that 
 he might, without meaning it, turn aside a trust- 
 fulness beneficial to a misshapen young mind, 
 and perhaps to his own power of directing and 
 improving it. They were within sight of the 
 lights in his windows, and he stopped. 
 
 " Let us turn back and take a turn or two up 
 and down, Mr. Neville, or you may not have 
 time to finish what you wish to say to me. You 
 are hasty in thinking that I mean to check you. 
 Quite the contrary. I invite your confidence." 
 
 " You have invited it, sir, without knowing it, 
 ever since I came here. I say ' ever since,' as 
 if I had been here a week. The truth is, we 
 came here (my sister and I) to quarrel with you, 
 and affront you, and break away again." 
 
 " Really ? " said Mr. Crisparkle, at a dead 
 loss for anything else to say. 
 
 " You see, we could not know what you were 
 beforehand, sir; could we?" 
 
 " Clearly not," said Mr. Crisparkle. 
 
 " And having Hked no one else with whom 
 we have ever been brought into contact, we had 
 made up our minds not to like you," 
 
 " Really ? " said Mr. Crisparkle again. 
 
 " But we do like you, sir, and we see an 
 unmistakable difference between your house and 
 your reception of us, and anything else we have 
 ever known. This — and my happening to be 
 alone with you — and everything around us seem- 
 ing so quiet and peaceful after Mr. Honeythun- 
 der's departure — and Cloisterham being so old 
 and grave and beautiful, with the moon shining 
 on it — these things inclined me to open my 
 heart." 
 
 " I quite understand, Mr. Neville. And it is 
 salutary to listen to such influences." 
 
 " In describing my own imperfections, sir, I 
 must ask you not to suppose that I am describ- 
 ing my sister's. She has come out of the dis- 
 advantages of our miserable life as much better 
 than I am as that cathedral tower is higher than 
 those chimneys." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle in his own breast was not so 
 sure of this. 
 
 " I have had, sir, from my earliest remem- 
 brance, to suppress a deadly and bitter hatred. 
 This has made me secret and revengeful. I 
 have been always tyrannically held down by the 
 strong hand. This has driven me, in my weak- 
 ness, to the resource of being false and mean. 
 I have been stinted of education, liberty, money, 
 dress, the very necessaries of life, the commonest 
 
THE REVEREND SEPTIMUS'S NEW INMATE. 
 
 27 
 
 possessions of youth. This has caused me to 
 be utterly wanting in I don't know what emo- 
 tions, or remembrances, or good instincts — I 
 have not even a name for tlie thing, you see ! — 
 that you have had to work upon in other young 
 men to whom you have been accustomed." 
 
 •' This is evidently true. But this is not 
 encouraging," thought Mr. Crisparkle as they 
 turned again. 
 
 " And, to finish with, sir, I have been brought 
 up among abject and servile dependants of an 
 inferior race, and I may easily have contracted 
 some affinity with them. Sometimes, I don't 
 know but that it may be a drop of what is tigerish 
 in their blood.'' 
 
 '' As in the case of that remark just now," 
 thought Mr. Crisparkle. 
 
 " In a last word of reference to my sister, sir 
 (we are twin children), you ought to know, to 
 her honour, that nothing in our misery ever 
 subdued her, though it often cowed me. When 
 we ran away from it (we ran away four times in 
 six years, to be soon brought back and cruelly 
 punished), the flight was always of her planning 
 and leading. Each time she dressed as a boy, 
 and showed the daring of a man. I take it we 
 were seven years old when we first decamped ; 
 but I remember, when I lost the pocket-knife 
 with which she was to have cut her hair short, 
 how^ desperately she tried to tear it out, or bite 
 it off. I have nothing further to say, sir, except 
 that I hope you will bear with me and make 
 allowance for me." 
 
 " Of that, Mr. Neville, you may be sure," 
 returned the Minor Canon. " I don't preach 
 more than I can help, and I will not repay your 
 confidence with a sermon. But I entreat you 
 to bear in mind, very seriously and steadily, that 
 if I am to do you any good, it can only be 
 with your own assistance ; and that you can 
 only render that efficiently by seeking aid from 
 Heaven." 
 
 " I will try to do my part, sir." 
 
 " And, Mr. Neville, I will try to do mine. 
 Here is my hand on it. May God bless our 
 endeavours ! " 
 
 They were now standing at his house-door, 
 and a cheerful sound of voices and laughter was 
 heard within. 
 
 '•' We will take one more turn before going 
 in," said Mr. Crisparkle, " for I want to ask you 
 a question. When you said you were in a 
 changed mind concerning me, you spoke, not 
 only for yourself, but for your sister too?" 
 
 " Undoubtedly I did, sir." 
 
 " Excuse me, Mr. Neville, but I think you 
 kave had no opportunity of communicating with 
 
 your sister since I met you. Mr. Honeythunder 
 was very eloquent ; but perhaps I may venture 
 to say, without ill-nature, that he rather monopo- 
 lised the occa-sion. May you not have answered 
 for your sister without sufficient warrant? " 
 
 Neville shook his head with a proud smile. 
 
 " You don't know, sir, yet, what a complete 
 understanding can exist between my sister and 
 me, though no spoken word — perhaps hardly as 
 much as a look — may have passed between us. 
 She not only feels as I have described, but she 
 very well knows that I am taking this oj^portunity 
 of speaking to you, both for her and for mysulf. 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle looked in his face with some 
 incredulity ; but his face expressed such absolute 
 and firm conviction of the truth of what he said, 
 that Mr. Crisparkle looked at the pavement, 
 and mused, until they came to his door again. 
 
 " I will ask for one more turn, sir, this time," 
 said the young man with a rather heightened 
 colour rising in his face. " But for Mr. Honey- 
 thunder's— I think you called it eloquence, sir ?" 
 (somewhat slily.) 
 
 " I — yes, I called it eloquence," said Mr. 
 Crisparkle. 
 
 " — But for Mr. Honeythunder's eloquence, I 
 might have had no need to ask you what I am 
 going to ask you. This Mr. Edwin Drood, sir ; 
 I think that's the name ? " 
 
 " Quite correct," said Mr. Crisparkle. " D-r- 
 double o-d." 
 
 " Does he — or did he — read with you, sir?" 
 
 " Never, Mr. Neville. He comes here visit- 
 ing his relation, Mr. Jasper." 
 
 " Is Miss Bud his relation too, sir ? " 
 
 C Now, why should he ask that with sudden 
 superciliousness?" thought Mr. Crisparkle.) 
 Then he explained, aloud, what he knew of the 
 little story of their betrothal. 
 
 " Oh, thaf's, it, is it ? " said the young man. 
 " I understand his air of proprietorship now ! " 
 This was said so evidently to himself, or to any- 
 body rather than Mr. Crisparkle, that the latter 
 instinctively felt as if to notice it would be almost 
 tantamount to noticing a passage in a letter 
 which he had read by chance over the writer's 
 shoulder. A moment afterwards they re-entered 
 the house. 
 
 Mr. Jasper was seated at the piano as they 
 came into his drawing-room, and was accompa- 
 nying Miss Rosebud v>'hile she sang. It was a 
 consequence of his playing the accompani- 
 ment without notes, and of her being a heed- 
 less little creature, very apt to go wrong, 
 that he followed her lips most attentively, 
 with his eyes as well as hands ; carefully 
 and softly hinting -the key-note from time to 
 
28 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 time. Standing with an arm drawn round her, 
 but with a face far more intent on Mr. Jasper 
 than on her singing, stood Helena, between 
 ■whom and her brother an instantaneous recog- 
 nition passed, in which Mr, Crisparkle saw, or 
 thought he saw, the understanding that had been 
 spoken of flash out. Mr. Neville then took his 
 admiring station, leaning against the piano, 
 opposite the singer ; Mr. Crisparkle sat down by 
 the china shepherdess ; Edwin Drood gallantly 
 furled and unfurled Miss Twinkleton's fan j and 
 
 that lady passively claimed that sort of exhi- 
 bitor's proprietorship in the accomplishment on 
 view, Avhich Mr. Tope, the verger, daily claimed 
 in the cathedral service. 
 
 The song went on. It was a sorrowful strain 
 of parting, and the fresh young voice was very 
 plaintive and tender. As Jasper watched the 
 pretty lips, and ever and again hinted the one 
 note, as though it were a low whisper from him- 
 self, the voice became less steady, until all at 
 once the singer broke into a burst of tears, and 
 
 AT THE PIANO. 
 
 shrieked out, with her hands over her eyes : " I 
 can't bear this ! I am frightened ! Take me 
 away 1 " 
 
 With one swift turn of her lithe figure, Helena 
 laid the little beauty on a sofa, as if she had 
 never caught her up. Then, on one knee beside 
 her, and with one hand upon her rosy mouth, 
 while with the other she appealed to all the rest, 
 Helena said to them : " It's nothing ; it's all 
 over ; don't speak to her for one minute, and 
 she is well ! " 
 
 Jasper's hands hud, in the same instant, lifted 
 
 themselves from the keys, and were now poised 
 above them, as though he waited to resume. 
 In that attitude he yet sat quiet; not even 
 looking round, when all the rest hail changed 
 their places and were reassuring one another, 
 
 " Pussy's not used to an audience ; that's the 
 fact," said Edwin Drood. " She got nervous, 
 and couldn't hold out. Besides, Jack, you are 
 such a conscientious master, and require so 
 much, that i ' elieve you make her afraid of 
 you. No wonder." 
 
 " No wonder," repeated Helena. 
 
HELENA AND ROSA. 
 
 29 
 
 " There, Jack, you hear ! You would be 
 afraiil of him under similar circumstances, 
 wouldn't you, Miss Landless ? " 
 
 " Not under any circumstances,'' returned 
 Helena. 
 
 Jasper brought down his hands, looked over 
 his shoulder, and begged to thank Miss Land- 
 less for her vindication of his character. Then 
 he fell to dumbly playing without striking the 
 notes, while his little pupil was taken to an open 
 window for air, and was otherwise petted and 
 restored. When she was brought back his place 
 was empty. "Jack's gone, Pussy," Edwin tokl 
 her. " I am more than half afraid he didn't like 
 to be charged with being the Monster who had 
 frightened you." But she answered never a 
 word, and shivered, as if they had made her a 
 little too cold. 
 
 Miss Twinkleton now opining that Indeed 
 these were late hours, Mrs. Crisparkle, for 
 finding ourselves outside the walls of the Nuns' 
 House, and that we who undertook the forma- 
 tion of the future wives and mothers of England 
 (the last words in a lower voice, as requiring to 
 be communicated in confidence) were really 
 bound (voice coming up again) to set a better 
 example than one of rakish habits, wrappers 
 were put in requisition, and the two young cava- 
 liers volunteered to see the ladies home. It 
 was soon done, and the gate of the Nuns' House 
 closed upon them. 
 
 The boarders had retired, and only Mrs. 
 Tisher in solitary vigil awaited the new pupil. 
 Her bedroom being within Rosa's, very little 
 introduction or explanation was necessary before 
 she was placed in charge of her new friend, and 
 left for the night. 
 
 " This is a blessed relief, my dear," said 
 Helena;' '•' I have been dreading all day that I 
 should be brought to bay at this time." 
 
 "There are not many of us," returned Rosa, 
 " and we are good-natured girls ; at least, the 
 others are ; I can answer for them." 
 
 " I can answer for you," laughed Helena, 
 searching the lovely little face with her dark 
 fiery eyes, and tenderly caressing the small 
 tigure. " You will be a friend to me, won't 
 you ? " 
 
 " I hope so. But the idea of my being a 
 friend to you seems too absurd, though." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Oh ! I am such a mite of a thing, and you 
 are so womanly and handsome. You seem to 
 have resolution and power enough to crush me. 
 I shrink into nothing by the side of your pie- 
 sence even." 
 
 " I am a neglected creature, my dear, unac- 
 
 quainted with all accomplishments, sensitively 
 conscious that I have everything to learn, and 
 deeply ashamed to own my ignorance.'' 
 
 " And yet you acknowledge everything to 
 me ! " said Rosa. 
 
 " My pretty one, can I help it ? There is a 
 fascination in you." 
 
 " Oh ! is there, though ? " pouted Rosa, half 
 in jest, and half in earnest. " What a pity 
 Master Eddy doesn't feel it more ! " 
 
 Of course her relations towards that young 
 gentleman had been already imparted in Minor 
 Canon Corner. 
 
 " Why, surely he must love you with all his 
 heart!" cried Helena with an earnestness that 
 threatened to blaze into ferocity if he didn't. 
 
 " Eh ? Oh ! well, I suppose he does," said 
 Rosa, pouting again. " I am sure I have no 
 right to say he doesn't. Perhaps it's my fault. 
 Perhaps I am not as nice to him as I ought to 
 be. I don't think I am. But it is so ridi- 
 culous ! " 
 
 Helena's eyes demanded what was. 
 
 " We are," said Rosa, answering as if she had 
 spoken. "We are such a ridiculous couple. 
 And we are always quarrelling." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Because we both know we are ridiculous, 
 my dear ! " Rosa gave that answer as if it were 
 the most conclusive answer in the world. 
 
 Helena's masterful look was intent upon her 
 face for a few moments, and then she impul- 
 sively put out both her hands and said : 
 
 " You will be my friend and help me ? " 
 
 " Indeed, my dear, I will," replied Rosa in a 
 tone of affectionate childishness that went 
 straight and true to her heart. " I will be as good 
 a friend as such a mite of a thing can be to such 
 a noble creature as you. And be a friend to me, 
 please. I don't understand myself : and I want 
 a friend who can understand me, very much 
 indeed," 
 
 Helena Landless kissed her, and, retaining 
 both her hands, said : 
 
 " Who is Mr. Jasper ? " 
 
 Rosa turned aside her head in answering : 
 " Eddy's uncle, and my music-master." 
 
 " You do not love him ? " 
 
 " Ugh ! " She put her hands up to her face, 
 and shook with fear or horror. 
 
 " You know that he loves you ? " 
 
 " Oh, don't, don't, don't ! " cried Rosa, drop- 
 ping on her knees, and clinging to her new re- 
 source. " Don't tell me of it ! He terrifies me. 
 He haunts my thoughts like a dreadful ghost. I 
 feel that I am never safe from him. I feel as if 
 he could pass in through the wall when he is 
 
30 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 spoken of." She actually did look round, as if 
 she dreaded to see him standing in the shadow 
 behind her. 
 
 " Try to tell me more about it, darling." 
 
 " Yes, I will, I will ! Because you are so 
 strong. But hold me the while, and stay with 
 me afterwards." 
 
 " My child ! You speak as if he had threat- 
 ened you in some dark way." 
 
 " He has never spoken to me about — that. 
 Never." 
 
 " What has he done ? " 
 
 " He has made a slave of me with his looks. 
 He has forced me to understand him without 
 his saying a word ; and he has forced me to keep 
 silence without his uttering a threat. When I 
 play, he never moves his eyes from my hands. 
 When I sing, he never moves his eyes from my 
 lips. When he corrects me, and strikes a note, 
 or a chord, or plays a passage, he himself is in 
 the sounds, whispering that he pursues me as a 
 lover, and commanding me to keep his secret. 
 I avoid his eyes, but he forces me to see them 
 without looking at them. Even when a glaze 
 comes over them (which is sometimes the case), 
 and he seems to wander away into a frightful 
 sort of dream in which he threatens most, he 
 obliges me to know it, and to know that he is 
 sitting close at my side, more terrible to me 
 than ever." 
 
 " What is this imagined threatening, pretty 
 one ? What is threatened ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I have never even dared to 
 think or wonder what it is." 
 
 " And was this all to-night ? " 
 
 " This was all ; except that to-night, when he 
 watched my lips so closely as I was singing, 
 besides feeling terrified, I felt ashamed and pas- 
 sionately hurt. It was as if he kissed me, and 
 I couldn't bear it, but cried out. You must 
 never breathe this to any one. Eddy is devoted 
 to him. But you said to-night that you would 
 not be afraid of him under any circumstances, 
 and that gives me — who am so much afraid of 
 him — courage to tell only you. Hold me ! Stay 
 with me ! I am too frightened to be left by 
 myself." 
 
 The lustrous gipsy -face drooped over the 
 clinging arms and bosom, and the wild black hair 
 fell down protectingly over the childish form. 
 There was a slumbering gleam of fire in the 
 intense dark eyes, though they were then soft- 
 ened with compassion and admiration. Let 
 whomsoever it most concerned look well to it ! 
 
 CHAPTER Vni. 
 
 DAGGERS DRAWN. 
 
 _HE two young men, having seen 
 -^ the damsels, their charges, enter the 
 courtyard of the Nuns' House, and 
 finding themselves coldly stared at 
 by the brazen door-plate, as if the 
 battered old beau with the glass in his 
 eye were insolent, look at one another, 
 look along the perspective of the moonlit 
 street, and slowly walk away together. 
 
 " Do you stay here long, Mr. Drood ? " says 
 Neville. 
 
 " Not this time," is the careless answer. " I 
 leave for London again to-morrow. But I 
 shall be here, off and on, until next midsum- 
 mer ; then I shall take my leave of Cloisterham, 
 and England too ; for many a long day, I ex- 
 pect." 
 
 " Are you going abroad ? " 
 
 " Going to wake up Egypt a Httle," is the 
 condescending answer. 
 
 " Are you reading ?" 
 
 " Reading ! " repeats Edwin Drood with a 
 touch of contempt. " No. Doing, working, 
 engineering. My small patrimony was left a part 
 of the capital of the Firm I am with, by my 
 father, a former partner ; and I am a charge 
 upon the Firm until I come of age ; and then I 
 step into my modest share in the concern. Jack 
 — you met him at dinner — is, until then, my 
 guardian and trustee." 
 
 " I heard from Mr. Crisparkle of your other 
 good fortune." 
 
 " What do you mean by my other good 
 fortune ? " 
 
 Neville has made his remark in a watchfully 
 advancing, and yet furtive and shy manner, very 
 expressive of that peculiar air, already noticed, 
 of being at once hunter and hunted. Edwin 
 has made his retort with an abruptness not at 
 all polite. They stop, and interchange a rather 
 heated look. 
 
 " I hope," says Neville, " there is no offence, 
 Mr. Drood, in my innocently referring to your 
 betrothal ? " 
 
 " By George ! " cries Edwin, leading on again 
 at a somewhat quicker pace, " everybody in this 
 chattering old Cloisterham refers to it. I wonder 
 no public-house has been set up, with my por- 
 trait for the sign of The Betrothed's Head. Or 
 Pussy's portrait. One or the other."' 
 
 " I am not accountable for Mr. Crisparkle's 
 mentioning the matter to me quite openly," 
 Neville begins. 
 
HIGH WORDS. 
 
 3* 
 
 " No ; that's true ; you are not," Edwin Drood 
 assents. 
 
 " But," resumed Neville, " I am accountable 
 for mentioning it to you. And I did so on the 
 supposition that you could not fail to be highly 
 proud of it." 
 
 Now, there are these two curious touches of 
 human nature working the secret springs of this 
 dialogue. Neville Landless is already enough 
 impressed by Little Rosebud to feel indignant 
 that Edwin Drood (far below her) should hold 
 his prize so lightly. Edwin Drood is already 
 enough impressed by Helena to feel indignant 
 that Helena's brother (for below her) should dis- 
 pose of him so coolly, and put him out of the 
 way so entirely. 
 
 However, the last remark had better be 
 answered. So says Edwin : 
 
 " I don't know, Mr. Neville " (adopting that 
 mode of address from Mr. Crisparkle), " that 
 what people are proudest of, they usually talk 
 most about; I don't know, either, that what 
 they are proudest of, they most like other people 
 to talk about. But I live a busy life, and I speak 
 under correction by you readers, who ought to 
 know everything, and I dare say do." 
 
 By this time they had both become savage ; 
 Mr. Neville out in the open ; Edwin Drood 
 under the transparent cover of a popular tune, 
 and a stop now and then to pretend to admire 
 picturesque effects in the moonlight before him. 
 
 " It does not seem to me very civil in you," 
 remarks Neville at length, "to reflect upon a 
 stranger who comes here, not having had your 
 advantages, to try to make up for lost time. 
 But, to be sure, /was not brought up in 'busy 
 life,' and my ideas of civility were formed among 
 Heathens." 
 
 " Perhaps the best civility, whatever kind of 
 people we are brought up among," retorts Edwin 
 Drood, " is to mind our own business. If you 
 will set me that example, I promise to follow it." 
 
 " Do you know that you take a great deal too 
 much upon yourself?" is the angry rejoinder, 
 " and that, in the part of the world I come 
 from, you would be called to account for it ? " 
 
 " By whom, for instance ?" asks Edwin Drood, 
 coming to a halt, and surveying the other with a 
 look of disdain. 
 
 But, here a startling light hand is laid on 
 Edwin's shoulder, and Jasper stands between 
 them. For, it would seem that he, too, has 
 strolled round by the Nuns' House, and has 
 come up behind them on the shadowy side of 
 the road. 
 
 " Ned, Ned, Ned !" he says ; " we must have 
 no more of this. I don't like this. I have over- 
 
 heard high words between you two. Remember, 
 my dear boy, you are almost in the position oi 
 host to-night. You belong, as it were, to the 
 place, and in a manner represent it towards a 
 stranger. Mr. Neville is a stranger, and you 
 should respect the obligations of hospitality. 
 And, Mr. Neville," laying his left hand on the 
 inner shoulder of that young gentleman, and 
 thus walking on between them, hand to shoulder 
 on either side, " you will pardon me ; but I 
 appeal to you to govern your temper too. Now, 
 what is amiss ? But why ask ? Let there be 
 nothing amiss, and the question is superfluous. 
 We are all three on a good understanding, are 
 we not ? " 
 
 After a silent struggle between the two young 
 men who shall speak last, Edwin Drood strikes 
 in with : "So far as I am concerned, Jack, there 
 is no anger in me." 
 
 " Nor in me," says Neville Landless, though 
 not so freely, or perhaps so carelessly. " But if 
 Mr. Drood knew all that lies behind me, far 
 away from here, he might know better how it is 
 that sharp-edged words have sharp edges to 
 wound me." 
 
 "Perhaps," saysjasper in a smoothing manner, 
 " we had better not qualify our good understand- 
 ing. We had better not say anything having the 
 appearance of a remonstrance or condition ; it 
 might not seem generous. Frankly and freely, 
 you see there is no anger in Ned. Frankly and 
 freely, there is no anger in you, Mr. Neville ? " 
 
 " None at all, Mr. Jasper." Still, not quite so 
 frankly or so freely ; or, be it said once again, 
 not quite so carelessly, perhaps. 
 
 " All over, then ! Now, my bachelor gate- 
 house is a few yards from here, and the heater 
 is on the fire, and the wine and glasses are on 
 the table, and it is not a stone's throw from 
 Minor Canon Corner. Ned, you are up and 
 away to-morrow. We will carry Mr. Neville in 
 with us, to take a stirrup-cup." 
 
 " With all my heart, Jack." 
 
 "And with all mine, Mr. Jasper." Neville 
 feels it impossible to say less, but would rather 
 not go. He has an impression upon him that 
 he has lost hold of his temper ; feels that Edwin 
 Drood's coolness, so far from being infectious, 
 makes him red-hot. 
 
 Mr. Jasper, still walking in the centre, hand 
 to shoulder on either side, beautifully turns the 
 Refrain of a drinking song, and they all go up 
 to his rooms. There, the first object visible, 
 when he adds the light of a lamp to that of the 
 fire, is the portrait over the chimney-piece. It is 
 not an object calculated to improve the under- 
 standing between the two young men, as rather 
 
32 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 awkwardly reviving the subject of their differ- 
 ence. Accordingly, they both glance at it con- 
 sciously, but say nothing. Jasper, however (who 
 would appear, from his conduct, to have gained 
 but an imperfect clue to the cause of their late 
 high words), directly calls attention to it. 
 
 " You recognise that picture, Mr. Neville ? " 
 shading the lamp to throw the light upon it. 
 
 " I recognise it, but it is far from flattering 
 the original." 
 
 " Oh, you are hard upon it ! It was done by 
 Ned, who made me a present of it ! " 
 
 " I am sorry for that, Mr. Drood," Neville 
 apologises, with a real intention to apologise ; 
 " if I had known I was in the artist's pre- 
 sence " 
 
 " Oh, a joke, sir, a mere joke ! " Edwin cuts 
 in with a provoking yawn. " A little humouring 
 of Pussy's points ! I'm going to paint her gravely 
 one of these days, if she's good." 
 
 The air of leisurely patronage and indifference 
 with which this is said, as the speaker throws 
 himself back in a chair and clasps his hands at 
 the back of his head, as a rest for it, is very 
 exasperating to the excitable and excited Neville. 
 Jasper looks observantly from the one to the 
 other, slightly smiles, and turns his back to mix 
 a jug of mulled wine at the fire. It seems to 
 require much mixing and compounding. 
 
 " I suppose, Mr. Neville," says Edwin, quick 
 to resent the indignant protest against himself 
 in the face of young Landless, which is fully as 
 visible as the portrait, or the fire, or the lamp : 
 " I suppose that if you painted the picture of 
 your lady love " 
 
 " I can't paint," is the hasty interruption. 
 
 " That's your misfortune, and not your fault. 
 You would if you could. But if you could, I 
 suppose you would make her (no matter what 
 she was in reality), Juno, Minerva, Diana, and 
 Venus, all in one. Eh ?" 
 
 " I have no lady love, and I can't say." 
 
 " If I were to try my hand," says Edwin, 
 with a boyish boastfulness getting up in him, 
 " on a portrait of Miss Landless — in earnest, 
 mind you ; in earnest — you should see what I 
 could do ! " 
 
 " My sister's consent to sit for it bei\ig first 
 got, I suppose ? As it never will be got, I am 
 afraid I shall never see what you can do. I 
 must bear the loss." 
 
 Jasper turns round from the fire, fills a large 
 goblet glass for Neville, fills a large goblet glass 
 for Edwin, and hands each his own ; then fills 
 for himself^, saying : 
 
 " Come, Mr. Neville, we are to drink to my 
 nephew, Ned. As it is his foot that is in the 
 
 stirrup — metaphorically — our stirrup-cup is to 
 be devoted to him. Ned, my dearest fellow, 
 my love I " 
 
 Jasper sets the example of nearly emptying 
 his glass, and Neville follows it. Edwin Drood 
 says, " Thank you both very much," and follows 
 the double example. 
 
 " Look at him," cries Jasper, stretching out 
 his hand admiringly and tenderly, though rally- 
 ingly too. " See where he lounges so easily, 
 Mr. Neville ! The world is all before him where 
 to choose. A life of stirring work and interest, 
 a life of change and excitement, a life of domes- 
 tic ease and love ! Look at him ! " 
 
 Edwin Drood's face has become quickly and 
 remarkably flushed with the w-ine ; so has the 
 face of Neville Landless. Edwin still sits thrown 
 back in his chair, making that rest of clasped 
 hands for his head. 
 
 " See how little he heeds it all I " Jasper pro- 
 ceeds in a bantering vein. " It is hardly worth 
 his while to pluck the golden fruit that hangs 
 ripe on the tree for him. And yet consider the 
 contrast, Mr. Neville. You and I have no 
 prospect of stirring work and interest, or of 
 change and excitement, or of domestic ease and 
 love. You and I have no prospect (unless you 
 are more fortunate than I am, which may easily 
 be), but the tedious unchanging round of this 
 dull place." 
 
 " Upon my soul. Jack," says Edwin com- 
 placently, " I feel quite apologetic for having 
 my way smoothed as you describe. But you 
 know what I know. Jack, and it may not be so 
 very easy as it seems, after all. May it. Pussy?" 
 To the portrait, with a snap of his thumb and 
 finger. " We have got to hit it oft" yet ; haven't 
 we. Pussy? You know what I mean. Jack?" 
 
 His speech has become thick and indistinct. 
 Jasper, quiet and self-possessed, looks to Neville, 
 as expecting his answer or comment. When 
 Neville speaks, his speech is also thick and in- 
 distinct. 
 
 " It might have been better for Mr. Drood to 
 have known some hardships," he says defiantly. 
 
 " Pray," retorts Edwin, turning merely his 
 eyes in that direction, " pray why might it have 
 been better for Mr. Drood to have known some 
 hardships ? " 
 
 " Ay," Jasper assents with an air of interest ; 
 " let us know why ? " 
 
 " Because they might have made him more 
 sensible," says Neville, " of good fortune that is 
 not by any means necessarily the result of his 
 own merits." 
 
 Mr. Jasper quickly looks to his nephew for 
 his rejoinder. 
 
AFTER THE STIRRUP-CUP. 
 
 Zl 
 
 ''Have you known hardships, may I ask?" 
 
 says Edwin Drood, sitting upright. 
 
 Mr. Jasper quickly looks to the other for his 
 
 retort. 
 
 " I have."' 
 
 " And what have they madejw/ sensiole of?" 
 
 Mr. Jasper's play of eyes between the two 
 
 holds good throughout the dialogue to the end. 
 " I have told you once before to-night."' 
 " You have done nothing of the sort." 
 " I tell you I have. That you take a great 
 
 deal too much upon yourself."' 
 
 " You added something else to that, if I re- 
 member ? " 
 
 " Yes, I did say something else." 
 
 *' Say it again." 
 
 " I said that, in the part of the world I come 
 from, you would be called to account for it." 
 
 "Only there?" cries Edwin Drood with a 
 contemptuous laugh. " A long way off, I be- 
 lieve ? Yes ; I see ! That part of the world 
 is at a safe distance." 
 
 " Say here, then," rejoins the other, rising in 
 a fury. " Say anywhere ! Your vanity is in- 
 
 ON DANGEROUS GROUND. 
 
 tolerable, your conceit is beyond endurance ; 
 you talk as if you were some rare and precious 
 ^prize, instead of a coaimon boaster. You are a 
 common fellow, and a common boaster." 
 
 " Pooh, pooh ! " says Edwin Drood, equally 
 furious, but more collected ; " how should you 
 know ? You may know a black common fellow, 
 or a black common boaster, when you see him 
 (and no doubt you have a large acquaintance 
 that way), but you are no judge of white men." 
 
 This insulting allusion to his dark skin in- 
 Edwin Drood, 3. 
 
 furiates Neville to that violent degree, that he 
 flings the dregs of his wine at Edwin Drood, 
 and is in the act of flinging the goblet after it, 
 when his arm is caught in the nick of time by 
 Jasper. 
 
 " Ned, my dear fellow !" he cries in a loud 
 voice ; " I entreat you, I command you to be 
 still ! " There has been a rush of all the three, 
 and a clattering of glasses and overturning of 
 chairs. " Mr. Neville, for shame ! Give this glass 
 to me. Open your hand, sir. I will have it ! " 
 
34 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 But Neville throws him off", and pauses for , 
 an instant, in a raging passion, with the goblet 
 yet in his uplifted hand. Then, he dashes it 
 down under the grate, with such force that the 
 broken splinters fly out again in a shower; and 
 he leaves the house. 
 
 When he first emerges into the nigb'c'~air, 
 nothing around him is still or steady ; nothing 
 around him shows like what it is ; he only 
 knows that he stands with a bare head in the midst 
 of a blood-red whirl, waiting to be struggled 
 Avith, and to struggle to the death. 
 
 But, nothing happening, and the moon look- 
 ing down upon him as if he were dead after a 
 fit of wrath, he holds his steam-hammer-beating 
 head and heart, and staggers away. Then, he 
 becomes half conscious of having heard himself 
 bolted and barred out, like a dangerous animal ; 
 and thinks, what shall he do ? 
 
 Some wildly passionate ideas of the river dis- 
 solve under the spell of the moonlight on the 
 cathedral and the graves, and the remembrance 
 of his sister, and the thought of what he owes to 
 the good man who has but that very day won 
 his confidence and given him his pledge. He 
 repairs to Minor Canon Corner, and knocks 
 softly at the door. 
 
 It is Mr. Crisparkle's custom to sit up last of 
 the early household, very softly touching his 
 piano and practising his favourite parts in con- 
 certed vocal music. The south wind that goes 
 where it lists, by way of Minor Canon Corner 
 on a still night, is not more subdued than Mr. 
 Crisparkle at such times, regardful of the slum- 
 bers of the china shepherdess. 
 
 His knock is immediately answered by Mr. 
 Crisparkle himself. When he opens the door, 
 candle in hand, his cheerful face falls, and dis- 
 appointed amazement is in it. 
 
 " Mr. Neville ! In this disorder ! Where have 
 you been ?" 
 
 " I have been to Mr. Jasper's, sir. With his 
 nephew." 
 
 " Come in." 
 
 The Minor Canon props him by the elbow 
 with a strong hand (in a strictly scientific manner, 
 worthy of his morning trainings) and turns him 
 into his own little book-room, and shuts the 
 door. 
 
 " I have begun ill, sir. I have begun dread- 
 fully ill." 
 
 " Too true. You are not sober, Mr. Neville." 
 
 " I am afraid I am not, sir, though I can 
 satisfy you at another time that I have had a 
 very little indeed to drink, and that it overcame 
 me in the strangest and most sudden manner." 
 
 " Mr. Neville, Mr. Neville," says the Minor 
 
 Canon, shaking his head with a sorrowful smile : 
 
 " I have heard that said before." 
 
 " I think — my mind is much confused, but I 
 think — it is equally true of Mr. Jasper's nephew, 
 sir." 
 
 " Very likely," is the dry rejoinder. 
 
 " We quarrelled, sir. He insulted me most 
 grossly. He had heated that tigerish blood I 
 told you of to-day, before then." 
 
 " Mr. Neville," rejoins the Minor Canon 
 mildly, but firmly, " I request you not to speak 
 to me with that clenched right hand. Unclench 
 it, if you please." 
 
 " He goaded me, sir," pursues the young man, 
 instantly obeying, " beyond my power of en- 
 durance. I cannot say whether or no he meant 
 it at first, but he did it. He certainly meant it 
 at last. In short, sir," with an irrepressible out- 
 burst, " in the passion into which he lashed me, 
 I would have cut him down if I could, and I 
 tried to do it." 
 
 " You have clenched that hand again," is Mr. 
 Crisparkle's quiet commentary, 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir." 
 
 " You know your room, for I showed it you 
 before dinner ; but I will accompany you to it 
 once more. Your arm, if you jDlease. Softl}-, 
 for the house is all abed." 
 
 Scooping his hand into the same scientific 
 elbow-rest as before, and backing it up with the 
 inert strength of his arm as skilfully as a Police 
 Expert, and with an apparent repose quite un- 
 attainable by novices, Mr. Crisparkle conducts 
 his pupil to the pleasant and orderly old room 
 prepared for him. Arrived there, the young 
 man throws himself into a chair, and, flinging 
 his arms upon his reading-table, rests his head 
 upon them with an air of wretched self-reproach. 
 
 The gentle Minor Canon has had it in his 
 thoughts to leave the room without a word. 
 But looking round at the door, and seeing this 
 dejected figure, he turns back to it, touches it 
 with a mild hand, and says " Good night ! " A 
 sob is his only acknowledgment. He might 
 have had many a worse ; i:'erhaps could have 
 had few better. 
 
 Another soft knock at the outer door attracts 
 his attention as he goes down-stairs. He opens 
 it to Mr. Jasper, holding in his hand the pupil's 
 hat. 
 
 " We have had an awful scene with him," says 
 Jasper in a low voice. 
 
 " Has it been so bad as that ? " 
 
 " Murderous ! " 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle remonstrates : " No, no, no ! 
 Do not use such strong words." 
 
 " He might have laid my dear boy dead at 
 
STARTLING NEWS REACHES THE NUNS' HOUSE. 
 
 35 
 
 my feet. It is no fault of his that he did not. 
 But tliat I was, through the mercy of God, swift 
 and strong with him, he would have cut him 
 down on my hearth." 
 
 The phrase smites home. " Ah ! " thinks 
 i\Ir. Crisparklc, " his own words !" 
 
 '* Seeing what I have seen to-night, and hear- 
 ing what 1 have heard," adds Jasper with great 
 earnestness, " I shall never know peace of mind 
 when there is danger of those two coming to- 
 gether, with no one else to interfere. It was 
 horrible. There is something of the tiger in his 
 dark blood." 
 
 " Ah ! " thinks Mr. Crisparkle, " so he said !" 
 
 " You, my dear sir," pursues Jasper, taking 
 his hand, " even you, have accepted a dangerous 
 charge." 
 
 " You need have no fear for me, Jasper," 
 returns Mr. Crisparkle with a quiet smile. " I 
 have none for myself." 
 
 " I have none for myself," returns Jasper with 
 an emphasis on the last pronoun, " because I 
 am not, nor am I in the way of being, the object 
 of his hostility. But you may be, and my dear 
 boy has been. Goodnight!" 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle goes in, Avith the hat that has 
 so easily, so almost imperceptibly, acquired the 
 right to be hung up in his hall ; hangs it up ; 
 and goes thoughtfully to bed. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 BIRDS IN THE BUSH. 
 
 OSA, having no relation that she 
 knew of in the world, had, from the 
 seventh year of her age, known no 
 home but the Nuns' House, and no 
 mother but Miss Twinkleton. Her 
 remembrance of her own mother 
 was of a pretty little creature like herself 
 (not much older than herself it seemed to 
 her), who had been brought home in her father's 
 arms, drowned. The fatal accident had hap- 
 pened at a party of pleasure. Every fold and 
 colour in the pretty summer dress, and even the 
 long wet hair, with scattered petals of ruined 
 flowers still clinging to it, as the dead young 
 figure, in its sad, sad beauty lay upon the bed, 
 were fixed indelibly in Rosa's recollection. So 
 were the wild despair and the subsequent 
 bowed-down grief of her poor young father, 
 who died broken-hearted on the first anniver- 
 sary of that hard day. 
 
 The betrothal of Rosa grew out of the sooth- 
 
 ing of his year of mental distress by his fast 
 friend and old college companion, Drood : who 
 likewise had been left a widower in his youth. 
 But he, too, went the silent road into which all 
 earthly pilgrimages merge, some sooner, and 
 some later; and thus the young couple had 
 come to be as they were. 
 
 The atmosphere of \)\\.y surrounding the little 
 orphan girl when she first came to Cloisterham 
 had never cleared away. It had taken brighter 
 hues as she grew older, happier, prettier ; now 
 it had been golden, now roseate, and now 
 azure; but it had always adorned her with 
 some soft light of its own. The general desire 
 to console and caress her had caused her to be 
 treated, in the beginning, as a child much 
 younger than her years ; the same desire had 
 caused her to be still petted when she was a 
 child no longer. Who should be her favourite, 
 who should anticipate this or that small present, 
 or do her this or that small service ; who should 
 take her home for the holidays ; who should 
 write to her the oftenest when they were sepa- 
 rated, and whom she would most rejoice to see 
 again when they were reunited ; even these 
 gentle rivalries were not without their slight 
 dashes of bitterness in the Nuns' House. Well 
 for the poor Nuns, in their day, if they hid no 
 harder strife under their veils and rosaries ! 
 
 Thus Rosa had grown to be an amiable, 
 giddy, wilful, winning little creature ; spoilt, in 
 the sense of counting upon kindness from all 
 around her ; but not in the sense of repaying it 
 with indifference. Possessing an exhaustless 
 well of affection in her nature, its sparkling 
 waters had freshened and brightened the Nuns' 
 House for years, and yet its depths had never 
 yet been moved. What might betide when that 
 came to pass ; what developing changes miglit 
 fall upon the heedless head and light heart, 
 then ; remained to be seen. 
 
 By what means the news that there had been 
 a quarrel between the two young men over- 
 night, involving even some kind of onslaught by 
 Mr. Neville upon Edwin Drood, got into Miss 
 Twinkleton's establishment before breakfast, it 
 is impossible to say. Whether it was brought 
 in by the birds of the air, or came blowing in 
 with the very air itself, when the casement 
 windows were set open ; whether the baker 
 brought it kneaded into the bread, or the milk- 
 man delivered it as part of the adulteration of 
 his milk ; or the housemaids, beating the dust 
 out of their mats against t!ie gate-posts, received 
 it in exchange deposited on the mats by the 
 town atmosphere; certain it is that the news 
 permeated every gable of the old building be- 
 
3(^ 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 fore Miss Twinkleton was down, and that Miss 
 'rwinkleton herself received it, through Mrs. 
 'risher, while yet in the act of dressing ; or (as 
 she might have expressed the phrase to a i)arent 
 or guardian of a mythological turn) of sacrificing 
 to the Graces. 
 
 Miss Landless's brother had thrown a bottle 
 at Mr. Edwin Drood. 
 
 Miss Landless's brother had thrown a knife 
 at Mr. Edwin Drood. 
 
 A knife became suggestive of a fork ; and 
 Miss Landless's brother had thrown a fork at 
 Mr. Edwin Drootl. 
 
 As in the governing precedence of Peter 
 Piper, alleged to have picked the peck of 
 pickled pepper, it was held physically desirable 
 to have evidence of the existence of the peck of 
 pickled pepper which Peter Piper was alleged 
 to have picked ; so, in this case, it was held 
 psychologically important to know why Miss 
 Landless's brother threw a bottle, knife, or fork 
 — or bottle, knife, and fork — for the cook had 
 been given to understand it was all three — at 
 Mr. Edwin Drood. 
 
 \\"ell, then ! Miss Landless's brother had 
 said he admired Miss Bud. Mr. Edwin Drood 
 had said to I^Iiss Landless's brother that he had 
 no business to admire Miss Bud. Miss Land- 
 less's brother had then " up'd " (this was the 
 cook's exact information) with the bottle, knife, 
 fork, and decanter (the decanter now coolly 
 flying at everybody's head, without the least 
 introduction), and thrown them all at Mr. 
 Edwin Drood. 
 
 Poor little Rosa put a forefinger into each of 
 her ears when these rumours began to circulate, 
 and retired into a corner, beseeching not to be 
 told any more ; but Miss Landless, begging 
 permission of Miss Twinkleton to go and speak 
 with her brother, and pretty plainly showing 
 that she would take it if it were not given, 
 struck out the more definite course of going to 
 Mr. Crisparkle's for accurate intelligence. 
 
 When she came back (being first closeteu 
 with Miss Twinkleton, in order that anything 
 objectionable in her tidings might be retained 
 by that discreet filter), she imparted to Rosa 
 only what had taken place ; dwelling with a 
 flushed cheek on the provocation her brother 
 had received, but almost limiting it to that last 
 gross affront as crowning " some other words 
 between them," and, out of consideration for 
 her new friend, passing lightly over the fact that 
 the other words had originated in her lover's 
 taking things in general so very easily. To 
 Rosa direct, she brought a petition from her 
 brother that she would forgive him ; and, 
 
 having delivered it with sisterly earnestness, 
 made an end of the subject. 
 
 It was reserved for Miss Twinkleton to tone 
 down the public mind of the Nuns' House. 
 That lady, therefore, entering in a stately man- 
 ner what plebeians might have called the school- 
 room, but what, in the patrician language of the 
 head of the Nuns' House, was euphuistically, 
 not to say roundaboutedly, denominated " the 
 apartment allotted to study," and saying, with a 
 forensic air, " Ladies ! " all rose. Mrs. Tisher 
 at the same time grouped herself behind her 
 chief, as representing Queen Elizabeth's first 
 historical female friend at Tilbury Fort. Miss 
 Twinkleton then proceeded to remark that 
 Rumour, Ladies, had been represented by the 
 bard of Avon — needless were it to mention the 
 immortal Shakspeare, also called the Swan of 
 his native river, not improbably with some 
 reference to the ancient superstition that that 
 bird of graceful plumage (Miss Jennings will 
 please stand upright) sang sweetly on the ap- 
 proach of death, for which we have no ornitho- 
 logical authority, — Rumour, Ladies, had been 
 represented by tnat bard — hem !- 
 
 " Who drew 
 The celebiated Jew," 
 
 as painted full of tongues. Rumour in Cloister- 
 ham (Miss Ferdinand will honour me with her 
 attention) was no exception to tiie great limnefs 
 portrait of Rumour elsewhere. A slight fracas 
 between two young gentlemen occurring last 
 night within a hundred miles of these peaceful 
 walls (Miss Ferdinand, being apparently incor- 
 rigible, will have the kindness to write out this 
 evening, in the original language, the first four 
 fables of our vivacious neighbour, IMonsieur La 
 Fontaine) had been very grossly exaggerated by 
 Rumour's voice. In the first alarm and anxiety 
 arising from our sympathy with a sweet young 
 friend, not wholly to be dissociated from one of 
 the gladiators in the bloodless arena in question 
 (the impropriety of Miss Reynolds's appearing 
 to stab herself in the band with a pin is far too 
 obvious, and too glaringly unlady-like, to be 
 pointed out), we descended from our maiden 
 elevation to discuss this uncongenial and this 
 unfit theme. Responsible inquiries having 
 assured us that it was but one of those " airy 
 nothings " pointed at by the Poet (whose name 
 and date of birth Miss Giggles will supply within 
 half an hour), we Avould now discard the sub- 
 ject, and concentrate our minds upon the grateful 
 labours of the day. 
 
 But the subject so surviveil all day, neverthe- 
 less, that Miss Ferdinand got into new trouble 
 by surreptitiously clapping on a paper moustache 
 
ROSA 'S GUARDIAN. 
 
 at dinner-time, and going through the motions 
 of aiming a water bottle at Miss Giggles, who 
 drew a table-spoon in defence. 
 
 Now, Rosa thought of this unlucky quarrel a 
 great deal, and thought of it with an uncomfort- 
 able feeling that she was involved in it, as cause, 
 or consequence, or what not, through being in a 
 false position altogether as to her marriage en- 
 gagement. Never free from such uneasiness 
 when she v.-as with her affianced hnsband, it 
 was not likely that she would be free from it 
 \\hen they were apart. To-day, too, she was 
 cast in upon herself, and deprived of the relief of 
 talking freely with her new friend, because the 
 quarrel had been with Helena's brother, and 
 Helena undisguisedly avoided the subject as a 
 delicate and difficult one to herself. At this 
 critical time, of all times, Rosa's guardian was 
 announced as having come to see her. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious had been well selected for his 
 trust, as a man of incorruptible integrity, but 
 certainly for no other appropriate quality dis- 
 cernible on the surface. He was an arid, sandy 
 man, who, if he had been put into a grinding- 
 mill, looked as if he would have ground imme- 
 diately into high-dried snuff. He had a scanty 
 flat crop of hair, in colour and consistency like 
 some very mangy yellow fur tippet ; it was so 
 unlike hair, that it must have been a wig, but 
 for the stupendous improbabiHty of anybody's 
 voluntarily sporting such a head. The little 
 play of feature that his face presented was cut 
 deep into it, in a few hard curves that made it 
 more like work ; and he had certain notches in 
 his forehead, which looked as though Nature 
 had been about to touch them into sensibility 
 or refinement, when she had impatiently thrown 
 away the chisel, and said : " I really cannot be 
 worried to finish off this man ; let him go as 
 he is." 
 
 With too great length of throat at his upper 
 end, and too much ankle-bone and heel at his 
 lower ; with an awkward and hesitating manner ; 
 with a shambling walk ; and with what is called 
 a near sight — which perhaps prevented his 
 observing how much white cotton stocking he 
 displayed to the public eye, in contrast with 
 his black suit — Mr. Grewgious still had some 
 strange capacity in him of making on the whole 
 an agreeable impression. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious was discovered by his ward, 
 much discomfited by being in Miss Twinkleton's 
 company in Miss Twinkleton's own sacred 
 room. Dim forebodings of being examined in 
 something, and not coming well out of it, 
 seemed to oppress the poor gentleman when 
 found in these circumstances. 
 
 " My dear, how do you do ? I am giad to 
 see you. My dear, how much improved you 
 are ! Permit me to hand you a chair, my dear." 
 
 Miss Twinkleton rose at her little writing- 
 table, saying, with general sweetness, as to the 
 j)olite Universe : " \\'ill you permit me to re- 
 tire ? " 
 
 " By no means, madam, on my account. I 
 beg that you will not move." 
 
 " I must entreat permission to move" re- 
 turned Miss Twinkleton, rei)eating the word 
 with a charming grace; "but I will not wiiTi- 
 draw, since you are so obliging. If I wheel my 
 desk to this corner window, shall I be in the 
 way ? " 
 
 " Madam ! In the way ! " 
 
 " You are very kind. Rosa, my dear, you 
 will be under no restraint, I am sure." 
 
 Here Mr. Grewgious, left by the fire with 
 Rosa, said again : " My dear, how do you do ? 
 I am glad to see you, my dear." And, having 
 waited for her to sit down, sat down himself. 
 
 " My visits," said Mr. Grewgious, " are, like 
 those of the angels — iiot that 1 compare myself 
 to an angel." 
 
 " No, sir," said Rosa. 
 
 " Not by any means," assented Mr. Grew- 
 gious. " I merely refer to my visits, which are 
 few and far between. The angels are, we know 
 very well, up-stairs." 
 
 Miss Twinkleton looked round with a kind of 
 stiff stare. 
 
 " I refer, my dear," said Mr, Grewgious, lay- 
 ing his hand on Rosa's, as the possibility thrilled 
 through his frame of his otherwise seeming to 
 take the awful liberty of calling Miss Twinkleton 
 my dear ; " I refer to the other young ladies." 
 
 Miss Twinkleton resumed her writing. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious, with a sense of not having 
 managed his opening point quite as neatly as 
 he might have desired, smoothed his head from 
 back to front as if he had just dived, and were 
 pressing the water out — this smoothing action, 
 however superfluous, was habitual with him — 
 and took a pocket-book from his coat pocket, 
 and a stump of black-lead pencil from his waist- 
 coat pocket. 
 
 " I made," he said, turning the leaves : " I 
 made a guiding memorandum or so — as I 
 usually do, for I have no conversational powers 
 whatever — to which I will, witii your permis- 
 sion, my dear, refer. ' Well and happy.' Truly. 
 You are well and happy, my dear ? You look 
 so." 
 
 " Yes, indeed, sir," answered Rosa. 
 
 " For which," said Mr. Grewgious, with a 
 bend of his head towards the corner window, 
 
38 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 "our warmest acknowledgments are due, and I 
 am sure are rendered, to the maternal kindness 
 and the constant care and consideration of the 
 lady whom I have now the honour to see before 
 me." 
 
 This point, again, made but a lame departure 
 from Mr. Grewgious, and never got to its desti- 
 nation ; for. Miss Twinkleton, feeling that the 
 courtesies required her to be by this time quite 
 outside the conversation, was biting the end of 
 her pen, and looking upward, as waiting for the 
 descent of an idea from any member of the 
 Celestial Nine who might have one to spare. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious smoothed his smooth head 
 again, and then made another reference to his 
 pocket-book ; lining out " well and ha2:)py," as 
 disposed of. 
 
 " ' Pounds, shillings, and pence,' is my next 
 note. A dry subject for a young lady, but an 
 important subject too. Life is pounds, shil- 
 lings, and pence. Death is " A sudden 
 
 recollection of the death of her two parents 
 seemed to stop him, and he said in a softer 
 tone, and evidently inserting the negative as an 
 after-thought : " Death is 7iot pounds, shillings, 
 and pence." 
 
 His voice was as hard and dry as himself, 
 and Fancy might have ground it straight, like 
 himself, into high-dried snuff. And yet, through 
 the very limited means of expression that he 
 possessed, he seemed to express kindness. If 
 Nature had but finished him off, kindness 
 might have been recognisable in his face at 
 this moment. But if the notches in his fore- 
 head wouldn't fuse together, and if his face 
 would work and couldn't play, what could he 
 do, poor man ? 
 
 •• ' Pounds, shillings, and pence.' You find 
 your allowance always sufficient for your wants, 
 my dear ? '' 
 
 Rosa wanted for nothing, and therefore it was 
 ample. 
 
 " And you are not in debt } " 
 
 Rosa laughed at the idea of being in debt. 
 It seemed, to her inexperience, a comical vagary 
 of the imagination. Mr. Grewgious stretched 
 his near sight to be sure that this was her view 
 of the case. " Ah ! " he said, as comment, with 
 a furtive glance towards Miss Twinkleton, and 
 lining out pounds, shillings, and pence : " I 
 spoke of having got among the angels ! So I 
 did ! " 
 
 Rosa felt what his next memorandum would 
 prove to be, and was blushing and folding a 
 crease in her dress with one embarrassed hand, 
 long before he found it. 
 • "* Marriage.' Hem!" Mr. Grewgious car- 
 
 ried his smoothing hand down over his eyes and 
 nose, and even chin, before drawing his chair a 
 little nearer, and speaking a little more confi- 
 dentially : " I now touch, my dear, upon the 
 point that is the direct cause of my troubling 
 you with the present visit. Otherwise, being a 
 particularly Angular man, I should not have 
 intruded here. I am the last man to intrude 
 into a sphere for which I am so entirely un- 
 fitted. 1 feel, on these premises, as if I was a 
 bear — with the cramp — in a youthful Cotillon." 
 
 His ungainliness gave him enough of the air 
 of his simile to set Rosa off laughing heartily. 
 
 " It strikes you in the same light," said Mr. 
 Grewgious with perfect calmness. "Just so. 
 To return to my memorandum. Mr. Edwin 
 has been to and fro here, as was arranged. 
 You have mentioned that in your quarterly 
 letters to me. And you like him, and he likes 
 you." 
 
 " I like him very much, sir," rejoined Rosa. 
 
 " So I said, my dear," returned her guardian, 
 for whose ear the timid emphasis was much too 
 fine. " Good. And you correspond." 
 
 " We write to one another," said Rosa, pout- 
 ing, as she recalled their epistolary differences. 
 
 " Such is the meaning that I attach to the 
 word ' correspond ' in this application, my 
 dear," said Mr. Grewgious. *' Good. All goes 
 well, time works on, and at this next Christmas- 
 time it will become necessary, as a matter of 
 form, to give the exemplary lady in the corner 
 window, to whom we are so much indebted, 
 business notice of your departure in the ensuing 
 half-year. Your relations with her are far more 
 than business relations, no doubt ; but a residue 
 of business remains in them, and business is 
 business ever. I am a particularly Angular 
 man," proceeded Mr. Grewgious, as if it sud- 
 denly occurred to him to mention it, "and I am 
 not used to give anything away. If, for these 
 two reasons, some competent Proxy would give 
 yoic away, I should take it very kindly." 
 
 Rosa intimated, with her eyes on the ground, 
 that she thought a substitute might be found, if 
 required, 
 
 "Surely, surely," said Mr. Grewgious. "For 
 instance, the gentleman who teaches Dancing 
 here — he would know how to do it with grace- 
 ful propriety. He would advance and retire in 
 a manner satisfactory to the feelings of the 
 officiating clergyman, and of yourself, and the 
 bridegroom, and all i:)arties concerned. I am — 
 I am a particularly Angular man," said Mr. 
 Grewgious, as if he had made up his mind to 
 screw it out at last, "and should only blunder." 
 Rosa sat still and silent. Perhaps her mind 
 
AN ANGULAR SUBJECT. 
 
 39 
 
 had not got quite so far as the ceremony yet, 
 
 but was lagging on the way there. 
 
 " Memorandum, ' Will.' Now, my dear," said 
 Mr. Grewgious, referring to his notes, disposing 
 of " Marriage " with his pencil, and taking a 
 paper from his pocket : " although I have before 
 possessed you with the contents of your father's 
 will, I think it right at this time to leave a certi- 
 fied copy of it in your hands. And although 
 Mr. Eilwin is also aware of its contents, I think 
 it right at this time likewise to place a certified 
 copy of it in Mr. Jasper's hand "' 
 
 "Not in his own?" asked Rosa, looking up 
 quickly. " Cannot the copy go to Eddy him- 
 self?" 
 
 " Why, yes, my dear, if you particularly wish 
 it ; but I spoke of Mr. Jasper as being his 
 trustee." 
 
 " I do particularly wish it, if you please," said 
 Rosa hurriedly and earnestly ; " I don't like 
 Mr. Jasper to come between us in any way." 
 
 "It is natural, I suppose," said Mr. Grew- 
 gious, " that your young husband should be all 
 m all. Yes. You observe that I say, I sup- 
 pose. The fact is, I am a particularly Un- 
 natural man, and I don't know from my own 
 knowledge." 
 
 Rosa looked at him with some wonder. 
 
 " I mean," he explained, " that young ways 
 were never my ways, I was the only offspring 
 of parents far advanced in life, and I half be- 
 lieve I was born advanced in life myself. No 
 personality is intended towards the name you 
 will so soon change, when I remark that while 
 the general growth of people seem to have come 
 into existence buds, I seem to have come into 
 existence a chip. I was a chip — and a very dry 
 one — when I first became aware of myself. 
 Respecting the other certified copy, your wish 
 shall be complied with. Respecting your in- 
 heritance, I think you know all. It is an 
 annuity of two hundred and fifty pounds. The 
 savings upon that annuity, and some other 
 items to your credit, all duly carried to account, 
 with vouchers, will place you in possession of a 
 lump-sum of money rather exceeding Seventeen 
 Hundred Pounds. I am empowered to advance 
 the cost of your preparations for your n.arriage 
 out of that fund. All is told." 
 
 " Will you please tell me," said Rosa, taking 
 the paper with a prettily-knitted brow, but not 
 opening it, " whether I am right in what I am 
 going to say? I can understand what you tell 
 me, so very much better than what I read in 
 Law-writings. My poor papa and Eddy's father 
 made their agreement together, as very dear 
 and firm and last friends, in order that we, too, 
 
 might be very dear and firm and fast friends 
 after them." 
 
 "Just so." 
 
 " For the lasting good of both of us, and the 
 lasting happiness of both of us ? " 
 
 " Just so." 
 
 " That we might be to one another even much 
 mone than they had been to one another ? " 
 
 " Just so." 
 
 " It was not bound upon Eddy, and it was 
 not bound upon me, by any forfeit, in case " 
 
 " Don't be agitated, my dear. In the case 
 that it brings tears into your affectionate eyes 
 even to picture to yourself — in the case of your 
 not marrying one another — no, no forfeiture on 
 either side. You would then have been my 
 ward until you were of age. No worse would 
 have befallen you. Bad enough, perhaps !" 
 
 " And Eddy ? " 
 
 " He would have come into his partnership 
 derived from his father, and into its arrears to 
 his credit (if any), on attaining his majority, 
 just as now." 
 
 Rosa, with her perplexed face and knitted 
 brow, bit the corner of hei attested copy, as she 
 sat with her head on one side, looking ab- 
 stractedly on the floor, and smoothing it with 
 her foot. 
 
 " in short," said Mr. Grewgious, " this be- 
 trothal is a wish, a sentiment, a friendly project, 
 tenderly expressed on both sides. That it was 
 strongly felt, and that there was a lively hope 
 that it would prosper, there can be no doubt. 
 When you were both children, you began to be 
 accustomed to it, and it has prospered. But 
 circumstances alter cases ; and I made this 
 visit to-day, pardy, indeed principally, to dis- 
 charge jnyself of the duty of telling you, my 
 dear, that two young people can only be be- 
 trothed in marriage (except as a matter of con- 
 venience, and therefore mockery and misery) of 
 their own free-will, their own attachment, and 
 their own assurance (it may or it may not prove 
 a mistaken one, but we must take our chance of 
 that), that they are suited to each other, and 
 will make each other happ)^ • Is it to be sup- 
 posed, for example, that if either of j'our fathers 
 were living now, and had any mistrust on that 
 subject, his mind would not be changed by the 
 change of circumstances involved in the change 
 of your years ? Untenable, unreasonable, in- 
 conclusive, and preposterous ! " 
 
 Mr. Grewgious said all this as if he were 
 reading it aloud ; oj, still more, as if he were 
 repeating a lesson. So expressionless of any 
 approach to spontaneity were his face and 
 manner. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 " I have now, my dear," he added, blurring 
 
 out " Will " with his pencil, " discharged myself 
 of what is doubtless a formal duty in this case, 
 but still a duty in such a case. Memorandum, 
 ' Wishes.' jNIy dear, is there any wish of yours 
 that I can further?" 
 
 Rosa shook her head with an almost plaintive 
 air of hesitation in want of help. 
 
 " Is there any instruction that I can take 
 from you with reference to your affairs ? " 
 
 " I — I should like to settle them with Eddy 
 first, if you please." said Rosa, plaiting the 
 crease in her dress. 
 
 " Surely, surely," returned Mr. Grewgious. 
 " You two should be of one mind in all things. 
 Is the young gentleman expected shortly ? " 
 
 " He has gone away only this morning. He 
 will be back at Christmas." 
 
 " Nothing could happen better. You will, 
 on his return at Christmas, arrange all matters 
 of detail with him ; you will then communicate 
 with me ; and I will discharge myself (as a 
 mere business acquittance) of my business 
 responsibilities towards the accomplished lady 
 in the corner window. They will accrue 
 at that season." Blurring pencil once again. 
 " Memorandum, ' Leave.' Yes. I will now, 
 my dear, take my leave." 
 
 "Could I," said Rosa, rising, as he jerked 
 out of his chair in his ungainly way : "could I 
 ask you most kindly to come to me at Christ- 
 mas, if I had anything particular to say to 
 you ? " 
 
 "Why, certainly, certainly," he rejoined; 
 apparently — if such a word can be used of one 
 who had no apparent lights or shadows about 
 him — complimented by the question. " As a 
 particularly Angular man, I do not fit smoothly 
 into the social circle, and consequently I have 
 no other engagement at Christmas-time than to 
 partake, on the twenty-fifth, of a boiled turkey and 
 celery sauce with a — with a particularly Angular 
 clerk I have the good fortune to possess, whose 
 father, being a Norfolk farmer, sends him up 
 (the turkey up), as a present to me, from the 
 neighbourhood of Norwich. I should be quite 
 proud of your wishing to see me, my dear. As 
 a professional Receiver of rents, so very few 
 people do wish to see me, that the novelty 
 would be bracing." 
 
 For his ready acquiescence the grateful Rosa 
 put her hands upon his shoulders, stood on tip- 
 toe, and instantly kissed him. 
 
 " Lord bless me ! " cried Mr. Grewgious. 
 " Thank you, my dear ! The honour is almost 
 equal to the pleasure. Miss Twinkleton, 
 madam, I have had a most satisfactory conver- 
 
 sation with my ward, and I will now release you 
 from the encumbrance of my presence." 
 
 " Nay, sir," rejoined Miss Twinkleton, rising 
 with a gracious condescension : " say not en- 
 cumbrance. Not so, by any means. I cannot 
 permit you to say so." 
 
 " Thank you, madam. I have read in the 
 newspapers," said Mr. Grewgious, stammering a 
 little, " that when a distinguished visitor (not 
 that I am one : i'ar from it) goes to a school 
 (not that this is one : far from it), lie asks for a 
 holiday or some sort of grace. It being now 
 the afternoon in the — College — of which you are 
 the eminent head, the young ladies might gain 
 nothing, except in name, by having the rest of 
 the day allowed them. But if there is any 
 young lady at all under a cloud, might I 
 solicit " 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Grewgious, Mr. Grewgious ! " cried 
 Miss Twinkleton with a chastely-rallying fore- 
 finger. " Oh, you gentlemen, you gentlemen ! 
 Fie for shame, that you are so hard upon us 
 poor maligned disciplinarians of our sex, for 
 your sakes ! But as Miss Ferdinand is at pre- 
 sent weighed down by an incubus " — Miss 
 Twinkleton might have said a pen-and-ink- 
 ubus of writing out Monsieur La Fontaine — 
 " go to her, Rosa my dear, and tell her the 
 penalty is remitted, in deference to the interces- 
 sion of your guardian, Mr. Grewgious." 
 
 Miss Twinkleton here achieved a curtsy, sug- 
 gestive of marvels happening to her respected 
 legs, and which she came out of nobly, three 
 yards behind her starting-point. 
 
 As he held it incumbent upon him to call 
 on Mr. Jasper before leaving Cloisterham, Mr. 
 Grewgious went to the gate-house, and climbed 
 its postern-stair. But Mr. Jasper's door being 
 closed, and presenting on a slip of paper the 
 word " Cathedral," the fact of its being service- 
 time was borne into the mind of Mr. Grew- 
 gious. So he descended the stair again, and, 
 crossing the Close, paused at the great western 
 folding door of the cathedral, which stood open 
 on the fine and bright, though short-lived, after- 
 noon, for the airing of the place. 
 
 " Dear me," said Mr. Grewgious, peeping in, 
 "it's like looking down the throat of Old Time." 
 
 Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb 
 and arch and vault ; and gloomy shadows began 
 to deepen in corners ; and damps began to rise 
 from green patches of stone ; and jewels, cast 
 upon the pavement of the nave from stained 
 glass by the declining sun, began to perish. 
 Within the grill-gate of the chancel, up the steps 
 surmounted loomingly by the fast-darkening 
 organ, white robes could be dimly seen, and 
 
THE GUARDIAN AND TRUSTEE. 
 
 41 
 
 one feeble voice, rising and falling in a cracked 
 monotonous mutter, coukl at intervals be faintly 
 heard. In the free outer air, the river, the 
 green pastures, and the brown arable lands, 
 the teeniing hills and dales, were reddened by 
 the sunset : while the distant little windows in 
 windmills and farm homesteads shone, patches 
 of bright beaten gold. In the cathedral all be- 
 came grey, murky, and sepulchral, and the 
 cracked monotonous mutter went on like a 
 dying voice, until the organ and the choir burst 
 forth, and drowned it in a sea of music. Then, 
 the sea fell, and the dying voice made another 
 feeble effort, and then the sea rose high, and 
 beat its life out, and lashed the roof, and 
 surged among the arches, and pierced the 
 heights of the great tower ; and then the sea 
 was dry, and all was still. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious had by that time walked to 
 the chancel steps, where he met the living 
 waters coming out. 
 
 " Nothing is the matter ? " Thus Jasper 
 accosted hira rather quickly. " You have not 
 been sent fcvr ? " 
 
 " Not at all, not at all. I came down of my 
 own accord. I have been to my pretty ward's, 
 and am now homeward bound again." 
 
 " You found her thriving ? " 
 
 " Blooming indeed. Most blooming. I 
 merely came to tell her, seriously^ what a 
 betrotiial by deceased parents is." 
 
 "And what is it — according to your judg- 
 ment? " 
 
 Mr. Grewgious noticed the whiteness of the 
 lips that asked the question, and put it down to 
 the chilling account of the cathedral. 
 
 " I merely came to tell her that it could not 
 be considered binding, against any such reason 
 for its dissolution as a want of affection, or want 
 of disposition to carry it into effect, on the side 
 of either party.' 
 
 " i\Iay I ask, had you any especial reason for 
 telling her that ? " 
 
 Mr. Grewgious answered somewhat sharply : 
 " The especial reason of doing my duty, sir. 
 Simply that." Then he added : " Come, Mr. 
 Jasper ; I know your affection for your nephew, 
 and that you are quick to feel on his behalf. I 
 assure you that this implies not the least doubt 
 of, or disrespect to, your nephew." 
 
 " You could not," returned Jasper, with a 
 friendly pressure of his arm, as they walked on 
 side by side, " speak more handsomely." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious pulled off his hat to smooth 
 his head, and, having smoothed it, nodded it 
 contentedly, and put his hat on again. 
 
 " I will wager," said Jasper, smiling — his lips 
 
 were still so white that he was conscious of it, 
 and bit and moistened them while speaking, 
 " I will wager that she hinted no wish to be 
 released from Ned." 
 
 " And you will win your wager, if you do," 
 retorted Mr. Grewgious. " We should allow- 
 some margin for little maidenly delicacies in a 
 young motherless creature under such circum- 
 stances, I suppose ; it is not in my line ; what 
 do you think ? " 
 
 " There can be no doubt of it." 
 
 " I am glad you say so. Because," proceeded 
 Mr. Grewgious, who had all this time very 
 knowingly felt his way round to action on his 
 remembrance of what she had said of Jasper 
 himself: "because she seems to have some 
 little delicate instinct that all preliminary 
 arrangements had best be made between Mr. 
 Edwin Drood and herself, don't you see? She 
 don't want us, don't you know ? " 
 
 Jasper touched himself on the breast, and 
 said, somewhat indistinctly : " You mean me." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious touched himself on the breast, 
 and said : " I mean us. Therefore, let them 
 have their little discussions and councils to- 
 gether, when Mr. Edwin Drood comes back 
 here at Christmas ; and then you and I will 
 step in, and put the final touches to the busi- 
 ness." 
 
 " So you settled with her that you would 
 come back at Christmas?' observed Jasper. " I 
 see ! Mr. Grewgious, as you quite fairly said 
 just now, there is such an exceptional attach- 
 ment between my nephew and me, that I am 
 more sensitive for the dear, fortunate, happy, 
 happy fellow than for myself. But it is only 
 right that the young lady should be considered 
 as you have pointed out, and that I should 
 accept my cue from you. I accept it. I 
 understand that at Christmas they will com- 
 plete their preparations for May, and that their 
 marringe will be put in final train by themselves, 
 and that nothing will remain for us but to put 
 ourselves in train also, and have everydiing 
 ready for our formal release from our trusts on 
 Edwin's birthday." 
 
 "That is my understanding," assented Mr. 
 Grewgious as they shook hands to part. " God 
 bless them both ! " 
 
 " God save them both ! " cried Jasper. 
 
 " I said, bless them," remarked the former, 
 looking back over his shoulder. 
 
 " I said, save them," returned the latter. "Is 
 there any difference ? "' 
 
42 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SMOOTHING THE WW. 
 
 • T has been often enough remarked 
 that women have a curious power 
 of divining the characters of men 
 which would seem to be innate and 
 instinctive ; seeing that it is arrived 
 at through no patient process of 
 reasoning, that it can give no satisfac- 
 tory or sufficient account of itself, and 
 that it pronounces in the most confident manner 
 even against accumulated observation on the 
 part of the other sex. But it has not been 
 quite so often remarked that this power (fal- 
 lible, like every other human attribute), is, for 
 the most part, absolutely incapable of self- 
 revision ; and that when it has delivered an 
 adverse opinion which by all human lights is 
 subsequently proved to have failed, it is undis- 
 tinguishable from prejudice, in respect of its 
 determination not to be corrected. Nay, the 
 very possibility of contradiction or disproof, 
 however remote, communicates to this feminine 
 judgment from the first, in nine cases out of 
 ten, the weakness attendant on the testimony 
 of an interested witness ; so personally and 
 strongly does the fair diviner connect herself 
 with her divination. 
 
 " Now, don't you think, ma dear," said the 
 Minor Canon to his mother one day as she sat 
 at her knitting in his little book-room, " that 
 you are rather hard on Mr. Neville ? " 
 
 " No, I do not, Sept," returned the old lady. 
 
 " Let us discuss it, ma." 
 
 " I have no objection to discuss it, Sept. I 
 trust, my dear, I am always open to discussion." 
 There was a vibration in the old lady's cap, as 
 though she internally added : " And I should 
 like to see the discussion that would change 
 my mind ! " ' 
 
 " Very good, ma," said her conciliatory son. 
 " There is nothing like being open to discus- 
 sion." 
 
 " I hope not, my dear," returned the old lady, 
 evidently shut to it. 
 
 " Well ! ]\Ir. Neville, on that unfortunate 
 occasion, commits himself under provocation." 
 
 " And under mulled wine," added the old 
 lady. 
 
 " I must admit the wine. Though I believe 
 the two young men were much alike in that 
 regard." 
 
 " I don't," said the old lady. 
 
 '' Why not, ma ? " 
 
 " Because I don't" said the old lady. " Still, 
 I am quite open to discussion. 
 
 " But, my dear ma, I cannot see how we are 
 to discuss, if you take that line." 
 
 " Blame Mr. Neville for it. Sept, and not me," 
 said the old lady with stately severity. 
 
 " My dear ma ! why Mr. Neville?" 
 
 " Because," said Mrs. Crisparkle, retiring on 
 first principles, " he came home intoxicated, and 
 did great discredit to this house, and showed 
 great disrespect to this family." 
 
 " That is not to be denied, ma. He was 
 then, and he is now, very sorry for it." 
 
 " But for Mr. Jasper's well-bred consideration 
 in coming up to me next day, after service, 
 in the Nave itself, with his gown still on, 
 and expressing his hope that I had not been 
 greatly alarmed or had my rest violently broken, 
 I believe I might never have heard of that dis- 
 graceful transaction," said the old lady. 
 
 " To be candid, ma, I think I should have 
 kept it from you if I could : though I had not 
 decidedly made up my mind. I was following 
 Jasper out, to confer with him on the subject, 
 and to consider the expediency of his and my 
 jointly hushing the thing up on all accounts, 
 when I found him speaking to you. Then it 
 was too late." 
 
 " Too late, indeed, Sept. He was still as 
 pale as gentlemanly ashes at what had taken 
 place in his rooms overnight." 
 
 " If I had kept it from you, ma, you may be 
 sure it would have been for your peace and 
 quiet, and for the good of the young men, and 
 in my best discharge of my duty according to 
 my lights." 
 
 The old lady immediately walked across the 
 room and kissed him : saying, " Of course, my 
 dear Sept, I am sure of that." 
 
 " However, it became the town talk," said 
 Mr. Crisparkle, rubbing his ear, as his mother 
 resumed her seat and her knitting, " and passed 
 out of my power." 
 
 "And I said then. Sept," returned the old 
 lady, " that I thought ill of Mr. Neville. And 
 I say now, that I think ill of Mr. Neville. And 
 I said then, and I say now, that I hope Mr. 
 Neville may come to good, but I don't believe 
 he will." Here the cap vibrated again con- 
 siderably. 
 
 " I am sorry to hear you say so, ma " 
 
 " I am sorry to say so, my dear," interposed 
 the old lady, knitting on firmly, "but I can't 
 help it." 
 
 " — For," pursued the Minor Canon, " it is 
 undeniable that Mr. Neville is exceedingly in- 
 dustrious and attentive, and that he improves 
 
A WONDERFUL CLOSET. 
 
 43 
 
 apace, and that he has — I hope I may say — an 
 
 attachment to ine." 
 
 " There is no merit in the last article, my 
 dear," said the old lady quickly : " and if he 
 says there is, I think the worse of him for the 
 boast." 
 
 " But, my dear ma, he never said there was." 
 
 " Perhaps not," returned the old lady : " still, 
 i don't see that it greatly signifies." 
 
 There was no impatience in the pleasant look 
 with which Mr. Crisparkle contemplated the 
 pretty old piece of china as it knitted ; but 
 there was, certainly, a humorous sense of its 
 not being a piece of china to argue with very 
 closely. 
 
 " Besides, Sept, ask yourself what he would 
 be without his sister. You know what an influ- 
 ence she has over him ; you know what a 
 capacity she has ; you know that, whatever he 
 reads with you, he reads with her. Give her 
 her fair share of your praise, and how much do 
 you leave for him ?" 
 
 At these words Mr. Crisparkle fell into a little 
 reverie, in which he thought of several things. 
 He thought of the times he had seen the brother 
 and sister together in deep converse over one 
 of his own old college books ; now, in the rimy 
 mornings, when he made those sharpening pil- 
 grimages to Cloisterham Weir ; now, in the 
 sombre evenings, when he faced the wind at 
 sunset, having climbed his favourite outlook, a 
 beetling fragment of monastery ruin ; and the 
 two studious tigures passed below him along the 
 margin of the river, in which the town fires and 
 lights already shone, making the landscape 
 bleaker. He thought how the consciousness 
 had stolen upon him that, in teaching one, he 
 was teaching two ; and how he had almost 
 insensibly adapted his explanations to both 
 minds — that with which his own was daily in 
 contact, and that which he only approached 
 through it. He thought of the gossip that had 
 reached him from the Nuns' House, to the effect 
 that Helena, whom he had mistrusted as so 
 proud and fierce, submitted herself to the fairy- 
 bride (as he called her), and learnt from her 
 what she knew. He thought of the picturesque 
 alliance between those two, externally so very 
 different. He thought — perhaps most of all — 
 could it be that these things were yet but so 
 many weeks old, and had become an integral 
 part of his life ? 
 
 As, whenever the Reverend Septimus fell a 
 musing, his good mother took it to be an in- 
 fallible sign that he "wanted support," the 
 blooming old lady made all haste to the dining- 
 room closet, to produce from it the support 
 
 embodied in a glass of constantia and a home- 
 made biscuit. It was a most wonderful closet, 
 worthy of Cloisterham and of Minor Canon 
 Corner. Above it, a jwrlrait of Handel in a 
 flowing wig beamed down at the spectator, with 
 a knowing air of being up to the contents of the 
 closet, and a musical air of intending to com- 
 bine all its harmonics in one delicious fugue. 
 No common closet with a vulgar door on hinges, 
 openable all at once, and leaving nothing to be 
 disclosed by degrees, this rare closet had a lock 
 in mid-air, where two perpendicular slides met : 
 the one falling down, and the other pushing up. 
 The upper slide, on being pulled down (leaving 
 the lower a double mystery), revealed deep 
 shelves of pickle-jars, jam-pots, tin canisters, 
 spice boxes, and agreeably outlandish vessels of 
 blue and white, the luscious lodgings of pre- 
 served tamarinds and ginger. Every benevolent 
 inhabitant of this retreat had his name inscribed 
 upon his stomach. The pickles, in a uniform 
 of rich brown double-breasted buttoned coat, 
 and yellow or sombre drab continuations, an- 
 nounced their portly forms, in printed capitals, as 
 Walnut, Gherkin, Onion, Cabbage, Cauliflower, 
 Mixed, and other members of that noble family. 
 The jams, as being of a less masculine tempera- 
 ment, and as wearing curl-papers, announceil 
 themselves in feminine caligraphy, like a soft whis- 
 per, to be Raspberry, Gooseberry, Apricot, Plum, 
 Damson, Apple, and Peach. The scene closing 
 on these charmers, and the lower slide ascend- 
 ing, oranges were revealed, attended by a mighty 
 japanned sugar box, to temper their acerbity if 
 unripe. Home-made biscuits waited at the Court 
 of these Powers, accompanied by a goodly frag- 
 ment of plum-cake, and various slender ladies' 
 fingers, to be dipped into sweet wine and kissed. 
 Lowest of all, a compact leaden vault enshrined 
 the sweet wine and a stock of cordials : whence 
 issued whispers of Seville Orange, Lemon, Al- 
 mond, and Caraway-seed. There was a crown- 
 ing air upon this closet of closets, of having 
 been for ages hummed through by the cathedral 
 bell and organ, until those venerable bees had 
 made sublimated honey of everything in store ; 
 and it was always observed that every dipper 
 among the shelves (deep, as has been noticed, 
 and swallowing up head, shoulders, and elbows) 
 came forth again mellow-faced, and seeming to 
 have undergone a saccharine transfiguration. 
 
 The Reverend Septimus yielded himself up 
 quite as willing a victim to a nauseous medicinal 
 herb-closet, also presided over by the china 
 shepherdess, as to this glorious cupboard. To 
 what amazing infusions of gentian, peppermint, 
 gilliflower, sage, parsley, thyme, rue, rosemary. 
 
44 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 and dandelion, did his courageous stomach sub- 
 mit itself ! In what wonderful wrappers, enclos- 
 ing layers of dried leaves, would he swathe his 
 rosy and contented face, if his mother suspected 
 him of a toothache ! What botanical blotches 
 would he cheerfully stick upon his cheek or fore- 
 head, if the dear old lady convicteil him of an im- 
 perceptible pimple there ! Into this herbaceous 
 penitentiary, situated on an upper staircase- 
 landing : a low and narrow whitewashed cell, 
 where bunches of dried leaves hung from rusty 
 hooks in the ceiling, and were spread out upon 
 shelves, in company with portentous bottles : 
 would the Reverend Septimus submissively be 
 led, like the iiighly popular lamb who has so long 
 and unresistingly been led to the slaughter, and 
 there would he, unlike that lamb, bore nobody 
 but himself. Not even doing that much, so that 
 the old lady were busy and pleased, he would 
 quietly swallow what was given him, merely 
 taking a corrective dip of hands and face into 
 the great bowl of dried rose-leaves, and into the 
 other great bowl of dried lavender, and then 
 would go out as confident in the sweetening 
 powers of Cloisterham Weir and a wholesome 
 mind, as Lady Macbeth was hopeless of those 
 of all the seas that roll. 
 
 In the present instance the good Minor Canon 
 took his glass of constantia with an excellent 
 grace, and, so supported to his mother's satis- 
 faction, applied himself to the remaining duties 
 of the day. In their orderly and punctual ])ro- 
 gress they brought round Vesper Service and 
 twilight. The cathedral being very cold, he set 
 off for a brisk trot after service ; the trot to end 
 in a charge at his favourite fragment of ruin, 
 which was to be carried by storm, without a 
 pause for breath. 
 
 He carried it in a masterly manner, and, not 
 breathed even then, stood looking down upon 
 the river. The river at Cloisterham is suffi- 
 ciently near the sea to throw up oftentimes a 
 quantity of seaweed. An unusual quantity had 
 come in with the last tide, and this, and the 
 confusion of the water, and the restless dipping 
 and flapping of the noisy gulls, and an angry 
 light out seaward beyond the brown-sailed barges 
 that were turning black, foreshadowed a stormy 
 night. In his mind he was contrasting the wild 
 and noisy sea with the quiet harbour of Minor 
 Canon Corner, when Helena and Neville Land- 
 less passed below him. He had had the two 
 together in his thoughts all day, and at once 
 climbed down to speak to them together. The 
 footing was rough in an uncertain light for any 
 tread save that of a good climber ; but the Minor 
 Canon was as good a climber as most men, and 
 
 stood beside them before many good climbers 
 would have been half-way down. 
 
 " A wild evening, Miss Landless ! Do you 
 not find your usual walk with your brother too 
 exposed and cold for the time of year ? Or, at 
 all events, when the sun is down, and the 
 weather is driving in from the sea?" 
 
 Helena thought not. It was their favourite 
 walk. It was very retired. 
 
 " It is very retired," assented Mr. Crisparkle, 
 jaying hold of his opportunity straightway, and 
 walking on with them. "It is a place of all 
 others where one can speak without interruption, 
 as I wish to do. Mr. Neville, I believe you 
 tell your sister everything that passes between 
 us?" 
 
 " Everything, sir." 
 
 " Consequently," said Mr. Crisparkle, " your 
 sister is aware that I have repeatedly urged you 
 to make some kind of apology for that unfor- 
 tunate occurrence which befell on the night of 
 your arrival here." 
 
 In saying it he looked to her, and not to 
 him : therefore it was she, and not he, who 
 replied : 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I call it unfortunate, Miss Helena," resumed 
 Mr. Crisparkle, "forasmuch as it certainly has 
 engendered a prejudice against Neville. There 
 is a notion about that he is a dangerously pas- 
 sionate fellow, of an uncontrollable and furious 
 temper : he is really avoided as such." 
 
 " I have no doubt he is, poor fellow," said 
 Helena with a look of proud compassion at her 
 brother, expressing a deep sense of his being 
 ungenerously treated. " I should be quite sure 
 of it, from your saying so ; but what you tell me 
 is confirmed by suppressed hints and references 
 that I meet with every day." 
 
 " Now," Mr. Crisparkle again resumed in a 
 tone of mild though firm persuasion, " is not 
 this to be regretted, and ought it not to be 
 amended ? These are early days of Neville's 
 in Cloisterham, and I have no fear of his out- 
 living such a prejudice, and proving himself to 
 have been misunderstood. But how much wiser 
 to take action at once than to trust to uncertain 
 time ! Besides, apart from its being politic, it 
 is right. For there can be no question that 
 Neville was wrong." 
 . " He was provoked," Helena submitted. 
 
 " He was the assailant," Mr. Crisparkle sub- 
 mitted. 
 
 They w^alked on in silence, until Helena raised 
 her eyes to the Minor Canon's face, and said, 
 almost reproachfully : " Oh, Mr. Crisparkle, 
 would you have Neville throw himself at young 
 
A COi\F£SSJON AND A RELAPSE. 
 
 45 
 
 Diood's feet, or at Mr. Jasper's, who maligns 
 him every day? In your heart you cannot 
 mean it. From your heart you could not do it, 
 if his case were yours." 
 
 '' I have rei)resented to Mr. Crisparkle, 
 Helena,"' said Neville with a glance of deference 
 towards his tutor, " that if 1 could do it from 
 my heart, I would. But I cannot, and I revolt 
 from the pretence. You forget, however, that 
 to put the case to Mr. Crisparkle as his own, is 
 to suppose Mr. Crisparkle to have done what I 
 did." 
 
 " I ask his pardon," said Helena. 
 
 " You see," remarked Mr. Crisparkle, again 
 laying hold of his opportunity, though with a 
 moderate and delicate touch, "you both in- 
 stinctively acknowledge that Neville did wrong. 
 Then why stop short, and not otherwise acknow- 
 ledge it ? ■' 
 
 " Is there no difference," asked Helena with 
 a little faltering in her manner, " between sub- 
 mission to a generous spirit and submission to a 
 base or trivial one ? " 
 
 Before the worthy Minor Canon was quite 
 ready with his argument in reference to this 
 nice distinction, Neville struck in : 
 
 " Help me to clear myself with Mr. Crisparkle, 
 Helena. Help me to convince him that I can- 
 not be the first to make concessions without 
 mockery and falsehood. My nature must be 
 changed before I can do so, and it is not 
 changed. I am sensible of inexpressible affront, 
 and deliberate aggravation of inexpressible 
 aftront, and I am angry. The plain truth is, 
 I am still as angry when I recall that night as I 
 was that night." 
 
 " Neville," hinted the Minor Canon with a 
 steady countenance, " you have repeated that 
 former action of your hands, which I so much 
 dislike." 
 
 " I am sorry for it, sir, but it was involun- 
 tary. I confessed that I was still as angry." 
 
 " And I confess," said ^Ir. Crisparkle, " that 
 I hoped for better things." 
 
 "I am sorry to disappoint you, sir, buc it 
 would be far worse to deceive you, and I should 
 deceive you grossly if I pretended that you had 
 softened me in this respect. The time may 
 come when your powerful influence will do even 
 that with the difficult pupil whose antecedents 
 you know ; but it has not come yet. Is this 
 so, and in spite of my struggles against myself, 
 Helena ? " 
 
 She, whose dark eyes were watching the effect 
 of what he said on Mr. Crisparkle's face, replied 
 — to Mr. Crisparkle, not to him : " It is so." 
 After a short pause, she answered the slightest 
 
 look of inquiry conceivable, in her brother's 
 eyes, with as slight an affirmative bend of her 
 own head ; and he went on : 
 
 " I have never yet had the courage to say to 
 you, sir, what in full openness I ought to have 
 said when you first talked with me on this sub- 
 ject. It is not easy to say, and I have been 
 withheld by a fear of its seeming ridiculous, 
 which is very strong upon me down to this last 
 moment, and might, but for my sister, prevent 
 my being quite open with you even now. — 1 
 admire Miss Bud, sir, so very much, that I can- 
 not bear her being treated with conceit or in- 
 difterence ; and even if I did not feel that I liad 
 an injury against young Drood on my own 
 account, I should feel that I had an injury 
 cigainst him on hers." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle, in utter amazement, looked 
 at Helena for corroboration, and met in her 
 expressive face full corroboration and a pie for 
 advice. 
 
 " The young lady of whom you sjjeak is, as 
 you know, Mr. Neville, shortly to be married," 
 said Mr. Crisparkle gravely ; " therefore your 
 admiration, if it be of that special nature wiiich 
 you seem to indicate, is outrageously misplaced. 
 Moreover, it is monstrous that you should take 
 upon yourself to be the young lady's champion 
 against her chosen husband. Besides, you have 
 seen them only once. The young lady has be- 
 come your sister's friend ; and I wonder that 
 your sister, even on her behalf, has not checked 
 you in this irrational and culpable fancy." 
 
 " She has tried, sir, but uselessly. Husband 
 or no husband, that fellow is incapable of the . 
 feeling with which I am inspired towards the 
 beautiful young creature whom he treats like a 
 doll. I say he is as incapable of it as he is un- 
 worthy of her. I say she is sacrificed in being 
 bestowed upon him. I say that I love her, and 
 despise and hate him ! " This with a face so 
 flushed, and a gesture so violent, that his sister 
 crossed to his sxle, and caught his arm, re- 
 monstrating, " Neville, Neville ! " 
 
 Thus recalled to himself, he quickly became 
 sensible of having lost the guard he had set upon 
 his passionate tendency, and covered his lace 
 with his hand, as one repentant and wretched. 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle, watching him attentively, and 
 at the same time meditating how to proceed, 
 walked on for some paces in silence. Then he 
 spoke : 
 
 " Mr. Neville, Mr. Neville, I am sorely grieved 
 to see in you more traces of a character as 
 sullen, angry, and wild as the night now closing 
 in. They are of too serious an aspect to leave 
 me the resource of treating the infatuation you 
 
46 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 have disclosed as undeserving serious considera- 
 tion. I give it very serious consideration, and 
 I speak to you accordingly. This feud between 
 you and young Drood must not go on. I cannot 
 ])erniit it to go on any longer, knowing what I 
 now know from you, and you living under my 
 roof. Whatever prejudiced and unauthorised 
 constructions your blind and envious wrath may 
 jiut upon his character, it is a frank, good- 
 natured character. I know I can trust to it for 
 that. Now, pray observe what I am about to 
 say. On reflection, and on your sister's repre- 
 sentation, I am willing to admit that, in making 
 {)eace with young Drood, you have a right to be 
 met half-way. I will engage that you shall be, 
 and even that young Drood shall make the first 
 advance. This condition fulfilled, you will pledge 
 me the honour of a Christian gentleman that 
 the quarrel is for ever at an end on your side. 
 What may be in your heart when you give him 
 your hand can only be known to the Searcher 
 of all hearts ; but it will never go well with you 
 if there be any treachery there. So far, as to 
 that ; next as to what I must again speak of as 
 your infatuation. I understand it to have been 
 confided to me, and to be known to no other 
 l^erson save your sister and yourself. Do I 
 understand aright ? " 
 
 Helena answered in a low voice : " It is only 
 known to us three who are here together." 
 
 '•It is not at all known to the young lady, 
 your friend ? " 
 
 " On my soul, no ! " 
 
 " I require you, then, to give me your similar 
 and solemn pledge, Mr. Neville, that it shall 
 remain the secret it is, and that you will take 
 no other action whatsoever upon it than endea- 
 vouring (and that mcst earnestly) to erase it j 
 from your mind. I will not tell you that it will 
 soon pass ; I will not tell you that it is the fancy ' 
 of the moment ; I will not tell you that such 
 caprices have their rise and fall among the ' 
 )oung and ardent every hour ; I will leave you ■ 
 undisturbed in the belief that it has few parallels ; 
 or none, that it will abide with you a long time, 
 and that it will be very difficult to conquer. So 
 much the more weight shall I attach to the j 
 pledge I require from you, when it is unre- ' 
 served ly given." 
 
 The young man twice or thrice essayed to 
 speak, but fliiled. 
 
 '■ Let me leave }'Ou with your sister, whom it 
 is time you took home," said Wx. Crisparkle. j 
 " Vou wdl find me alone in my room by-and-by." 
 
 " Pray do not leave us yet," Helena implored 
 him. " Another minute." 
 , '• I should not,'' said Neville, pressing his 
 
 hand upon his face, " have needed so much as 
 another minute, if you had been less patient 
 with me, Mr. Crisparkle, less considerate of me, 
 and less unpretendingly good and true. Oh, if 
 in my childhood I had known such a guide ! " 
 
 " Follow your guide now, Neville," murmured 
 Helena, " and follow him to Heaven ! " 
 
 There was that in her tone which broke the 
 good Minor Canon's voice, or it would have 
 repudiated her exaltation of him. As it was, he 
 laid a finger on his lips, and looked towards her 
 brother. 
 
 " To say that I give both pledges, Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle, out of my innermost heart, and to say 
 that there is no treachery in it, is to say no- 
 thing ! " Thus Neville, greatly moved. " I beg 
 your forgiveness for my miserable lapse into a 
 burst of passion." 
 
 " Not mine, Neville, not mine. You know 
 with whom forgiveness lies, as the highest attri- 
 bute conceivable. Miss Helena, you and your 
 brother are twin children. You cam.e into this 
 world with the same dispositions, and you passed 
 your younger days together, surrounded by the 
 same adverse circumstances. What you have 
 overcome in yourself can you not overcome in 
 him ? You see the rock that lies in his course. 
 Who but you can keep him clear of it ? " 
 
 " Who but you, sir ? " replied Helena. " What 
 is my influence, or my weak wisdom, compared 
 with yours ? '' 
 
 " You have the wisdom of Love,'' returned 
 the Minor Canon, " and it was the highest wis- 
 dom ever known upon this earth, remember. 
 As to mine But the less said of that com- 
 monplace commodity the better. Good night !" 
 
 She took the hand he oftered her, and grate- 
 fully and almost reverently raised it to her lips. 
 
 " Tut ! " said the Minor Canon softly, " I am 
 much overpaid ! " and turned away. 
 
 Retracing his steps towards the Cathedral 
 Close, he tried, as he went along in the dark, to 
 think out the best means of bringing to pass 
 what he had promised to eftect, and what must 
 somehow be done. " I shall probably be asked 
 to marr}- them," he reflected, " and I would they 
 were married and gone 1 But this presses first." 
 He debated principally whether he should write 
 to young Drood, or whether he should speak to 
 Jasper. The consciousness of being popular 
 with the whole cathedral establishment inclined 
 him to the latter course, and the well-timed sight 
 of the lighted gatehouse decided him to take it. 
 " I will strike while the iron is hot," he said, 
 " and see him now." 
 
 Jasper was lying asleep on a couch before the 
 fire, when, having ascended the postern-stair, 
 
MR. JASPER 'S DIAR V. 
 
 47 
 
 and received no answer to his knock at the 
 door, Mr. Crisparkle gently turned the handle 
 and looked in. Long afterwards he had cause 
 to remember how Jasper sprang from the couch 
 in a delirious state between sleeping and waking, 
 and crying out : " What is the matter ? Who 
 did it?" 
 
 " It is only I, Jasper. I atn sorry to have 
 disturbed you." 
 
 The glare of his eyes settled down into a look 
 of recognition, and he moved a chair or two, to 
 make a way to the fueside. 
 
 " I was dreaming at a great rate, and am 
 glad to be disturbed from an indigestive after- 
 dinner sleep. Not to mention that you are 
 always welcome." 
 
 " Thank you. I am not confident,'' returned 
 Mr. Crisparkle as he sat himself down in the 
 easy-chair placed for him, " that my subject will 
 at first sight be quite as welcome as myself; but 
 I am a minister of peace, and I pursue my sub- 
 ject in the interests of peace. In a word, Jasper, 
 I want to establish peace between these two 
 young fellows." 
 
 A very perplexed expression took hold of 
 Mr. Jasper's face ; a very perplexing expression 
 too, ibr Mr. Crisparkle could make nothing of it. 
 
 "How?" was Jasper's inquiry, in a low and 
 slow voice, after a silence, 
 
 " For the ' How' I come to you. I want to 
 ask you to do me the great favour and service 
 of interposing with your nephew (I have already 
 interposed with Mr. Neville), and getting him to 
 write you a short note, in his lively way, saying 
 that he is willing to shake hands. I know what 
 a good-natured fellow he is, and what influence 
 you have with him. And, without in the least 
 defending Mr. Neville, we must all admit that 
 he was bitterly stung." 
 
 Jasper turned that perplexed face towards the 
 fire. Mr. Crisparkle, continuing to observe it, 
 found it even more perplexing than before, inas- 
 much as it seemed to denote (which could hardly 
 be) some close internal calculation. 
 
 " I know that you are not prepossessed in 
 Mr. Neville's favour," the Minor Canon was 
 going on, when Jasper stopped him. 
 
 " You have cause to say so, I am not, 
 indeed." 
 
 "Undoubtedly; and I admit his lamentable 
 violence of temper, though I hope he and I will 
 get the better of it between us. But I have 
 exacted a very solemn promise from him as to 
 his future demeanour towards your nephew, if 
 you do kindly interpose ; and I am sure he will 
 keep it." 
 
 " You are always responsible and trustworthy, 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle. Do you really feel sure that 
 you can answer for him so confidently ?" 
 
 '•' I do." 
 
 The perplexed and perplexing look vanished. 
 
 " Then you relieve my mind of a great dread 
 and a heavy weight," said Jasper. " I will do it." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle, delighted by the swiftness and 
 completeness of his success, acknowledged it in 
 the handsomest terms. 
 
 " I will do it," repeated Jasper, "for the com- 
 fort of having your guarantee against my vague 
 and unfounded fears. You will laugh — but do 
 you keep a Diary ? " 
 
 " A line for a day ; not more." 
 
 " A line for a day would be quite as m.uch as 
 my uneventful life would need. Heaven knows," 
 said Jasper, taking a book from a desk, " but 
 that my Diary is, in fact, a Diary of Ned's life 
 too. You will laugh at this entry; you will 
 guess when it was made : 
 
 " * Past midnight. — After what I liave just now seen, 
 I have a morbid dread upon me of some horrible conse- 
 quences resulting to my dear boy, that I cannot reason 
 with or in any way contend against. All my efforts are 
 vain. The demoniacal passion of this Neville Landless, 
 his strength in his fury, and his savage rage for the 
 destruction of its object, appal me. So profound is the 
 impression, that twice since I have gone into my dear boy's 
 room, to assure myself of his sleeping safely, and not 
 lying dead in his blood.' 
 
 Here is another entry next morning : 
 
 " ' Ned up and away. Light-hearted and unsuspicious 
 as ever. He laughed when I cautioned him, and said he 
 was as good a man as Neville Landless any day. I told 
 him that might be, but he was not as bad a man. He 
 continued to make light of it, but I travelled with him as 
 far as I could, and left him most unwillingly. I am 
 unable to shake off these dark intangible presentiments 
 of evil — if feelings founded upon staring facts are to be 
 so called.' 
 
 Again and again," said Jasper, in conclusion, 
 twirling the leaves of the book before putting it 
 by, " I have relapsed into these moods, as other 
 entries show. But I have now your assurance 
 at my back, and shall put it in my book, and 
 make it an antidote to my black humours." 
 
 " Such an antidote, I hope," returned Mr. 
 Crisparkle, " as will induce you before long to 
 consign the black humours to the flames. I 
 ought to be the last to find any fault with you 
 this evening, when you have met my wishes so 
 freely ; but I must say, Jasper, that your devotion 
 to your nephew has made you exaggerative here." 
 
 " You are my witness," said Jasper, shrugging 
 his shoulders, "what my state of mind honestly 
 was that night, before I sat down to write, and 
 in what words I exi)ressed it. You remember 
 objecting to a word I used, as being too strong? 
 It was a stronger word than any in my Diary." 
 
48 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 " Well, well ! Try the antidote," rejoined 
 Mr. Crisparkle ; " and may it give you a brighter 
 and better view of the case ! We will discuss it 
 no more now. I have to thank you for myself, 
 and I thank you sincerely."' ' 
 
 " You shall find," said Jasper as they shook 
 hands, " that I will not do the thing you wish 
 me to do by halves. I will take care that Ned, 
 giving way at all, shall give way thoroughly." 
 
 On the third day after this conversation, he 
 called on Mr. Crisparkle with the following letter : 
 
 " My de.ar Jack, 
 
 " I am touched by your account of 
 your interview with Mr. Crisparkle, whom I 
 much respect and esteem. At once I openly 
 say that 1 forgot myself on that occasion quite 
 as much as Mr. Landless did, and that I wish 
 that bygone to be a bygone, and all to be right 
 again. 
 
 " Look here, dear old boy. Ask Mr. Land- 
 less to dinner on Christmas-eve (the better the 
 day the better the deed), and let there be only 
 
 MR. CRISPARKLE IS OVliRPAID. 
 
 we three, and let us shake hands all round there 
 and then, and say no more about it. 
 " My dear Jack, 
 
 " Ever your most affectionate 
 
 " Edwin Drood, 
 
 " P.S. — Love to Miss Pussy at the next music 
 lesson." 
 
 "You expect Mr. Neville, then ? " said Mr. 
 Crisparkle. 
 
 " 1 count upon his coming," said Mr. Jas- 
 per. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 A PICTURE AND A RING. 
 
 EHIND the most ancient part of 
 Holborn, London, where certain 
 gabled houses some centuries of age 
 still stand looking on the public way, 
 as if disconsolately looking for the 
 Old Bourne that has long run dry, is 
 a little nook composed of two irregular 
 quadrangles, calletl Sta])le Inn. It is 
 one of those nooks, the turning into which, out 
 
MR. GREWGIOUS AT HOME. 
 
 49 
 
 of the clashing street, imparts to the reheved 
 l)edcstrian the sensation of having put cotton in 
 his ears, and velvet soles on his boots. It is 
 one of those nooks where a few smoky sparrows 
 tuitter in snioky trees, as though they called to 
 one another, " Let us play at country," and 
 where a few feet of garden mould and a few 
 yards of gravel enable them to do that refresh- 
 ing violence to their tiny understandings. More- 
 over, it is one of those nooks which are legal 
 nooks ; and it contains a little Hall, with a little 
 lantern in its roof: to what obstructive purposes 
 devoted, and at whose expense, this history 
 knoweth not. 
 
 In the days when Cloisterham took offence at 
 the existence of a railroad afar off, as menacing 
 that sensitive constitution, the property of us 
 Britons : the odd fortune of which sacred insti- 
 tution it is to be in exactly equal degrees croaked 
 about, trembled for, and boasted of, whatever 
 happens to anything, anywhere in the world : in 
 those days no neighbouring architecture of lofty 
 proportions had arisen to overshadow Staple 
 Inn. The westering sun bestowed bright glances 
 on it, and the south-west wind blew into it un- 
 impeded. 
 
 Neither wind nor sun, however, favoured 
 Staple Inn one December afternoon towards 
 six o'clock, when it was filled with fog, and 
 candles shed murky and blurred rays through 
 the windows of all its then-occupied sets of 
 chambers ; notably from a set of chambers in a 
 corner house in the little inner quadrangle, pre- 
 senting in black and white over its ugly portal 
 the mysterious inscription : 
 
 J T 
 
 1747- 
 
 In which set of chambers, never having troubled 
 his head about the inscription, unless to bethink 
 himself at odd times, on glancing up at it, that 
 haply it might mean Perhaps John Thomas, or 
 Perhaps Joe Tyler, sat Mr. Grewgious, writing 
 by his fire. 
 
 Who could have told, by looking at Mr. 
 Grewgious, whether he had ever known ambi- 
 tion or disappointment ? He had been bred to 
 the Bar, and had laid himself out for chamber 
 practice ; to draw deeds ; " convey the wise it 
 call," as Pistol says. But Conveyancing and he 
 had made such a very indifferent marriage of it 
 that they had separated by consent — if there 
 can be said to be separation where there has 
 never been coming together. 
 
 No. Coy Conveyancing would not come to 
 Edwin Drood, 4. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious. She was wooed, not won, and 
 they went their several ways. But an Arbitra- 
 tion being blown towards him by some unac- 
 countable wind, and he gaining great credit in 
 it as one indefatigable in seeking out right and 
 doing right, a i)retty fat Receivership was next 
 blown into his i)Ocket by a wind more traceable 
 to its source. So, by chance, he had found his 
 niche. Receiver and Agent now to two rich 
 estates, and deputing their legal business, in an 
 amount worth having, to a firm of solicitors on 
 the floor below, he had snuffed out his ambition 
 (supposing him to have ever lighted it), and 
 had settled down with his snuffers for the rest 
 of his life under the dry vine and fig-tree of 
 P. J. T., who planted in seventeen-forty-seven. 
 
 Many accounts and account books, many files 
 of correspondence, and several strong-boxes gar- 
 nished Mr. Grewgious's room. They can scarcely 
 l)e represented as having lumbered it, so con- 
 scientious and precise was their orderly arrange- 
 ment. The apprehension of dying suddenly, and 
 leaving one fact or one figure with any incom- 
 pleteness or obscurity attaching to it, would have 
 stretched Mr. Grewgious stone dead any day. 
 The largest fidelity to a trust was thfe life-blood 
 of the man. There are sorts of life-blood that 
 course more quickly, more gaily, more attrac- 
 tively ; but there is no better sort in circulation. 
 
 There was no luxury in his room. Even its 
 comforts were limited to its being dry and warm, 
 and having a snug though faded fireside. What 
 may be called its private life was confined to the 
 hearth, and an easy-chair, and an old-lasliioned 
 occasional round table that was brought out 
 upon the rug after business hours, from a corner 
 where it elsewise remained turned up like a 
 shining mahogany shield. Behind it, when stand- 
 ing thus on the defensive, was a closet, usually 
 containing something good to drink. An outer 
 room was the clerk's room ; Mr. Grewgious's 
 sleeping-room was across the common stair; 
 and he held some not empty cellarage at the 
 bottom of the common stair. Three hundred 
 days in the year, at least, he crossed over to the 
 hotel in Furnival's Inn for his dinner, and after 
 dinner crossed back again, to make the most of 
 these simplicities until it shc/id become broad 
 business day once more, with P. J. T., date 
 seventeen-forty-seven. 
 
 As Mr. Grewgious sat and wrote by his fire 
 that afternoon, so did the clerk of Mr. Grewgious 
 sit and write by his fire. A pale, pufty-faced, 
 dark-haired person of thirty, with big dark eyes 
 that wholly wanted lustre, and a dissatisfied 
 doughy complexion, that seemed to ask to be 
 sent to the baker's, this attendant was a mys- 
 
50 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 terious being, possessed of some strange power 
 over Mr. Grewgious. As though he had been 
 called into existence, like a fabulous Familiar, 
 by a magic spell which had failed when required 
 to dismiss him, he stuck tight to Mr. Grewgious's 
 stool, although Mr. Grewgious's comfort and con- 
 venience would manifestly have been advanced 
 by dispossessing him. A gloomy person, with 
 tangled locks, and a general air of having been 
 reared under the shadow of that baleful tree of 
 Java which has given shelter to more lies than 
 the whole botanical kingdom, Mr. Grewgious, 
 nevertheless, treated him with unaccountable 
 consideration. 
 
 " Now, Bazzard," said ]\Ir. Grewgious on the 
 entrance of his clerk : looking up from his 
 papers as he arranged them for the night : 
 " what is in the wind besides fog? " 
 
 " Mr. Drood," said Bazzard. 
 
 " What of him ? " 
 
 "Has called," said Bazzard. 
 
 " You might have shown him in." 
 
 " I am doing it," said Bazzard. 
 
 The visitor came in accordingly. 
 
 " Dear me ! " said Mr. Grewgious, looking 
 round his pair of office candles. " I thought 
 you had called and merely left your name and 
 gone. How do you do, Mr. Edwin ? Dear 
 me, you're choking ! " 
 
 "It's this fog," returned Edwin; "and it 
 makes my eyes smart like cayenne pepper." 
 
 " Is it really so bad as that ? Pray undo 
 your wrappers. It's fortunate I have so good 
 a fire ; but Mr. Bazzard has taken care of 
 me." 
 
 " No, I haven't," said Mr. Bazzard at the 
 door. 
 
 "Ah ! then it follows that I must have taken 
 care of myself without observing it," said Mr. 
 Grewgious. " Pray be seated in my chair. No. 
 I beg ! Coming out of such an atmosphere, in 
 my chair." 
 
 Edwin took the easy-chair in the corner ; and 
 the fog he had brought in with him, and the fog 
 he took off with his great-coat and neck-shawl, 
 was speedily licked up by the eager fire. 
 
 " I look," said Edwin, smiling, " as if I had 
 come to stop." 
 
 " By-the-bye," cried Mr. Grewgious; "excuse 
 my interrupting you ; do stop. The fog may 
 clear in an hour or two. We can have dinner 
 in from just across Holborn. You had better 
 take your ca3'enne pepper here than outside ; 
 pray stop and dine." 
 
 " You are very kind," said Edwin, glancing 
 about him as though attracted by the notion of 
 a new and relishing sort of gipsy party. 
 
 " Not at all," said Mr. Grewgious ; "yon are 
 very kind to join issue with a bachelor in cham- 
 bers, and take pot-luck. And I'll ask," said 
 Mr. Grewgious, dropping his voice, and s])eak- 
 ing with a twinkling eye, as if inspired with a 
 bright thought : " I'll ask Bazzard. He mightn't 
 like it else. Bazzard ! " 
 
 Bazzard reappeared. 
 
 " Dine presently with Mr. Drood and me." 
 
 " If I am ordered to dine, of course I will, 
 sir," was the gloomy answer. 
 
 " Save the man ! " cried Mr. Grewgious. 
 " You're not ordered ; you're invited." 
 
 " Thank you, sir," said Bazzard ; " in that 
 case I don't care if I do." 
 
 "That's arranged. And perhaps you wouldn't 
 mind," said Mr. Grewgious, "stepping over to 
 the hotel in Furnival's, and asking them to send 
 in materials for laying the cloth. For dinner 
 we'll have a tureen of the hottest and strongest 
 soup available, and we'll have the best made- 
 dish that can be recommended, and we'll have 
 a joint (such as a haunch of mutton), and we'll 
 have a goose, or a turkey, or any little stuffed 
 thing of that sort that may happen to be in the 
 bill of fare — in short, we'll have whatever there 
 is on hand." 
 
 These liberal directions Mr. Grewgious issued 
 with his usual air of reading an inventory, or 
 repeating a lesson, or doing anything else by 
 rote. Bazzard, after drawing out the round 
 table, withdrew to execute them. 
 
 " I was a little delicate, you see," said Mr. 
 Grewgious in a lower tone, after his clerk's de- 
 parture, "about employing him in the foraging 
 or commissariat department. Because he 
 mightn't like it." 
 
 " He seems to have his own way, sir," re- 
 marked Edwin. 
 
 "His own way?" returned Mr. Grewgious. 
 "Oh dear no ! Poor fellow, you quite mistake 
 him. If he had his own way, he wouldn't be 
 here." 
 
 " I wonder where he would be !" Edwin 
 thought. But he only thought it, because Mr. 
 Grewgious came and stood himself with his 
 back to the other corner of the fire, and his 
 shoulder-blades against the chimney-piece, and 
 collected his skirts for easy conversation. 
 
 " I take it, without having the gift of pro- 
 phecy, that you have done me the favour of 
 looking in to mention that you are going down 
 yonder — where, I can tell you, you are expected 
 — and to offer to execute any little commission 
 from me to my charming ward, and perhaps to 
 sharpen me up a bit in any proceedings? Eh, 
 Mr. Edwin?" 
 
DINNER FOR THREE. 
 
 51 
 
 " I called, sir, before going down, as an act 
 
 of attention." 
 
 •' Of attention ! " said Mr. Grewgious. " Ah ! 
 of course, not of impatience ? " 
 
 " Impatience, sir? " 
 
 Mr. Grewgious had meant to be arch — not 
 that he in the remotest degree expressed that 
 meaning — and had brought himself into scarcely 
 supportable proximity with the fire, as if to 
 burn the fullest effect of his archness into him- 
 self, as other subtle impressions are burnt into 
 hard metals. But his archness suddenly flying 
 before the composed face and manner of his 
 visitor, and only the fire remaining, he started 
 and rubbed himself. 
 
 " I have lately been down yonder," said Mr. 
 Grewgious, rearranging his skirts ; '' and that 
 was what I referred to, when I said I could tell 
 you you are expected." 
 
 " Indeed, sir ! Yes ; I knew that Pussy was 
 looking out for me." 
 
 " Do you keep a cat down there ? " asked 
 Mr. Grewgious. 
 
 Edwin coloured a little as he explained : " I 
 call Rosa Pussy." 
 
 " Oh ! really," said Mr. Grewgious, smooth- 
 ing down his head ; " that's very affable." 
 
 Edwin glanced at his face, uncertain whether 
 or no he seriously objected to the appellation. 
 But Edwin might as well have glanced at the 
 face of a clock. 
 
 " A pet name, sir," he explained again. 
 
 " Umps ! " said Mr. Grewgious with a nod. 
 But with such an extraordinary compromise be- 
 tween an unqualified assent and a qualified dis- 
 sent, that liis visitor was much disconcerted. 
 
 " Did PRosa " Edwin began by way of 
 
 recovering himself 
 
 "PRosa?" repeated Mr. Grewgious. 
 
 " I was going to say Pussy, and changed my 
 mind. — Did she tell you anything about the 
 Landlesses ? " 
 
 "No," said Mr. Grewgious. "What is the 
 Landlesses ? An estate ? A villa ? A farm ? " 
 
 " A brother and sister. The sister is at the 
 Nuns' House, and has become a great friend 
 of P " 
 
 " PRosa's," Mr. Grewgious struck in with a 
 fixed face. 
 
 " She is a strikingly handsome girl, sir, and I 
 thought she might have been described to you, 
 or presented to you, perhaps? " 
 
 " Neither," said Mr. Grewgious. "But here 
 is Bazzard." 
 
 Bazzard returned, accompanied by two 
 waiters — an immovable waiter and a flying 
 waiter ; and the three brought in with them 
 
 as much fog as gave a new roar to the fire. The 
 flying waiter, who had brought everylhing on 
 his shoulders, laid the cloth with amazint; 
 rapidity and dexterity ; while the immovabll- 
 waiter, who had brought notliing, found fault 
 with him. The flying waiter then highly 
 polished all the glasses he had brought, anil 
 the immovable waiter looked through them. 
 The flying waiter then flew across Holborn for 
 the soup, and flew back again, and then took 
 another flight for the made-dish, and flew back 
 again, and then took another flight for the joint 
 and poultry, and flew back again, and between- 
 whiles took supplementary flights for a great 
 variety of articles, as it was discovered from time 
 to time that the immovable waiter had forgotten 
 them all. But let the flying waiter cleave the 
 air as he might, he was always reproached on 
 his return by the immovable waiter for bringing 
 fog with him, and being out of breath. At the 
 conclusion of the repast, by which time the 
 flying waiter was severely blown, the immovable 
 waiter gathered up the table-cloth under his arm 
 with a grand air, and, having sternly (not to say 
 with indignation) looked on at the flying waiter 
 while he set the clean glasses round, directed a 
 valedictory glance towards Mr. Grewgious, con- 
 veying : " Let it be clearly understood between 
 us that the reward is mine, and that Nil is the 
 claim of this slave," and pushed the flying 
 waiter before him out of the room. 
 
 It was like a highly-finished miniature paint- 
 ing representing My Lords of the Circumlocu- 
 tion Department, Commandership-in-Chief of 
 any sort, Government. It was quite an edifying 
 little picture to be hung on the line in the 
 National Gallery. 
 
 As the fog had been the proximate cause of 
 this sumptuous repast, so the fog served for its 
 general sauce. To hear the outdoor clerks 
 sneezing, wheezing, and beating their feet on 
 the gravel was a zest far surpassing Doctor 
 Kitchener's. To bid, with a shiver, the unfor- 
 tunate flying waiter shut the door before he had 
 opened it, was a condiment of a profounder 
 flavour than Harvey. And here let it be 
 noticed, parenthetically, that the leg of this 
 young man, in its application to the door, 
 evinced the finest sense of touch : always pre- 
 ceding himself and tray (with something of an 
 angling air about it), by some seconds : and 
 always lingering after he and the tray had dis- 
 appeared, like Macbeth's leg when accompany- 
 ing him off the stage with reluctance to the 
 assassination of Duncan. 
 
 The host had gone below to the cellar, and 
 had brought up bottles of ruby, straw-coloured. 
 
52 
 
 THE MYSTER Y OF ED WIN DROOD. 
 
 and golden drinks, which had ripened long ago 
 in lands where no fogs are, and had since lain 
 slumbering in the shade. Sparkling and tin- 
 gling after so long a nap, they pushed at their 
 corks to help the cork-screw (like prisoners 
 helping rioters to force their gates), and danced 
 out L;aily. If P.J. T. in seventeen-forty-scvcn, 
 or in any other year of his period, drank such 
 wines — then, fjr a certainty, P.J. T. was Pretty 
 Jolly Too. 
 
 Externally, Mr. Grewgious showed no signs 
 of being mellowed by these glowing vintages. 
 Instead of his drinking them, they might have 
 been poured over him in his high-dried snuff 
 form, and run to waste, for any lights and 
 shades they caused to flicker over his face. 
 Neither was his manner influenced. But, in 
 his wooden way, he had observant eyes for 
 Edwin ; and when, at the end of dinner, he 
 motioned Edwin back to his own easy-chair in 
 the fireside corner, and Edwin sank luxuriously 
 into it after very brief remonstrance, Mr. Grew- 
 gious, as he turned his seat round towards the 
 fire too, and smoothed his head and face, might 
 have been seen looking at his visitor between 
 his smoothing fingers. 
 
 " Bazzard ! " said Mr. Grewgious, suddenly 
 turning to him. 
 
 " I follow you, sir," returned Bazzard ; who 
 had done his work of consuming meat and 
 drink in a workmanlike manner, though mostly 
 in speechlessness. 
 
 " I drink to you, Bazzard ; Mr. Edwin, suc- 
 cess to Mr. Bazzard ! " 
 
 " Success to Mr. Bazzard ! " echoed Edwin 
 with a totally unfounded appearance of enthu- 
 siasm, and with the unspoken addition : " What 
 in, I wonder?" 
 
 " And May ! " pursued Mr. Grewgious — " I 
 am not at liberty to be definite — May ! — my 
 conversational powers are so very limited, that 
 I know I shall not come well out of this — May ! 
 — it ought to be put imaginatively, but I have 
 no imagination — May ! — the thorn of anxiety is 
 .as nearly the mark as I am likely to get — May 
 it come out at last ! " 
 
 Mr. Bazzard, with a frowning smile at the 
 fire, put a hand into his tangled locks, as if the 
 thorn of anxiety were there ; then into his 
 waistcoat, as if it were there ; then into his 
 pockets, as if it were there. In all these move- 
 ments he was closely followed by the eyes of 
 Edwin, as if that young gentleman expected to 
 see the thorn in action. It was not produced, 
 however, and Mr. Bazzard merely said : " I 
 follow you, sir, and I thank you." 
 
 " I am going,*' said Mr. Grewgious, jingling 
 
 his glass on the table with one hand, and bend- 
 ing aside under cover of the other, to whisper 
 to Edwin, "to drink to my ward. But I put 
 Bazzard first. He mightn't like it else." 
 
 This was said with a mysterious wink; or 
 what would have been a wink if, in Mr. Grew- 
 gious's hands, it could have been quick enough. 
 So Edwin winked responsively, without the least 
 idea what he meant by doing so. 
 
 " And now," said Mr. Grewgious, " I devote 
 a bumper to the fair and fascinating Miss Rosa. 
 Bazzard, the fair and fascinating Miss Rosa ! " 
 
 " I follow you, sir," said Bazzard, " and I 
 pledge you ! " 
 
 " And so do 1 1 " said Edwin. 
 
 " Lord bless me ! " cried Mr. Grewgious, 
 breaking the blank silence which of course 
 ensued : though why these pauses should come 
 upon us when we have performed any small 
 social rite, not directly inducive of self-examina- 
 tion or mental despondency, who can tell ? "I 
 am a particularly Angular man, and yet I fancy 
 (if I may use the word, not having a morsel of 
 fancy), that I could draw a picture of a true 
 lover's state of mind to-night." 
 
 "Let us follow you, sir," said Bazzard, "and 
 have the picture." 
 
 "Mr. Edwin will correct it where it's wrong," 
 resumed Mr. Grewgious, "and will throw in a 
 few touches from the life. I dare say it is 
 wrong in many particulars, and wants many 
 touches from the life, for I was born a Chip, 
 and have neither soft sympathies nor soft expe- 
 riences. Well ! I hazard the guess that the 
 true lover's mind is completely permeated by 
 the beloved object of his affections. I hazard 
 the guess that her dear name is precious to him, 
 cannot be heard or repeated without emotion, 
 and is preserved sacred. If he has any distin- 
 guishing appellation of fondness for her, it is 
 reserved for her, and is not for common ears. 
 A name that it would be a privilege to call her 
 by, being alone with her own bright self, it 
 would be a liberty, a coldness, an insensibility, 
 almost a breach of good faith, to flaunt else- 
 where." 
 
 It was wonderful to see Mr. Grewgious sitting 
 bolt upriglit, with his hands on his knees, con- 
 tinuously chopping this discourse out of him- 
 self: much as a charity boy with a very good 
 memory might get his catechism said : and 
 evincing no correspondent emotion whatever, 
 unless in a certain occasional little tingling per- 
 ceptible at the end of his nose. 
 
 " My picture," Mr. Grewgious proceeded, 
 " goes on to represent (under correction from 
 you, Mr. Edwin) the true lover as ever im- 
 
MR. GREWGIOUS PAINTS THE PORTRAIT OF A LOVER. 
 
 53 
 
 patient to be in the presence or vicinity of the 
 beloved object of his affections ; as caring very 
 little for his ease in any other society ; and as 
 constantly seeking that. If I was to say seek- 
 ing that as a bird seeks its nest, I should make 
 an ass of myself, because that would trench 
 upon what 1 understand to be poetry ; and I 
 am so far from trenching upon poetry at any 
 time, that I never, to my knowledge, got within 
 ten thousand miles of it. And I am, besides, 
 totally unacquainted with the habits of birds, 
 excei)t the birds of Staple Inn, who seek their 
 nests on ledges, and in gutter-pipes, and chim- 
 ney-pots, not constructed for them by the 
 beneficent hand of Nature. I beg, therefore, 
 to be understood as foregoing the bird's nest. 
 But my picture does represent the true lover as 
 having no existence separable from that of the 
 beloved object of his affections, and as living at 
 once a doubled life and a halved life. And, if 
 I do not clearly express what I mean by that, 
 it is either for the reason that, having no con- 
 versational powers, I cannot express what I 
 mean, or that, having no meaning, I do not 
 mean what I fail to express. Which, to the 
 best of my belief, is not the case." 
 
 Edwin had turned red and turned white as 
 certain points of this picture came into the 
 light. He now sat looking at the fire, and bit 
 his lip. 
 
 •' The speculations of an Angular man," re- 
 sumed Mr. Grewgious, still sitting and speaking 
 exactly as before, " are probably erroneous on 
 so globular a topic. But I figure to myself 
 (subject, as before, to Mr. Edwin's correction), 
 that there can be no coolness, no lassitude, no 
 doubt, no indifference, no half fire and half 
 smoke state of mind, in a real lover. Pray am 
 I at all near the mark in my picture ? " 
 
 As abrupt in his conclusion as in his com- 
 mencement and progress, he jerked this inquiry 
 at Edwin, and stopped when one might have 
 supposed him in the middle of his oration. 
 
 " I should say, sir," stammered Edwin, " as 
 you refer the question to me " 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Grewgious, " I refer it to 
 you, as an authority." 
 
 " — I should say, then, sir," Edwin went on, 
 embarrassed, " that the picture you have drawn 
 is generally correct ; but I submit that perhaps 
 you may be rather hard upon the unlucky 
 lover." 
 
 " Likely so," assented Mr. Grewgious, " likely 
 so. I am a hard man in the grain." 
 
 "He may not show," said Edwin, "all he 
 feels ; or he may not " 
 
 There he stopped so long to find the rest of 
 
 his sentence, that Mr. Grewgious rendered his 
 difficulty a thousand times the greater by unex- 
 pectedly striking in with : 
 
 " No, to be sure ; he may not I " 
 
 After that, they all sat silent ; the silence of 
 Mr. Bazzard being occasioned by slumber. 
 
 " His responsibility is very great, though," 
 said Mr. Grewgious at length, with his eyes on 
 the fire. 
 
 Edwin nodded assent, with his eyes on the 
 fire. 
 
 " And let him be sure that he trifles with no 
 one," said Mr. Grewgious ; " neither with him- 
 self nor with any other." 
 
 Edwin bit his lip again, and still sat looking 
 at the fire. 
 
 " He must not make a plaything of a treasure. 
 Woe betide him if he does ! Let him take that 
 well to heart," said Mr. Grewgious. 
 
 Though he said these things in short sen- 
 tences, much as the supposititious charity boy 
 just now referred to might have repeated a verse 
 or two from the Book of Proverbs, there was 
 something dreamy (for so literal a man) in the 
 way in which he now shook his right forefinger 
 at the live coals in the grate, and again fell 
 silent. 
 
 But not for long. As he sat upright and stiff 
 in his chair, he suddenly rapped his knees, like 
 the carved image of some queer Joss or other 
 coming out of its reverie, and said : " We must 
 finish this bottle, Mr. Edwin. Let me help ycu. 
 I'll help Bazzard too, though he is asleep. He 
 mightn't like it else." 
 
 He helped them both, and helped himself, 
 and drained his glass, and stood it bottom 
 upward on the table, as though he had just 
 caught a blue-bottle in it. 
 
 " And now, Mr. Edwin," he proceeded, wiping 
 his mouth and hands upon his handkerchief: 
 " to a little piece of business. You received 
 from me, the other day, a certified copy of Miss 
 Rosa's father's will. You knew its contents 
 before, but you received it from me as a matter 
 of business. I should have sent it to Mr. 
 Jasper, but for Miss Rosa's wishing it to come 
 straight to you in preference. You received it?" 
 
 " Quite safely, sir." 
 
 " You should have acknowledged its receipt," 
 said Mr. Grewgious ; " business being business 
 all the world over. However, you did not." 
 
 "I meant to have acknowledged it when I 
 first came in this evening, sir." 
 
 " Not a business-like acknowledgment," re- 
 turned Mr. Grewgious : " however, let that 
 pass. Now, in that document, you have ob- 
 served a few words of kindly allusion to its 
 
54 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 being left to me to discharge a little trust, con- 
 fided to me in conversation, at such time as I in 
 my discretion may think best." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Mr. Edwin, it came into my mind just now, 
 when I was looking at the fire, that I could, m 
 my discretion, acquit myself of that trust at no 
 better time than the present. Favour me with 
 your attention half a minute." 
 
 He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, 
 singled out by the candle-light the key he 
 wanted, and then, with a candle in his hand, 
 went to a bureau or escritoir, unlocked it, 
 touched the spring of a little secret drawer, and 
 took from it an ordinary ring-case made for a 
 single ring. With this in his hand, he returned 
 to his chair. As he held it up for the young 
 man to see, his hand trembled. 
 
 " Mr. Edwin, this rose of diamonds and 
 rubies, delicately set in gold, was a ring be- 
 longing to Miss Rosa's mother. It was removed 
 from her dead hand, in my presence, with such 
 distracted grief as I hope it may never be my 
 lot to contemplate again. Hard man as I am, 
 I am not hard enough for that. See how bright 
 these stones shine ! " opening the case. " And 
 yet the eyes that were so much brighter, and 
 that so often looked upon them with a light and 
 a proud heart, have been ashes among ashes, 
 and dust among dust, some years ! If I had 
 any imagination (which it is needless to say I 
 have not), I might imagine that the lasting 
 beauty of these stones was almost cruel." 
 
 He closed the case again as he spoke. 
 
 " This ring was given to the young lady who 
 was drowned so early in her beautiful and happy 
 career, by her husband, when they first plighted 
 their faith to one another. It was he who 
 removed it from her unconscious hand, and it 
 was he who, when his death drew very near, 
 placed it in mine. The trust in which I re- 
 ceived it was, that, you and Miss Rosa growing 
 to manhood and womanhood, and your be- 
 trothal prospering and coming to maturity, I 
 should give it to you to place upon her finger. 
 Failing those desired results, it was to remain in 
 my possession." 
 
 Some trouble was in the young man's face, 
 and some indecision was in the action of his 
 hand, as Mr. Grewgious, looking steadfastly at 
 him, gave him the ring. 
 
 " Your placing it on her finger," said Mr. 
 Grewgious, " will be the solemn seal upon your 
 strict fidelity to the living and the dead. You 
 are going to her, to make the last irrevocable 
 preparations for your marriage. Take it with 
 you." 
 
 The young man took the little case, and 
 placed it in his breast. 
 
 '* If anything should be amiss, if anything 
 should be even slightly wrong, between you ; if 
 you should have any secret consciousness that 
 you are committing yourself to this step for no 
 higher reason than because you have long been 
 accustomed to look forward to it ; then," said 
 Mr. Grewgious, " I charge you once more, by 
 the living and by the dead, to bring that ring 
 back to me ! " 
 
 Here Bazzard awoke himself by his own 
 snoring ; and, as is usual in such cases, sat 
 apoplectically staring at vacancy, as defying 
 vacancy to accuse him of having been asleep. 
 
 " Bazzard ! " said Mr. Grewgious, harder than 
 ever. 
 
 " I follow you, sir," said Bazzard, " and I 
 have been following you." 
 
 " In discharge of a trust, I have handed Mr. 
 Edwin Drood a ring of diamonds and rubies. 
 You see ? " 
 
 Edwin reproduced the little case, and opened 
 it ; and Bazzard looked into it. 
 
 " I follow you both, sir," returned Bazzard, 
 " and I witness the transaction." 
 
 Evidently anxious to get away and be alone, 
 Edwin Drood now resumed his outer clothing, 
 muttering something about time and appoint- 
 ments. The fog was reported no clearer (by 
 the flying waiter, who alighted from a specula- 
 tive flight in the coffee interest), but he went 
 out into it ; and Bazzard, after his manner, 
 " followed " him.. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious, left alone, walked softly 
 and slowly to and fro for an hour and more. 
 He was restless to-night, and seemed dis- 
 pirited. 
 
 " I hope I have done right," he said. " The 
 appeal to him seemed necessary. It was hard 
 to lose the ring, and yet it must have gone from 
 me very soon." 
 
 He closed the empty little drawer with a 
 sigh, and shut and locked the escritoir, and 
 came back to the solitary fireside. 
 
 "Her ring," he went on. "Will it come 
 back to me ? My mind hangs about her ring 
 very uneasily to-night. But that is explainable. 
 I have had it so long, and I have prized it so 
 much ! I wonder " 
 
 He was in a wondering mood as well as a 
 restless ; for, though he cliecked himself at that 
 point, and took another walk, he resumed his 
 wondering when he sat down again. 
 
 " I wonder (for the ten thousandth time, and 
 what a weak fool I, for what can it signify now?) 
 whether he confided the charge of their orphan 
 
MR. SAFSEA TAKES AN AIRING. 
 
 55 
 
 child to me, because he knew- 
 
 Good God, 
 how Uke her mother she has become ! 
 
 " I wonder whether he ever so much as sus- 
 pected that some one doted on her, at a hope- 
 less, speechless distance, when he struck in and 
 won her ! I wonder whether it ever crept into 
 his mind who that unfortunate some one was ! 
 
 •' I wonder whether 1 shall sleep to-night ! 
 At all events, I will shut out the world with the 
 bedclothes, and try." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious crossed the staircase to his 
 raw and foggy bedroom, and was soon ready for 
 bed. Dimly catching sight of his face in the 
 misty looking-glass, he held his candle to it for 
 a moment. 
 
 " A likely some one, you, to come into any- 
 body's thoughts ill such an aspect ! " he ex- 
 claimed. "There! there! there! Get to bed, 
 poor man, and cease to jabber ! " 
 
 With that, he extinguished his light, pulled 
 up the bedclothes around him, and with another 
 sigh shut out the world. And yet there are 
 such unexplored romantic nooks in the unlike- 
 liest men, that even old tinderous and touch- 
 woody P. J. T. Possibly Jabbered Thus, at some 
 odd times, in or about seventeen-forty-seven. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A NIGHT AVITH DURDLES. 
 
 ^?|?■^W^)J^HEN Mr. Sapsea has nothing belter 
 Hm^JlMcHn iQ ^o towards evening, and finds 
 the contemplation of his own pro- 
 fundity becoming a little mono- 
 tonous in spite of the vastness of 
 the subject, he often takes an airing 
 in the Cathedral Close and thereabout. 
 He likes to pass the churchyard with a 
 swelling air of proprietorship, and to encourage 
 in his breast a sort of benignant-landlord feeling, 
 in that he has been bountiful towards that meri- 
 torious tenant, Mrs. Sapsea, and has publicly 
 given her a prize. He likes to see a stray face 
 or two looking in through the railings, and per- 
 haps reading his inscription. Should he meet a 
 stranger coming from the churchyard with a 
 quick step, he is morally convinced that the 
 stranger is " with a blush retiring," as monu- 
 mentally directed. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea's importance has received en- 
 hancement, for he has become Mayor of Clois- 
 terham. Without mayors, and many of them, 
 it cannot be disputed that the whole framework 
 of society — Mr. Sapsea is confident that he in- 
 vented that forcible figure — would fall to pieces. 
 
 Mayors have been knighted for "going up" 
 with addresses : explosive machines intrcjjidly 
 discharging shot and shell into the English 
 Grammar. Mr. Sapsea may " go up " with an 
 addreis. Rise, Sir Thomas Sapsea ! Of such 
 is the salt of the earth. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea has improved the acquaintance 
 of Mr. Jasper since their first meeting to partake 
 of port, epitaph, backgammon, beef, and salad. 
 Mr. Sapsea has been received at the gatehouse 
 with kindred hospitality ; and on that occasion 
 Mr. Jasper seated himself at the piano, and 
 sang to him, tickling his cars — figuratively — 
 long enough to present a considerable area for 
 tickling. What Mr. Sapsea likes in that young 
 man is, that he is always ready to profit by the 
 wisdom of his elders, and that he is sound, sir, 
 at the core. In proof of which, he sang to 
 Mr. Sapsea, that evening, no kickshaw ditties, 
 favourites with national enemies, but gave him 
 the genuine George the Third home-brewed ; 
 exhorting him (as " my brave boys ") to reduce 
 to a smashed condition all other islands but this 
 island, and all continents, peninsulas, isthmuses, 
 jjromontories, and other geographical forms of 
 land soever, besides sweeping the seas in all 
 directions. In short, he rendered it pretty clear 
 that Providence made a distinct mistake in 
 originating so small a nation of hearts of oak, 
 a-nd so many other verminous peoples. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea, walking slowly this moist evening 
 near the churchyard with his hands behind him, 
 on the look-out for a blushing and retiring 
 stranger, turns a corner, and comes instead into 
 the goodly presence of the Dean, conversing 
 with the verger and Mr. Jasper. Mr. Sapsea 
 makes his obeisance, and is instantly stricken 
 far more ecclesiastical than any Archbishop of 
 York or Canterbury. 
 
 " You are evidently going to write a book 
 about us, Mr. Jasper," quoth the Dean ; " to 
 write a book about us. Well ! We are very 
 ancient, and we ought to make a good book. 
 We are not so richly endowed in possessions as 
 in age ; but perhaps you will put i/iai in your 
 book, among other things, and call attention to 
 our wrongs." 
 
 Mr. Tope, as in duty bound, is greatly enter- 
 tained by this. 
 
 " I really have no intention at all, sir," replies 
 Jasper, " of turning author or archaeologist. It 
 is but a whim of mine. And even for my whim 
 Mr. Sapsea here is more accountable than I 
 am." 
 
 " How so, Mr. Mayor ? " says the Dean, with 
 a nod of good-natured recognition of his Fetch. 
 " How is that, Mr. Mayor ? " 
 
56 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 " I am r.ot aware," Mr. Sapsea remarks, look- 
 ing about him lor information, " to what the 
 Very Reverend the Dean does me the honour 
 of referring." And then falls to studying his 
 original in minute i)oints of detail. 
 
 " Durdles, ' Mr. Tope hints. 
 
 "Ay!" the l)ean echoes; "Durdles, Dur- 
 dles ! " 
 
 " The truth is, sir," explains Jasper, " that 
 my curiosity in the man was first really stimu- 
 lated by Mr. Sapsea. Mr. Sapsea's knowledge 
 of mankind, and power of ilrawing out whatever 
 is recluse or odd around him, first led to my 
 bestowing a second thought upon the man : 
 though of course 1 had met liim constantly about. 
 You would not be surprised by this, Mr. Dean, 
 if you had seen Mr. Sapsea deal with him in his 
 own parlour, as I did." 
 
 "Oh!" cries Sapsea, picking up the ball 
 thrown to him with inefiable complacency and 
 pomposity ; '• yes, ) es. The Very Reverend 
 the Dean refers to that? Yes. 1 happened to 
 i)ring Durdles and Mr. Jasper together. I 
 regard Durdles as a Character." 
 
 " A character, Mr. Sapsea, that witli a iew 
 skilful touches you turn inside out," says Jasper. 
 
 " Nay, r.ot quite ihat," returns the lumbering 
 auctioneer. " I may have a little influence 
 over him, perhaps ; and a little insight into his 
 character, perhaps. The Very Reverend the 
 Dean will please to bear in mind that I have 
 seen the world." Here Mr. Sapsea gets a little 
 behind the Dean, to inspect his coat buttons. 
 
 '■ Well !" says the Dean, looking about him 
 to see what has become of his copyist : " I hope, 
 Mr. Mayor, you will use your study and know- 
 ledge of Durdles to the good purpose of exhort- 
 ing him not to break our worthy and respected 
 choir-master's neck ; we cannot afford it ; his 
 head and voice are much too valuable to us." 
 
 Mr. Tope is again highly entertained, and, 
 having fallen into resjiectful convulsions of 
 laughter, subsides into a deferential murmur, 
 imj)orting that surely any gentleman would 
 deem it a pleasure and an honour to have his 
 neck broken, in return for such a compliment 
 from such a source. 
 
 " I will take it upon myself, sir," observes 
 Snpsea loftily, " to answer for Mr. Jasper's neck. 
 I will tell Durdles to be careful of it. He will 
 mind what / say. How is it at present endan- 
 gered?" he inquires, looking about him with 
 magnificent patronage. 
 
 " Only by my making a moonlight expedition 
 with Durdles among the tombs, vaults, towers, 
 and ruins," returns Jasper. " You remember 
 suggesting, when you brought us together, that, 
 
 as a lover of the picturesque, it might be worth 
 my while ?" 
 
 " / remember ! " replies tiie auctioneer. And 
 the solemn idiot really believes that he does 
 remember. 
 
 " Profiling by your hint," pursues Jasper, " I 
 have had some day rambles with the extra- 
 ordinary old fellow, and we are to make a 
 moonlight hole-and-corner exploration to-night." 
 
 " And here he is," says the Dean. 
 
 Durdles, with his dinner-bundle in his hand, 
 is indeed beheld slouching towards them. 
 Slouching nearer, and perceiving tlie Dean, he 
 pulls off his hat, and is slouching away with it 
 under his arm, when Mr. Sapsea stops him. 
 
 " Mind you take care of my friend," is the 
 injunction Mr. Sapsea lays upon him. 
 
 " What friend o' yourn is dead ?" asks Durdles. 
 " No orders has come in for any friend o' 
 yourn." 
 
 " I mean my live friend there." 
 
 "Oh! him?" says Durdles. "He can take 
 care of himself, can Mister Jarsper." 
 
 " But do you take care of him, too," says 
 Sapsea. 
 
 Whom Durdles (there being command in his 
 tone) surlily surveys from head to foot. 
 
 " With submission to his Reverence the Dean, 
 if you'll mind what concerns you, Mr. Sapsea, 
 Durdles he'll mind what concerns him." 
 
 " You're out of temper," says Mr. Sapsea, 
 winking to the company to observe how smoothly 
 he will manage him. " My friend concerns me, 
 and Mr. Jasper is my frienil. And you are m\' 
 friend." 
 
 " Don't you get into a bad habit of boasting," 
 retorts Durdles with a gra\e cautionary nod. 
 " It'll grow upon you." 
 
 " You are out of temper," says Sapsea again ; 
 reddening, but again winking to the company. 
 
 " I own to it," returns Durdles ; " I don't like 
 liberties." 
 
 Mr. Sapsea winks a third wink to the com- 
 pany, as who should say : " I think you will 
 agree with me that I have settled his business;" 
 and stalks out of the controversy. 
 
 Durdles then gives the Dean a good evening, 
 and adding, as he puts his hat on, " You'll find 
 me at home, Mr. Jarsper, as agreed, when you 
 want me; I'm a-going home to clean myself," 
 soon slouches out of sight. This going home 
 to clean himself is one of the man's incompre- 
 hensible compromises with inexorable facts; he, 
 and his hat, and his boots, and his clothes, 
 never showing any trace of cleaning, but being 
 uniformly in one condition of dust and grit. 
 
 The lamp-lighter now dotting the quiet Close 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR AN EXPEDITION. 
 
 57 
 
 with specks of light, and running at a great rate 
 
 up and down his little ladder with that object 
 — his little ladder under the sacred shadow of 
 whose inconvenience generations had grown up, 
 and which all Cloisterham would have stootl 
 aghast at the idea of abolishing — the Dean 
 withdraws to his dinner, Mr. Tope to his tea, 
 and Mr. Jasper to his piano. There, with no 
 light but that of the fire, he sits chanting choir 
 music in a low and beautiful voice for two or 
 three hours ; in short, until it has been for some 
 time dark, and the moon is about to rise. 
 
 Then he closes his piano softly, softly changes 
 his coat for a pea-jacket, with a goodly wicker- 
 cased bottle in its largest pocket, and, putting, 
 on a low-crowned flat-brimmed hat, goes softly 
 out. Why does he move so softly to-night? 
 No outward reason is apparent for it. Can 
 there be any symi)athctic reason crouching 
 darkly within him ? 
 
 Repairing to Durdles's unfinished house, 
 or hole in the city wall, and seeing a light 
 within it, he softly picks his course among the 
 gravestones, monuments, and stony lumber of 
 
 DURDLES CAUTIONS MR. SAPSEA AGAINST BOASTING. 
 
 the yard, already touched here and there, side- 
 wise, by the rising moon. The two journeymen 
 have left their two great saws sticking in their 
 blocks of stone ; and two skeleton journeymen 
 out of the Dance of Death might be grinning in 
 the shadow of their sheltering sentry-boxes, 
 about to slash away at cutting out the grave- 
 stones of the next two people destined to die in 
 Cloisterham. Likely enough, the two think 
 little of that now, being alive, and perhaps 
 
 merry. Curious, to make a guess at the two ; 
 or say one of the two ! 
 
 "Ho! Durdles!" 
 
 The light moves, and he appears with it at 
 the door. He would seem to have been " clean- 
 ing himself" with the aid of a bottle, jug, and 
 tumbler ; for no otlier cleansing instruments are 
 visible in the bare brick room, with rafters over- 
 head and no plastered ceiling, into which he 
 shows his visitor. 
 
58 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 " Are you ready ? " 
 
 " I am ready, Mister Jarsper. Let the old 
 'uns come out if they dare, when we go among 
 their tombs. My spirit is ready lor 'em." 
 
 " Do you mean animal spirits, or ardent?" 
 
 "The one's the t'other," answers Du'-'Mes, 
 " and 1 mean 'em both." 
 
 He takes a lantern from a hook ; puts a match 
 or two in his pocket wherewith to light it, 
 should there be need ; and they go out to- 
 gether, dinner-bundle and all. 
 
 Surely an unaccountable sort of expedition ! 
 That Durdles himself, who is always prowling 
 among old graves and ruins, like a Ghoule — 
 that he should be stealing forth to climb, and 
 dive, and wander without an object, is nothing 
 extraordinary ; but that the choir-master or any 
 one else should hold it worth his while to be 
 with him, and to study moonlight effects in such 
 company, is another affair. Surely an unac- 
 countable sort of exi)edition, therefore ! 
 
 '• 'W^are that there mound by the yard-gate, 
 Mister Jarsper." 
 
 " I see it. What is it ? " 
 
 " Lime." 
 
 Mr. Jasper stops, and waits for him to come 
 up, for he lags behind. " What you call quick, 
 lime?" 
 
 " Ay ! " says Durdles ; " quick enough to eat 
 your boots. With a little handy stirring, quick 
 enough to eat your bones." 
 
 They go on, presently passing the red windows, 
 of the Travellers' Twopenny, and emerging into 
 the clear moonlight of the Monks' Vineyard, 
 This crossed, they come to Minor Canon Corner: 
 of which the greater part lies in shadow until 
 the moon shall rise higher in the sky. 
 
 The sound of a closing house-door strikes 
 their ears, and two men come out. These are 
 Mr. Crisparkle and Neville. Jasper, with a 
 strange and sudden smile upon his face, lays 
 the palm of his hand upon the breast of Durdles, 
 stopping him where he stands. 
 
 At that end of Minor Canon Corner the 
 shadow is profound in the existing state of the 
 light : at that end, too, there is a piece of old 
 dwarf wall, breast high, the only remaining 
 boundary of what was once a garden, but is now 
 the thoroughfare. Jasper and Durdles would 
 have turned this wall in another instant; but, 
 stopping so short, stand behind it. 
 
 "Those two are only sauntering," Jasper 
 whispers ; " they will go out into the mooonlight 
 soon. Let us keep quiet here, or they will 
 detain us, or want to join us, or what not." 
 
 Durdles nods assent, and falls to munching 
 some fragments from his bundle. Jasper folds 
 
 his arms upon the top of the wall, and, with his 
 chin resting on them, watches. He takes no 
 note whatever of the Minor Canon, but watches 
 Neville as though his eye were at the trigger of 
 a loaded rille, and he had covered him, and 
 were going to fire. A sense of destructive 
 power is so expressed in his face, that even 
 Durdles pauses in his munching, and looks at 
 him, with an unmunched something in his 
 cheek. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Crisparkle and Neville walk 
 to and fro, quietly talking together. What they 
 say cannot be heard consecutively ; but Mr. 
 Jasper has already distinguished his own name 
 more than once. 
 
 " This is the first day of the week," Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle can be distinctly heard to observe as they 
 turn back ; " and the last day of the week is 
 Christmas-eve." 
 
 " You may be certain of me, sir." 
 
 The echoes were favourable at those points, 
 but, as the two approach, the sound of their 
 talking becomes confused again. The word 
 " confidence," shattered by the echoes, but still 
 capable of being pieced together, is uttered by 
 Mr. Crisparkle. As they draw still nearer, this 
 fragment of a reply is heard : " Not deserved 
 yet, but shall be, sir." As they turn away 
 again, Jasper again hears his own name, in con- 
 nection with the words from Mr. Crisparkle : 
 " Remember that I said I answered for you 
 confidently." Then the sound of their talk be- 
 comes confused again ; they halting for a little 
 while, and some earnest action on the part of 
 Neville succeeding. When they move once 
 more, Mr. Crisparkle is seen to look up at the 
 sky, and to point before him. They then 
 slowly disappear ; passing out into the moon- 
 light at the opposite end of the Corner. 
 
 It is not until they are gone that Mr. Jasper 
 moves. But then he turns to Durdles, and 
 bursts into a fit of laughter. Durdles, who still 
 has that suspended something in his cheek, and 
 who sees nothing to laugh at, stares at him until 
 Mr. Jasper lays his face down on his arms to 
 have his laugh out. Then Durdles bolts the 
 something, as if desperately resigning himself to 
 indigestion. 
 
 Among those secluded nooks there is very 
 little stir or movement after dark. There is 
 little enough in the high tide of the day, but 
 there is next to none at night. Besides that 
 the cheerfully-frequented High Street lies nearly 
 parallel to the spot (the old cathedral rising be- 
 tween the two), and is the natural channel in 
 which the Cloisterham traffic flows, a certain 
 awful hush pervades the ancient pile, tlie 
 
THE EXPEDITION IN PROGRESS— 
 
 59 
 
 cloisters, and the churchyard after dark, which 
 not many people care to encounter. Ask the 
 first hundred citizens of Cloisterham, met at 
 random in the streets at noon, if they believed 
 in Ghosts, they would tell you no ; but put 
 them to choose at night between these eerie 
 Precincts and the thoroughfare of shops, and 
 you would find that ninety-nine declared for the 
 longer round and the more-frequented way. 
 The cause of this is not to be found in any 
 local superstition that attaches to the Precincts 
 — albeit a mysterious lady, with a child in her 
 arms and a rope dangling from her neck, has 
 been seen flitting about there by sundry wit- 
 nesses as intangible as herself — but it is to be 
 sought in the innate shrinking of dust with the 
 breath of life in it from dust out of which the 
 breath of life has passed ; also, in the widely 
 diftused, and almost as widely unacknowledged, 
 reflection : " If the dead do, under any circum- 
 stances, become visible to the living, these are 
 such likely surroundings for the purpose, that I, 
 the living, will get out of them as soon as I can." 
 
 Hence, when Mr. Jasper and Durdles pause 
 to glance around them, before descending into 
 the crypt by a small side-door, of which the 
 latter has a key, the whole expanse of moon- 
 light in their view is utterly deserted. One 
 might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed 
 by Mr. Jasper's own gatehouse. The murmur 
 of the tide is heard beyond ; but no wave 
 passes the archway, over which his lamp burns 
 red behind his curtain, as if the building were a 
 Lighthouse. 
 
 They enter, locking themselves in, descend 
 the rugged steps, and are down in the crypt. 
 The lantern is not wanted, for the moonlight 
 strikes in at the groined windows, bare of glass, 
 the broken frames for which cast patterns on 
 the ground. The heavy pillars M'hich support 
 the roof engender masses of black shade, but 
 between them there are lanes of light. Up and 
 down these lanes they walk, Durdles discours- 
 ing of the "old 'uns" he yet counts on disin- 
 terring, and slapping a wall in which he con- 
 siders "a whole family on 'em" to be stoned 
 and earthed up, just as if he were a familiar 
 friend of the family. The taciturnity of Dur- 
 dles is for the time overcome by Mr. Jasper's 
 wicker bottle, which circulates freely; in the 
 sense, that is to say, that its contents enter 
 freely into Mr. Durdles's circulation, while Mr. 
 Jasper only rinses his mouth once, and casts 
 forth the rinsing. 
 
 They are to ascend the great Tower. On the 
 steps by which they rise to the cathedral, Dur- 
 dles pauses for new store of breath. The steps 
 
 are very dark, but out of the darkness they can 
 see the lanes of light they have traversed. 
 Durdles seats himself upon a step. Mr. Jasper 
 seats himself upon another. The odour from 
 the wicker bottle (which has somehow passed 
 into Durdles's keeping) soon intimates that the 
 cork has been taken out ; but this is not ascer- 
 tainable through the sense of sight, since neither 
 can descry the other. And yet, in talking, they 
 turn to one another, as though their faces could 
 commune together. 
 
 " This is good stuff. Mister Jarsper ! " 
 
 " It is very good stuff, I hope. I bought it 
 on purpose." 
 
 " They don't show, you see, the old 'uns 
 don't, Mr. Jarsper ! " 
 
 " It would be a more confused world than it 
 is, if they could." 
 
 " Well, it would lead towards a mixing of 
 things," Durdles acquiesces : pausing on the re- 
 mark, as if the idea of ghosts had not previously 
 presented itself to him in a merely inconvenient 
 light, domestically or chronologically. " But do 
 you think there may be Ghosts of other things, 
 though not of men and women ? " 
 
 "What things? Flower-beds and watering- 
 pots ? horses and harness ? " 
 
 " No. Sounds." 
 
 " What sounds ? " 
 '- "Cries." 
 
 "' What cries do you mean ? Chairs to mend ?" 
 
 " No. I mean screeches. Now I'll tell 
 you, Mr. Jarsper. Wait a bit till I put the 
 bottle right." Here the cork is evidently taken 
 out again, and replaced again. " There ! Now 
 it's right ! This time last year, only a few 
 days later, I happened to have been doing what 
 was correct by the season, in the way of giving 
 it the welcome it had a right to expect, when 
 them town boys set on me at their worst. At 
 length I gave 'em the slip, and turned in here. 
 And here I fell asleep. And what woke me ? 
 The ghost of a cry. The ghost of one terrific 
 shriek, which shriek was followed by the ghost 
 of the howl of a dog : a long, dismal, woeful 
 howl, such as a dog gives when a person's 
 dead. That was my last Christmas-eve." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " is the very abrupt, 
 and, one might say, fierce retort. 
 
 "I mean that I made inquiries everywhere 
 about, and that no living ears but mine heard 
 either that cry or that howl. So I say they 
 was both ghosts ; though why they came to me, 
 I've never made out." 
 
 " I thought you were another kind of man," 
 says Jasper scornfully. 
 
 " So I thought myself," answers Durdles with 
 
6o 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 his usual composure ; " and yet I was picked 
 out for it." 
 
 Jasper had risen suldenly wlien he asked 
 him what he meant, and he now says, " Come, 
 we shall freeze here • lead the way." 
 
 Durdles complies, not over-steadily ; opens 
 die door at the top of the steps with the key he 
 has already used ; and so emerges on the cathe- 
 dral level, in a passage at the side of the chancel. 
 Here the moonlight is so very bright again, that 
 the colours of the nearest stained-glass window 
 are thrown upon their faces. The appearance 
 of the unconscious Durdles, holding the door 
 open for his companion to follow, as if from the 
 grave, is ghastly enough, with a purple band 
 across his face, and a yellow splash upon his 
 brow : but he bears the close scrutiny of his 
 companion in an insensible way, although it is 
 prolonged while the latter fumbles among his 
 pockets for a key confided to him that will open 
 an iron gate, so to enable them to pass to the 
 staircase of the great tower. 
 
 " That and the bottle are enough for you to 
 carry," he says, giving it to Durdles ; " hand 
 your bundle to me ; I am younger and longer- 
 winded than you." Durdles hesitates for a 
 moment between bundle and bottle ; but gives 
 the preference to the bottle, as being by far the 
 better company, and consigns the dry weight to 
 his fellow-explorer. 
 
 Then they go up the winding staircase of the 
 great tower toilsomely, turning and turning, and 
 lowering their heads to avoid the stairs above, 
 or the rough stone pivot around which they 
 twist. Durdles has lighted his lantern, by draw- 
 ing from the cold hard wall a spark of that 
 mysterious fire which lurks in everything, and, 
 guided by this speck, they clamber up among 
 the cobwebs and the dust. Their way lies 
 through strange places. Twice or thrice they 
 emerge into level low-arched galleries, whence 
 they can look down into the moonlit nave : and 
 where Durdles, waving his lantern, waves the 
 dim angels' heads upon the corbels of the roof, 
 seeming to watch their progress. Anon they 
 turn into narrower and steeper staircases, and 
 the night air begins to blow upon them, and the 
 chirp of some startled jackdaw or frightened 
 rook precedes the heavy beating of wings in a 
 confined space, and the beating down of dust 
 and straws upon their heads. At last, leaving 
 their light behind a stair — for it blows fresh up 
 here — they look down on Cloisterham, fair to 
 see in the moonlight : its ruined habitations and 
 sanctuaries of the dead, at the tower's base : 
 its moss-softened red-tiled roofs and red-brick 
 houses of the living, clustered beyond : its river 
 
 winding down from the mist on the horizon, as 
 though that were its source, and already heaving 
 with a restless knowledge of its approach towards 
 the sea. 
 
 Once again, an unaccountable expedition this! 
 Jasper (always moving softly with no visible 
 reason) contemplates the scene, and especially 
 that stillest part of it which the cathedral over- 
 shadows. But he contemplates Durdles quite as 
 curiously, and Durdles is by times conscious of 
 his watchful eyes. 
 
 Only by times, because Durdles is growing 
 drowsy. As aeronauts lighten the load they 
 carry when they wish to rise, similarly Durdles 
 has lightened the wicker bottle in coming up. 
 Snatches of sleep surprise him on his legs, and 
 stop him in his talk. A mild fit of calenture 
 seizes him, in which he deems that the ground 
 so far below is on a level with the tower, and 
 would as lief walk off the tower into the air as 
 not. Such is his state when they begin to 
 come down. And as aeronauts make them- 
 selves heavier when they wish to descend, simi- 
 larly Durdles charges himself with more liquid 
 from the wicker bottle, that he may come down 
 the better. 
 
 The iron gate attained and locked — but not 
 before Durdles has tumbled twice, and cut an 
 eyebrow open once — they descend into the crypt 
 again, with the intent of issuing forth as they 
 entered. But, while returning among those lanes 
 of light, Durdles becomes so very uncertain, both 
 of foot and speech, that he half drops, half throws 
 himself down, by one of the heavy pillars, scarcely 
 less heavy than itself, and indistinctly appeals to 
 his companion for forty winks of a second each. 
 
 " If you will have it so, or must have it so," 
 replies Jasper, " I'll not leave you here. Take 
 them, while I walk to and fro." 
 
 Durdles is asleep at once ; an4 in his sleep he 
 dreams a dream. 
 
 It is not much of a dream, considering the 
 vast extent of the domains of dreamland, and 
 their wonderful productions ; it is only remark- 
 able for being unusually restless and unusually 
 real. He dreams of lying there asleep, and yet 
 counting his companion's footsteps as he walks 
 to and fro. He dreams that the footsteps die 
 away into distance of time and of space, and 
 that something touches him, and that something 
 falls from his hand. Then something clinks 
 and gropes about, and he dreams that he is 
 alone for so long a time, that the lanes of light 
 take new directions as the moon advances in 
 her course. From succeeding unconsciousness 
 he passes into a dream of slow uneasiness from 
 cold ; and painfully awakes to a perception c\ 
 
—AND CONCLUDED. 
 
 6r 
 
 the lanes of light — really changed, much as he 
 had dreamed — and Jasper walking among them, 
 beating his hands and feet. 
 
 " Holloa ! " Durdles cries out, unmeaningly 
 alarmed. 
 
 " Awake at last ? " says Jasper, coming up to 
 him. '• Do you know that your forties have 
 stretched into thousands ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " They have, though." 
 
 "What's the time?" 
 
 " Hark ! The bells are going in the tower ! " 
 
 They strike four quarters, and then the great 
 bell strikes. 
 
 " Two ! " cries Durdles, scrambling up. " Why 
 didn't you try to wake me, Mr. Jarsper ? " 
 
 " I did. I might as well have tried to wake 
 the dead — your own family of dead, up in the 
 corner there." 
 
 " Did you touch me ?" 
 
 " Touch vou ! Yes. Shook you." 
 
 As Durdl-s recalls that touching something 
 in his dream, he looks down on the pavement, 
 and sees the key of the crypt door lying close 
 to where he himself lay. 
 
 " I dropped you, did I ? " he says, picking it 
 up, and recalling that part of his dream. As he 
 gathers himself up again into an upright position, 
 or into a position as nearly upright as he ever 
 maintains, he is again conscious of being watched 
 by his companion. 
 
 "Well !" says Jasper, smiling, "are you quite 
 ready ? Pray don't hurry." 
 
 " Let me get my bundle right, Mister Jarsper, 
 and I'm with you." 
 
 As he ties it afresh, he is once more conscious 
 that he is very narrowly observed. 
 
 " What do you suspect me of, Mr. Jarsper ? " 
 he asks with drunken displeasure. " Let them 
 as has any suspicions of Durdles name 'em. 
 
 " I've no suspicions of you, my good Mr. 
 Durdles ; but I have suspicions that my bottle 
 was filled with something stiffer than either of 
 us supposed. And I also have suspicions," 
 Jasper adds, taking it from the pavement and 
 turning it bottom upwards, " that it's empty." 
 
 Durdles condescends to laugh at this. Con- 
 tinuing to chuckle when his laugh is over, as 
 though remonstrant with himself on his drinking 
 powers, he rolls to the door and unlocks it. 
 They both pass out, and Durdles relocks it, and 
 pockets his key. 
 
 "A thousand thanks for a curious and in- 
 teresting night," says Jasper, giving him his 
 hand. " You can make your own way 
 home ?" 
 
 " I should think so ! " answers Durdles. " If 
 
 you was to offer Durdles the affront to show him 
 his way home, he wouldn't go home. 
 
 ' Durdles wouldn't go home till morning ; 
 And then Durdles wouldn't go home,' 
 
 Durdles wouldn't." This with the utmost de- 
 fiance. 
 
 " Good night, then." 
 
 " Good night, Mr. Jarsper." 
 
 Each is turning his own way, when a sharp 
 whistle rends the silence, and the jargon is 
 yelped out : 
 
 " Widdy widdy wen ! 
 I — ket — ches — Im — out — arter — ten, 
 Widdy widdy wy ! 
 
 Then — E — don't — go — then — I — shy — 
 Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning ! " 
 
 Instantly afterwards, a rapid fire of stones rattles 
 at the cathedral wall, and the hideous small boy 
 is beheld opposite, dancing in the moonlight. 
 
 " What ! Is that baby-devil on the watch 
 there?" cries Jasper in a fury: so quickly 
 roused, and so violent, that he seems an older 
 devil himself. " I shall shed the blood of that 
 impish wretch ! I know I shall do it I" Regard- 
 less of the fire, though it hits him more than 
 once, he rushes at Deputy, collars him, and tries 
 to bring him across. But Deputy is not to be 
 so easily brought across. With a diabolical in- 
 sight into the strongest part of his position, he 
 is no sooner taken by the throat than he curls 
 up his legs, forces his assailant to hang him, as 
 it were, and gurgles in his throat, and screws his 
 body, and twists, as already undergoing the first 
 agonies of strangulation. There is nothing for 
 it but to drop him. He instantly gets himself 
 together, backs over to Durdles, and cries to his 
 assailant, gnashing the great gap in front of his 
 mouth with rage and malice : 
 
 " I'll blind yer, s'elp me ! I'll stone yer eyes 
 out, s'elp me ! If I don't have yer eyesight, 
 bellows me 1 " At the same time dodging behind 
 Durdles, and snarling at Jasper, now from this 
 side of him, and now from that : prepared, if 
 pounced upon, to dart away in all manner of 
 curvilinear directions, and, if run down after all, 
 to grovel in the dust, and cry : " Now, hit me 
 when I'm down ! Do it !" 
 
 " Don't hurt the boy, Mister Jarsper," urges 
 Durdles, shielding him. " Recollect yourself." 
 
 " He followed us to-night, when we first came 
 here!" 
 
 "Yer He, I didn't!" replies Deputy in his 
 one form of polite contradiction. 
 
 " He has been prowling near us ever 
 since !" 
 
 " Yer lie, I haven't !" returns Deputy. " I'd 
 
62 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 only jist come out for my 'elth'when I see you 
 two a-coming out of the Kinfreederel. If 
 'I^ket — ches — Im—out— ar — ter — ten ! ' " 
 
 (with the usual rhythm and dance, though dodg- 
 ing behind Durdles), " it ain't my fault, is it ? " 
 
 " Take him home, then," retorts Jasper fero- 
 ciously, though with a strong check upon himself, 
 " and let my eyes be rid of the sight of you ! " 
 
 Deputy, with another sharp whistle, at once 
 expressing his relief, and liis commencement of 
 a milder stoning of Mr. Durdles, begins stoning 
 that respectable gentleman home, as if he were 
 a reluctant ox. Mr. Jasper goes to his gate- 
 house, brooding. And tlius, as everything comes 
 to an end, the unaccountable exped'ition comes 
 to an end — for the time. 
 
 lO 'JUi '•!.. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 BOTH AT THEIR BEST. 
 
 TSS TVVINKLETON'S establish- 
 ment was about to undergo a serene 
 hush. The Christmas recess was at 
 hand. What had once, and at no 
 f^i^ remote period, been called, even by 
 the erudite Miss Twinkleton herself, 
 " the half ;" but what was now called, as 
 being more elegant, and more strictly 
 collegiate, "the term,'' would expire to-morrow. 
 A noticeable relaxation of discipline had for some 
 few days pervaded the Nuns' House. Club 
 suppers had occurred in the bedrooms, and a 
 dressed tongue had been carved with a pair of 
 scissors, and handed 'round with the curling- 
 tongs. Portions of marmalade had likewise 
 been distributed on a service of plates con- 
 structed of curl-paper ; and cowslip wine had 
 been quaffed from' the small squat measuring 
 glass in whicli little Ri'ckitts (a junior of weakly 
 constitution) took her steel drops daily. The 
 housemaids had been bribed With various frag- 
 ments of ribbon, and sundry pairs of shoes more 
 or less down at heel, to make no mention of 
 crumbs in the beds ; the airiest costumes had 
 been worn on these festive occasions ; and the 
 daring Miss Ferdinand had even surprised the 
 company with a sprightly solo on the comb-and- 
 curl-paper, until suftbcated in her own pillow by 
 two flowing-haired executioners. 
 
 Nor were these the only tokens of dispersal. 
 Boxes appeared in the bedrboms (where they 
 were capital at other times), and a surprising 
 amount of packing took place, out of all propor- 
 tion to the amount packed. Largess, in the 
 
 form of odds and ends of cold cream and 
 pomatum, and also of hair-pins, was freely dis- 
 tributed among the attendants. On charges of 
 inviolable secrecy, confidences were interchanged 
 respecting golden youth of England expected to 
 call, " at home," on the first opportunity. Miss 
 Giggles (deficient in sentiment) did, indeed, 
 profess that she, for her part, acknowledged 
 such homage by making faces at the golden 
 youth ; but this young lady was outvoted by an 
 immense majority. 
 
 On the last night before a recess, it was 
 always expressly made a point of honour that 
 nobody should go to sleep, and that Ghosts 
 should be encouraged by all possible means. 
 This compact invariably broke down, and all the 
 young ladies went to sleep very soon, and got 
 up very early. 
 
 The concluding ceremony came off at twelve 
 o'clock on the day of departure; when Miss 
 Twinkleton, supported by Mrs. Tisher, held a 
 drawing-room in her own apartment (the globes 
 already covered with brown hoUand), where 
 glasses of white wine and plates of cut pound- 
 cake were discovered on the table. Miss Twinkle- 
 ton then said : Ladies, another revolving year 
 had brouglit us round to that festive period at 
 which the first feelings of our nature bounded in 
 
 our Miss Twinkleton was annually going 
 
 to add " bosoms," but annually stopped on 
 the brink of that expression, and substituted 
 "hearts.*' Hearts; our hearts. Hem! Again 
 a revolving year, ladies, had brought us to a 
 pause in our studies — let us hope our greatly- 
 advanced studies— and, like the mariner in his 
 bark, the warrior in his tent, the captive in his 
 dungeon, and the traveller in his various con- 
 veyances, w^e yearned for home. Did we say, 
 on such an occasion, in the opening words of 
 Mr. Addison's impressive tragedy : 
 
 " The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, 
 And heavily in clouds brings on the day, 
 The great, th' important day ? " 
 
 Not SO. From horizon to zenith all was couktir 
 dc rose, for all was redolent of our relations 
 and friends. Might 7ue find iJicm prospering 
 as mc expected ; might they find us prospering 
 as they expected ! Ladies, we would now, with 
 our love to one another, wish one another good- 
 bye, and happiness, until we met again. And 
 when the time should come for our resumption 
 of those pursuits which (here a general depres- 
 sion set in all round), pursuits which, pursuits 
 which ; — then let us ever remember what was 
 said by the Spartan General, in words too trite 
 for repetition, at the battle it were superfluous 
 to specify. 
 
EDWIN AND ROSA UNDER A NEW ASPECT. 
 
 63 
 
 The handmaidens of the establishment, in 
 their best caps, then handed the trays, and the 
 young ladies sipped and crumbled, and the 
 bespoken coaches began to choke the street. 
 Then leave-taking was not long about ; and 
 Miss Twinkleton, in saluting each young lady's 
 cheek, confided to her an exceedingly neat letter, 
 addressed to her next friend at law, " with Miss 
 Twinkleton's best compliments " in the corner. 
 This missive she handed with an air as if it had 
 not the least connection with the bill, but were 
 something in the nature of a delicate and joyful 
 surprise. 
 
 So many times had Rosa seen such dispersals, 
 and so very little did she know of any other 
 Home, that she was contented to remain where 
 she was, and was even better contented than 
 ever before, having her latest friend with her. 
 And yet her latest friendship had a blank place 
 in it of which she could not fail to be sensible. 
 Helena Landless, having been a party to her 
 brother's revelation about Rosa, and having 
 entered into that compact of silence with Mr. 
 Crisparkle, shrank from any allusion to Edwin 
 Drood's name. Why she so avoided it was 
 mysterious to Rosa, but she perfectly perceived 
 the fact. But for the fact, she might have re- 
 lieved her own little perplexed heart of some 
 of its doubts and hesitations by taking Helena 
 into her confidence. As it was, she had no 
 such vent : she could only ponder on her own 
 difficulties, and wonder more and more why this 
 avoidance of Edwin's name should last, now that 
 she knew — for so much Helena had told her — 
 that a good understanding was to be re-esta- 
 blished between the two young men when Edwin 
 came down. 
 
 It would have made a pretty picture, so many 
 pretty girls kissing Rosa in the cold porch of 
 the Nuns' House, and that sunny little creature 
 peeping out of it (unconscious of sly faces carved 
 on spout and gable peeping at her), and waving 
 farewells to the departing coaches, as if she 
 represented the spirit of rosy youth abiding in 
 the place to keep it bright and warm in its deser- 
 tion. The hoarse High Street became musical 
 with the cry, in various silvery voices, " Good- 
 bye, Rosebud darling ! " and the effigy of Mr. 
 Sapsea's father over the opposite doorway seemed 
 to say to mankind : " Gentlemen, favour me with 
 your attention to this charming little last lot left 
 behind, and bid with a spirit worthy of the 
 occasion ! " Then the staid street, so unwontedly 
 sparkling, youthful, and fresh for a few rippling 
 moments, ran dry, and Cloisterham was itself 
 again. 
 
 If Rosebud in her bower now waited Edwin 
 
 Drood's coming with an uneasy heart, Edwin for 
 his part was uneasy too. AVith far less force of 
 purjjose in his composition than the childish 
 beauty, crowned by acclamation fairy (lueen of 
 Miss Twinkleton's establishment, he had a con- 
 science, and Mr. Grewgious had pricked it. 
 That gentleman's steady convictions of what was 
 right and what was wrong, in such a case as his, 
 were neither to be frowned aside nor laughed 
 aside. They would not be moved. But for the 
 dinner in Staple Inn, and but for the ring he 
 carried in the breast pocket of his coat, he 
 would have drifted into their wedding-day with- 
 out another pause for real thought, loosely 
 trusting that all would go well, left alone. But 
 that serious putting him on his truth to the 
 living and the dead had brought him to a check. 
 Ele must either give the ring to Rosa, or he 
 must take it back. Once put into this narrowed 
 way of action, it was curious that he began to 
 consider Rosa's claims upon him more unself- 
 ishly than he had ever considered them before, 
 and began to be less sure of himself than he had 
 ever been in all his easy-going days. 
 
 " I will be guided by what she says, and by 
 how we get on," was his decision, walking from 
 the gatehouse to the Nuns' House. " Whatever 
 comes of it, I will bear his words in mind, and 
 try to be true to the living and the dead." 
 
 Rosa was dressed for walking. She expected 
 him. It was a bright frosty day, and Miss 
 Twinkleton had already graciously sanctioned 
 fresh air. Thus they got out together before it 
 became necessary for either Miss Twinkleton, or 
 the deputy high-priest Mrs. Tisher, to lay even 
 so much as one of those usual offerings on the 
 shrine of Propriety. 
 
 " My dear Eddy," said Rosa when they had 
 turned out of the High Street, and had got 
 among the quiet walks in the neighbourhood of 
 the cathedral and the river, " I want to say 
 something very serious to you. I have been 
 thinking about it for a long, long time." 
 
 " I want to be serious with you too, Rosa 
 dear. I mean to be serious and earnest." 
 
 " Thank you, Eddy. And you will not think 
 _ie unkind because I begin, Avill you ? You 
 will not think I speak for myself only, because 
 I speak first? That would not be generous, 
 would it ? And I know you are generous !" 
 
 He said, " I hope I am not ungenerous to 
 you, Rosa." He called her Pussy no more. 
 Never again. 
 
 " And there is no fear," pursued Rosa, " of 
 our quarrelling, is there ? Because, Eddy," 
 clasping her hand on his arm, " we have so 
 much reason to be verv lenient to each other !"■ 
 
64 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 Eddy, let us be 
 to brother and 
 
 But 
 
 " We will be, Rosa." 
 
 " That's a dear good boy ! 
 courageous. Let us change 
 sister from this day forth." 
 
 " Never be husband and wife ?" 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 Neither spoke again for a little while, 
 after that pause he said, with some eftbrt : 
 
 " Of course I know that this has been in both 
 our minds, Rosa, and of course I am in honour 
 bound to confess freely that it does not originate 
 with you." 
 
 " No, nor with you, dear,"' she returned with 
 pathetic earnestness. " That sprung up between 
 us. You are not truly happy in our engagement ; 
 I am not truly happy in it. Oh, I am so sorry, 
 so sorry ! " And there she broke into tears. 
 
 " I am deeply sorry too, Rosa. Deeply sorry 
 for you." 
 
 " And I for you, poor boy ! And I for you '" 
 
 This pure young feeling, this gentle and for- 
 bearing feeling of each towards the other, brought 
 with it its reward in a softening light that seemed 
 to shine on their position. The relations be- 
 tween them did not look wilful, or capricious, 
 or a failure, in such a light ; they became ele- 
 vated into something more self-denying, honour- 
 able, affectionate, and true. 
 
 " If we knew yesterday," said Rosa as she 
 dried her eyes, " and we did know yesterday, 
 and on many, many yesterdays, that we were far 
 from right together in those relations which were 
 not of our own choosing, what better could we 
 do to-day than change them ? It is natural that 
 we should be sorry, and you see how sorry we 
 both are ; but how much better to be sorry now 
 than then ! " 
 
 " When, Rosa ? " 
 
 " When it would be too late. And then we 
 should be angry, besides." 
 
 Another silence fell upon them. 
 
 " And you know," said Rosa innocently, 
 " you couldn't like me then ; and you can 
 always like me now, for I shall not be a drag 
 upon you, or a worry to you. And I can always 
 like you now, and your sister will not tease or 
 trifle with you. I often did when I was \ ot 
 your sister, and I beg your pardon for it." 
 
 " Don't let us come to that, Rosa, or I shall 
 want more pardoning than I like to think of." 
 
 " No, indeed, Eddy; you are too hard, my 
 generous boy, upon yourself. Let us sit down, 
 brother, on these ruins, and let me tell you how 
 it was with us. I think I know, for I have con- 
 sidered about it very much since you were here 
 iast time. You liked me, didn't you ? You 
 thought I was a nice little thing ? " 
 
 " Everybody thinks that, Rosa." 
 
 " Do they ? " She knitted her brow musingly 
 for a moment, and then flaslicd out with the 
 bright little induction : " Well, but say they 
 do. Surely it was not enough that you should 
 think of me only as other people did ; now, 
 was it ? " 
 
 The point was not to be got over. It was not 
 enough. 
 
 " And that is just what I mean ; that is just 
 i how it was with us," said Rosa. " You liked me 
 very well, and you had grown used to me, and 
 had grown used to the idea of our being married. 
 You accepted the situation as an inevitable kind 
 of thing, didn't you ? It was to be, you thought, 
 and why discuss or dispute it ?" 
 
 It was new and strange to him to have him- 
 self presented to himself so clearly, in a glass of 
 her holding up. He had always patronised her, 
 in his superiority to her share of woman's wit. 
 Was that but another instance of something 
 radically amiss in the terms on which they had 
 been gliding towards a lifelong bondage ? 
 
 " All this that I say of you is true of me as 
 well, Eddy. Unless it was, I might not be bold 
 enough to say it. Only the difference between 
 us was, that by little and little there crept into 
 my mind a habit of thinking about it, instead of 
 dismissing it. My life is not so busy as yours, 
 you see, and I have not so many things to think 
 of. So I thought about it very much, and I 
 cried about it very much too (though that was 
 not your fault, poor boy) ; when all at once my 
 guardian came down, to prepare for my leaving 
 the Nuns' House. I tried to hint to him that 1 
 was not quite settled in my mind, but I hesi- 
 tated and failed, and he didn't understand me. 
 But he is a good, good man. And he put before 
 me so kindly, and yet so strongly, how seriously 
 we ought to consider in our circumstances, that 
 I resolved to speak to you the next moment we 
 were alone and grave. And if I seemed to 
 come to it easily just now, because I came to it 
 all at once, don't think it was so really, Eddy, 
 for oh ! it was very, very hard, and oh ! I am 
 very, very sorry ! " 
 
 Her full heart broke into tears again. He 
 put his arm about her waist, and the}- walked 
 by the river-side together. 
 
 '• Your guardian has spoken to me too, Rosa 
 dear. I saw him before I left London." His 
 right hand was in his breast, seeking the ring ; 
 but he checked it as he thought : " If I am to 
 take it back, why should I tell her of it ? '' 
 
 " And that made you more serious about it, 
 didn't it, Eddy ? And if I had not spoken to 
 you as I have, you would have spoken to me ? 
 
A DISAFFOINTMENl^ TO JACK. 
 
 65 
 
 I hope you can tell me so ? I don't like it to 
 be all my doing, ihougli it is so much better 
 for us." 
 
 " Yes, I should have spoken ; I shoukl have 
 put everything before you ; I came intending to 
 do it. But I never could have spoken to you as 
 you have spoken to me, Rosa." 
 
 " Don't say you mean so coldly or unkindly, 
 Eddy, please, if you can help it," 
 
 " I mean so sensibly and delicately, so wisely 
 and affectionately." 
 
 " That's my dear brother ! " She kissed his 
 
 hand in a little rapture. " The dear girls will 
 be dreadfully disappointed," added Rosa, laugh- 
 ing, with the dewdrops glistening in her bright 
 eyes. " They have looked forward to it so, poor 
 pets ! " 
 
 " Ah ! but I fear it will be a worse disappoint- 
 ment to Jack," said Edwin Drood with a start. 
 " I never thought of Jack ! " 
 
 Her swift and intent look at him as he said 
 the words could no more be recalled than a 
 flash of lightning can. But it appeared as 
 though she would have instantly recalled it, if 
 
 GOOD-BYE, KOSEBUD, DARLING ! " 
 
 she could ; for she looked down, confused, and 
 breathed quickly. 
 
 " You don't doubt its being a blow to Jack, 
 Rosa ? " 
 
 She merely replied, and that evasively and 
 hurriedly : Why shoukl she ? She had not 
 thought about it. He seemed, to her, to have 
 so little to do with it. 
 
 " My dear child ! can you suppose that any 
 
 one so wrapped up in another — Mrs. Tope's 
 
 expression : not mine — as Jack is in me, could 
 
 fail to be struck all of a heap by such a sudden 
 
 iiuvviN Drood, 5. 
 
 and complete change in my life ? I say sudden, 
 because it will be sudden to ///;;/, you know." 
 
 She nodded twice or thrice, and her lips 
 parted as if she would have assented. But she 
 uttered no sound, and her breathing was no 
 slower. 
 
 " How shall I tell Jack?" said Edwin, rumi- 
 nating. If he had been less occupied with the 
 thought, he must have seen her singular emotion. 
 " I never thought of Jack. It must be broken 
 to him before tlie town crier knows it. I dine 
 with the dear fellow to-morrow and next day — ■ 
 
66 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 Christmas-eve and Christmas-day — but it would 
 never do to spoil his feast-days. He always 
 worries about nie, and moddlcy-coddleys in the 
 merest trifles. The news is sure to overset him. 
 How on earth shall this be broken to Jack } " 
 
 *' He must be told, I suppose ? " said Rosa. 
 
 " My dear Rosa ! who ought to be in our 
 confidence, if not Jack ? " 
 
 " My guardian promised to come down, if I 
 should write and ask him. I am going to do so. 
 Would you like to leave it to him ? " 
 
 " A bright idea ! " cried Edwin. " The other 
 trustee. Nothing more natural. He comes down, 
 he goes to Jack, he relates what we have agreed 
 upon, and he states our case better than we 
 could. He has already spoken feelingly to you, 
 he has already spoken feelingly to me, and he'll 
 put the whole thing feelingly to Jack. That's 
 it ! I am not a coward, Rosa, but, to tell you a 
 secret, I am a little afraid of Jack." 
 
 " No, no ! you are not afraid of him ! " cried 
 Rosa, turning white, and clasping her hands. 
 
 " Why, sister Rosa, sister Rosa, what do you 
 see from the turret?" said Edwin, rallying her. 
 " My dear girl ! " 
 
 " You frightened me." 
 
 " Most unintentionally, but I am as sorry as 
 if I had meant to do it. Could you possibly 
 suppose for a moment, from any loose way of 
 speaking of mine, that I was literally afraid of 
 the dear fond fellow ? What I mean is, that he 
 is subject to a kind of paroxysm, or fit — I saw^ 
 him in it once — and I don't know but that so 
 great a surprise, coming upon him direct from 
 me whom he is so wrapped up in, might bring 
 it on, perhaps. Which — and this is the secret I 
 was going to tell you — is another reason for 
 your guardian's making the communication. He 
 is so steady, precise, and exact, that he Avill 
 talk Jack's thoughts into shape in no time ; 
 whereas with me Jack is always impulsive and 
 hurried, and I may sa}^, almost womanish." 
 
 Rosa seemed convinced. Perhaps, from her 
 own very difterent point of view of " Jack,"' she 
 felt comforted and protected by the interposition 
 of Mr. Grewgious between herself and him. 
 
 And now, Edwin Drood's right hand closed 
 again upon the ring in its little case, and again 
 Avas checked by the consideration : " It is cer- 
 tain, now, that I am to give it back to him ; 
 then why should I tell her of it ?" That pretty 
 sympathetic nature which could be so sorry for 
 him in the blight of their childish hopes of hap- 
 piness together, and could so quietly find itself 
 alone in a new world to weave fresh wreaths of 
 such flowers as it might prove to bear, the old 
 world's flowers being withered, would be grieved 
 
 by those sorrowful jewels ; and to what purpose ? 
 Why should it be ? They were but a sign of broken 
 joys and baseless projects ; in their very beauty 
 they were (as the unlikeliest of men had said) 
 almost a cruel satire on the loves, hopes, plans, 
 of humanity, which are able to forecast nothing, 
 and are so much brittle dust. Let them be. 
 He would restore them to her guardian when he 
 came down ; he, in his turn, would restore them 
 to the cabinet from which he had unwillingly 
 taken them ; and there, like old letters or old 
 vows, or other records of old aspirations come 
 to nothing, they would be disregarded, until^ 
 being valuable, they were sold into circulation 
 again, to repeat their former round. 
 
 Let them be. Let them lie unspoken of in 
 his breast. However distinctly or indistinctly 
 he entertained these thoughts, he arrived at the 
 conclusion. Let them be. Among the mighty 
 store of wonderful chains that are for ever forg- 
 ing, day and night, in the vast iron-works of 
 time and circumstance, there was one chain 
 forged in the moment of that small conclusion, 
 riveted to the foundations of heaven and earth, 
 and gifted with invincible force to hold and 
 drag. 
 
 They walked on by the river. They began to 
 speak of their separate plans. He would quicken 
 his departure from England, and she would re- 
 main where she was, at least as long as Helena 
 remained. The poor dear girls should have 
 their disappointment broken to them gently, 
 and, as the first preliminary, ]\Iiss Twinkleton 
 should be confided in by Rosa, even in advance 
 of the reappearance of Mr. Grewgious. It 
 should be made clear in all quarters that she 
 and Echvin were the best of friends. There had 
 never been so serene an understanding between 
 them since they were first afhanced. And yet 
 there w'as one reservation on each side : on hers, 
 that she intended, through her guardian, to with- 
 draw herself immediately from the tuition of her 
 music-master ; on his, that he did already enter- 
 tain some wandering speculations whether it 
 might ever come to pass that he would know 
 more of Miss Landless. 
 
 The bright frosty day declined as they walked 
 and spoke together. The sun dipped in the 
 river far behind them, and the old city lay red 
 before them, as their walk drew to a close. The 
 moaning water cast its seaweed duskily at their 
 feet when they turned to leave its margin ; and 
 the rooks hovered above them with hoarse cries, 
 darker splashes in the darkening air. 
 
 " I will prepare Jack for my flitting soon," said 
 Edwin in a low voice, "and I will but see your 
 guardian when he comes, and then go before 
 
UNDER THE TREES. 
 
 67 
 
 they speak together. It will be better done 
 without my being by. Don't you think so ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " We know we have done right, Rosa ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " We know we are better so, even now?" 
 
 " And shall be far, far better so by-and-by." 
 
 Still there was that lingering tenderness in 
 their hearts towards the old positions they were 
 relinquisliing, that they prolonged their parting. 
 ■\Vhen they came among the elm-trees by the 
 cathedral, where they had last sat together, they 
 stopped as by consent, and Rosa raised her face 
 to his, as she had never raised it in the old days; 
 for they were old already. 
 
 " God bless you, dear ! Good-bye ! " 
 
 " God bless you, dear ! Good-bye !" 
 
 They kissed each other fervently. 
 
 " Now, please take me home, Eddy, and let 
 me be by myself" 
 
 " Don't look round, Rosa," he cautioned her 
 as he drew her arm through his, and led her 
 away. " Didn't you see Jack?" 
 
 " No ! Where ? " 
 
 ** Under the trees. He saw us as we took 
 leave of each other. Poor fellow ! he little 
 thinks we have parted. This will be a blow to 
 him, I am much afraid ! " 
 
 She hurried on without resting, and hurried on 
 until they had passed under the gatehouse into 
 the street. Once there, she asked : 
 
 " Has he followed us ? You can look without 
 seeming to. Is he behind ? " 
 
 " No. Yes, he is ! He has just passed out 
 under the gateway. The dear sympathetic old 
 fellow likes to keep us in sight. I am afraid he 
 will be bitterly disappointed ! " 
 
 She pulled hurriedly at the handle of the 
 hoarse old bell, and the gate soon opened. 
 Before going in, she gave him one last wide- 
 wondering look, as if she would have asked him, 
 with imploring emphasis : " Oh ! don't you un- 
 derstand ? " And out of that look he vanished 
 from her view. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 WHEN SHALL THESE THREE MEET AGAIN? 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE in Cloisterham. A few 
 strange faces in the streets ; a fcAv other 
 faces, half strange and half familiar, once the 
 faces of Cloisterham children, now the faces of 
 men and women who come back from the 
 outer world at long intervals to find the city 
 wonderfully shrunken in size, as if it had not 
 
 washed by any means well in the meanwhile. 
 To these, the striking of the cathedral clock, 
 and the cawing of the rooks from the cathedral 
 tower, are like voices of their nursery-time. To 
 such as these it has happened, in their dying 
 hours afar off, that they have imagined their 
 chamber floor to be strewn with the autumnal 
 leaves fallen from the elm-trees in the Close : so 
 have the rustling sounds and fresh scents of their 
 earliest impressions revived when the circle of 
 their lives was very nearly traced, and the begin- 
 ning and the end were drawing close together. 
 
 Seasonable tokens are about. Red berries 
 shine here and there in the lattices of Minor 
 Canon Corner; Mr. and Mrs. Tope are daintily 
 sticking sprigs of holly into the carvings and 
 sconces of the cathedral stalls, as if they were 
 sticking them into the coat button-holes of the 
 Dean and Chapter. Lavish profusion is in the 
 shops : particularly in the articles of currants, 
 raisins, spices, candied peel, and moist sugar. 
 An unusual air of gallantry and dissijDation is 
 abroad ; evinced in an immense bunch of 
 mistletoe hanging in the greengrocer's shop 
 doorway, and a poor little Twelfth Cake, 
 culminating in the figure of a Harlequin — 
 such a very poor little Twelfth Cake, that 
 one would rather call it a Twenty-fourth Cake 
 or a Forty-eighth Cake — to be raffled for at the 
 pastrycook's, terms one shilling per member. 
 Public amusements are not wanting. The Wax- 
 Work which made so deep an impression on the 
 reflective mind of the Emperor of China is to be 
 seen by particular desire, during Christmas 
 Week only, on the premises of the bankrupt 
 livery-stable keeper up the lane ; and a new 
 grand comic Christmas Pantomime is to be pro- 
 duced at the Theatre: the latter heralded by 
 the portrait of Signor Jacksonini the clown, 
 saying, " How do you do to-morrow?" quite as 
 large as life, and almost as miserably. In short, 
 Cloisterham is up and doing : though from this 
 description the High School and Miss Twinkle- 
 ton's are to be excluded. From the former 
 establishment the scholars have gone home, 
 every one of them in love with one of Miss 
 Twinkleton's young ladies (who knows nothing 
 about it) ; and only the handmaidens flutter 
 occasionally in the windows of the latter. It is 
 noticed, by-the-bye, that these damsels become, 
 within the limits of decorum, more skittish when 
 thus intrusted with the concrete representation 
 of their sex than when dividing the representa- 
 tion with Miss Twinkleton's young ladies. 
 
 Three are to meet at the gatehouse to-night. 
 How does each one of the three get through the 
 day? 
 
63 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 Neville Landless, though absolved from his 
 books for the time by Mr. Crisparkle — whose 
 fresh nature is by no means insensible to the 
 charms of a holiday — reads and writes in his 
 cjuiet room, with a concentrated air, until it is 
 two hours past noon. He then sets himself to 
 clearing his table, to arranging his books, and to 
 tearing up and burning his stray papers. He 
 makes a clean sweep of all untidy accumulations, 
 puts all his drawers in order, and leaves no note 
 or scrap of paper undestroyed, save such me- 
 moranda as bear directly on his studies. This 
 done, he turns to his wardrobe, selects a few 
 articles of ordinary wear — among them, change 
 of stout shoes and socks for walking — and packs 
 these in a knapsack. This knapsack is new, and 
 he bought it in the High Street yesterday. He 
 also purchased, at the same time and at the 
 same place, a heavy walking-stick : strong in 
 the handle for the grip of the hand, and iron- 
 shod. He tries this, swings it, poises it, and lays 
 it by, with the knapsack, on a window-seat. By 
 this time his arrangements are complete. 
 
 He dresses for going out, and is in the act of 
 going — indeed, has left his room, and has met 
 the Minor Canon on the staircase, coming out 
 of his bedroom upon the same story — when he 
 turns back again for his walking-stick, thinking 
 he will carry it now. Mr. Crisparkle, who has 
 paused on the staircase, sees it in his hand on 
 his immediately reappearing, takes it from him, 
 and asks him with a smile how he chooses a 
 stick ? 
 
 " Really I don't know that I understand the 
 subject," he answers. " I chose it for its 
 Aveight." 
 
 " Much too heavy, Neville ; much too heavy." 
 
 " To rest upon in a long walk, sir? " 
 
 " Rest upon ! " repeats Mr. Crisparkle, throw- 
 ing himself into pedestrian form. " You don't 
 rest upon it ; you merely balance with it." 
 
 " I shall know better with practice, sir. I 
 have not lived in a walking country, you know." 
 
 "True,'' says Mr. Crisparkle. "Get into a 
 little training, and we will have a few score 
 miles together. I should leave you nowhere 
 now. Do you come back before dinner ? " 
 
 " I think not, as we dine early." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle gives him a bright nod and a 
 cheerful good-bye ; expressing (not without in- 
 tention) absolute confidence and ease. 
 
 Neville repairs to the Nuns' House, and re- 
 quests that Miss Landless may be informed that 
 her brother is there by appointment. He waits 
 at the gate, not even crossing the threshold ; 
 for he is on his parole not to put himself in 
 Rosa's way. 
 
 ^ ■ His sister is at least as mindful of the obliga- 
 tion they have taken on themselves as he can 
 be, and loses not a moment in joining him. 
 They meet affectionately, avoid lingering there, 
 and walk towards the upper inland country. 
 
 " I am not going to tread upon forbidden 
 ground, Helena," says Neville when they have 
 walked some distance and are turning ; " you 
 will understand in another moment that I can- 
 not help referring to — what shall I say ? — my 
 infatuation." 
 
 " Had you not better avoid it, Neville? You 
 know that I can hear nothing." 
 
 " You can hear, my dear, what Mr. Crisparkle 
 has heard, and heard with approval." 
 
 "Yes; I can hear so much.' 
 
 " ^^'el], it is this. I am not only unsettled 
 and unhappy myself, but I am conscious of un- 
 settling and interfering with other people. How 
 do I know that, but for my unfortunate pre- 
 sence, you, and — and — the rest of that former 
 party, our engaging guardian excepted, might 
 be dining cheerfully in Minor Canon Corner 
 to-morrow? Indeed, it probably would be so. 
 I can see too well that I am not high in the old 
 lady's opinion, and it is easy to understand 
 what an irksome clog I must be upon the hos- 
 pitalities of her orderly house — especially at 
 this time of year — when 1 must be kept asunder 
 from this person, and there is such a reason for 
 my not being brought into contact with that 
 person, and an unfavourable rejuitation has pre- 
 ceded me with such another person, and so on. 
 I have put this very gently to Mr. Crisparkle, 
 for you know his self-denying ways ; but still I 
 have put it. What I have laid much greater 
 stress upon, at the same time, is that I am en- 
 gaged in a miserable struggle w'ith myself, and 
 that a little change and absence may enable me 
 to come through it the better. So, the weather ' 
 being bright and hard, I am going on a walking 
 expedition, and intend taking myself out of 
 everybody's way (my own included, I hope) 
 to-morrow morning." 
 
 " When to come back ?" 
 
 " \\\ a fortnight." 
 
 " And going quite alone ? " 
 
 " I am much better without company, even if 
 there were any one but you to bear me com- 
 pany, my dear Helena." 
 
 " Mr. Crisparkle entirely agrees, you say ? " 
 
 " Entirely. I am not sure but that at first 
 he w'as inclined to think it rather a moody 
 scheme, and one that might do a brooding 
 mind harm. But w'e took a moonlight walk 
 last Monday night, to talk it over at leisure, 
 and I represented the case to him as it really 
 
AN ANTIPATHY TO DINNER. 
 
 69 
 
 is. I showed him that I do want to conquer 
 myself, and that, this evening well got over, it 
 is surely better that I should be away from here 
 just now than here. I could hardly help meet- 
 ing certain people walking together here, and 
 that could do no good, and is certainly not the 
 way to forget. A fortnight hence that chance 
 will probably be over for the time ; and when 
 it again arises for the last time, why, I can 
 again go away. Farther, I really do feel hope- 
 ful of bracing exercise and wholesome fatigue. 
 Vou know that Mr. Crisparkle allows such 
 things their full weight in the preservation of 
 his own sound mind in his own sound body, 
 and that his just spirit is not likely to maintain 
 one set of natural laws for himself and another 
 for me. He yielded to my view of the matter, 
 when convinced that I was honestly in earnest ; 
 and so, with his full consent, I start to-morrow 
 morning. Early enough to be not only out of 
 the streets, but out of hearing of the bells, when 
 the good people go to church." 
 
 Helena thinks it over, and thinks well of it. 
 Mr. Crisparkle doing so, she would do so ; but 
 she does originally, out of her own mind, think 
 well of it, as a healthy project, denoting a sin- 
 cere endeavour and an active attempt at self- 
 correction. She is inclined to pity him, poor 
 fellow, for going away solitary on the great 
 Christmas festival ; but she feels it much more 
 to the purpose to encourage him. And she 
 does encourage him. 
 
 He will write to her ? 
 
 He will write to her every alternate day, and 
 tell her all his adventures. 
 
 Does he send clothes on in advance of him ? 
 
 " My dear Helena, no. Travel like a pil- 
 grim, with Avallet and staff. My wallet — or my 
 knapsack — is packed, and ready for strapping 
 on ; and here is my staff ! " 
 
 He hands it to her ; she makes the same 
 remark as Mr. Crisparkle, that it is very heavy ; 
 and gives it back to him, asking what wood it 
 is ? Iron-wood. 
 
 Up to this point he has been extremely cheer- 
 ful. Perhaps the having to carry his case with 
 her, and therefore to present it in its brightest 
 aspect, has roused his spirits. Perhaps the 
 having done so with success is followed by a 
 revulsion. As the day closes in, and the city 
 lights begin to spring up before them, he grows 
 depressed. 
 
 " I wish I were not going to this dinner, 
 Helena." 
 
 " Dear Neville, is it worth Mhile to care 
 much about it ? Think how soon it will be 
 over." 
 
 " How soon it will be over ! " he repeats 
 gloomily. " Yes. Put I don't like it." 
 
 There may be a moment's awkwardness, she 
 cheeringly represents to him, but it can only 
 last a moment. He is quite sure of himself? 
 
 " I wish I felt as sure of everything else as I 
 feel of myself," he answers her. 
 
 '• How strangely you speak, dear ! What do 
 you mean ? " 
 
 " Helena, I don't know. I only know that I 
 don't like it. What a strange dead weight there 
 is in the air ! " 
 
 She calls his attention to those copperous 
 clouds beyond the river, and says that the wind 
 is rising. He scarcely speaks again until he 
 takes leave of her at the gate of the Nuns' 
 House. She does not immediately enter when 
 they have parted, but remains looking after him 
 along the street. Twice he passes the gate- 
 house, reluctant to enter. At length, the 
 cathedral clock chiming one (juarter, with a 
 rapid turn he hurries in. 
 
 And so he goes up the postern stair. 
 
 Edwin Drood passes a solitary day. Some- 
 thing of deeper moment than he had thought 
 has gone out of his life; and in the silence of 
 his own chamber he wept for it last night. 
 Though the image of Miss Landless still hovers 
 in the background of his mind, the pretty little 
 affectionate creature, so much firmer and wiser 
 than he had supposed, occupies its stronghold. 
 It is with some misgiving of his own unworthi- 
 ness that he thinks of her, and of what they 
 might have been to one another, if he had beea 
 more in earnest some time ago ; if he had set a 
 higher value on her ; if, instead of accepting his 
 lot in life as an inheritance of course, he had 
 studied the right way to its appreciation and 
 enhancement. And still, for all this, and 
 though there is a sharp heartache in all this, 
 the vanity and caprice of youth sustain that 
 handsome figure of Miss Landless in the back- 
 ground of his mind. 
 
 That was a curious look of Rosa's when they 
 parted at the gate. Did it mean that she saw 
 below the surface of his thoughts, and dowa 
 into their twilight depths ? Scarcely that, for it 
 was a look of astonished and keen inquiry. He 
 decides that he cannot understand it, though it 
 was remarkably expressive. 
 
 As he only waits for Mr. Grewgious now, and 
 will depart immediately after having seen him, 
 he takes a sauntering leave of the ancient city 
 and its neighbourhood. He recalls the time 
 when Rosa and he walked here or there, mere 
 children, full of the dignity of being engaged. 
 
70 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 Poor children ! he thinks with a pitying sad- 
 ness. 
 
 Finding that his watch had stopped, he turns 
 into the jeweller's shop, to have it wound and 
 set. The jeweller is knowing on the subject of 
 a bracelet, which he begs leave to submit in a 
 general and quite aimless way. It Avould suit 
 (he considers) a young bride to perfection ; 
 especially if of a rather diminutive style of beauty. 
 Finding the bracelet but coldly looked at, the 
 jeweller invites attention to a tray of rings for 
 gentlemen ; here is a style of ring, now, he re- 
 marks — a very chaste signet — which gentlemen 
 are much given to purchasing when changing 
 their condition. A ring of a very responsible 
 appearance. With the date of their wedding- 
 day engraved inside, several gentlemen have 
 preferred it to any other kind of memento. 
 
 The rings are as coldly viewed as the brace- 
 let. Edwin tells the tempter that he wears no 
 jewellery but his watch and chain, which were 
 his father's, and his shirt-pin. 
 
 " That I was aware of," is the jeweller's reply, 
 " for ]Mr. Jasper dropped in for a watch-glass 
 the other day, and, in fact, I showed these 
 articles to him, remarking that if he should wish 
 to make a present to a gentleman relative, on 
 
 any particular occasion But he said with 
 
 a smile that he had an inventory in his mind of 
 all the jewellery his gentleman relative ever 
 wore ; namely, his watch and chain, and his 
 shirt-pin." Still (the jeweller considers) that 
 might not apply to all times, though applying to 
 the present time. " Twenty minutes past two, 
 Mr. Drood, I set your watch at. Let me recom- 
 mend you not to let it run down, sir." 
 
 Edwin takes his watch, puts it on, and goes 
 out, thinking : '•' Dear old Jack ! If I were to 
 make an extra crease in my neckcloth, he would 
 think it worth noticing ! " 
 
 He strolls about and about, to pass the time 
 until the dinner hour. It somehow happens 
 that Cloisterham seems reproachful to him to- 
 day ; has fault to find with him, as if he had not 
 used it well ; but is far more pensive with him 
 than angry. His wonted carelessness is replaced 
 by a wistful looking at, and dwelling upon, all 
 the old landmarks. He will soon be far away, 
 and may never see them again, he thinks. Poor 
 youth ! poor youth ! 
 
 As dusk draws on, he paces the IMonks' 
 Vineyard. He has walked to and fro full half 
 an hour by the cathedral chimes, and it has 
 closed in dark, before he becomes quite aware 
 of a woman crouching on the ground near a 
 wicket-gate in a corner. The gate comm.ands a 
 cross by-path, little used in the gloaming, and 
 
 the figure must have been there all the time, 
 though he has but gradually and lately made it 
 out. 
 
 He strikes into that path, and walks up to the 
 wicket. By the light of a lamp near it, he sees 
 that the woman is of a haggard appearance, and 
 that her weazen chin is resting on her hands, 
 and that her eyes are staring — with an unwink- 
 ing, blind sort of steadfastness — before her. 
 
 Always kindly, but moved to be unusually kind 
 this evening, and having bestowed kind words 
 on most of the children and aged people he has 
 met, he at once bends down, and speaks to this 
 woman. 
 
 " Are you ill ? " 
 
 " No, deary," she answers without looking at 
 him, and with no departure from her strange 
 blind stare. 
 
 '• Are you blind ? " 
 
 " No, deary." 
 
 " Are you lost, homeless, faint ? What is the 
 matter, that you stay here in the cold so long, 
 without moving?" 
 
 By slow and stiff efforts, she appears to con- 
 tract her vision until it can rest upon him ; and 
 then a curious film passes over her, and she 
 begins to shake. 
 
 He straightens himself, recoils a step, and 
 looks down at her in a dread amazement ; for 
 he seems to know her. 
 
 " Good Heaven ! " he thinks next moment. 
 " Like Jack that night ! " 
 
 As he looks down at her, she looks up at him, 
 and whimpers : " My lungs is weakly : my lungs 
 is dreffle bad. Poor me, poor me, my cough is 
 rattling dry !" and coughs in confirmation horribly. 
 
 " Where do you come from ? " 
 
 " Come from London, deary." (Her cough 
 still rending her.) 
 
 " "Where are you going to ? " 
 
 " Back to London, deary. I came here, look- 
 ing for a needle in a haystack, and I ain't found 
 it. Lookee, deary ; give me three-and-sixpence, 
 and don't you be afeard for me. Ill get back 
 to London then, and trouble no one, I'm in a 
 business. — Ah me ! It's slack, it's slack, and 
 times is very bad ; but I can make a shift to 
 live by it." 
 , " Do you eat opium ? " 
 
 " Smokes it," she replies with difficulty, still 
 racked by her cough. " Give me three-and- 
 sixpence, and I'll lay it out well, and get back. 
 If you don't give me three-and-sixpence, don't 
 give me a brass farden. And if you do give me 
 three-and-sixpence, deary, I'll tell you some- 
 thing." 
 
 He counts the money from his pocket, and 
 
MR. JASPER IN CAPITAL SPIRITS. 
 
 71 
 
 puts it in her hand. She instantly clutches it 
 tight, anil rises to her feet with a croaking laugh 
 of satisfaction. 
 
 '• Bless ye ! Ilarkee, dear gen'l'm'n. What's 
 your Chris'n name ? " 
 
 " Edwin.'' 
 
 " Edwin, Edwin, Edwin," she repeats, trailing 
 off into a drowsy repetition of the word; and 
 then asks suddenly : " Is the short of that name 
 Eddy ? " 
 
 " it is sometimes called so," he replies with 
 the colour starting to his face. 
 
 " Don't sweethearts call it so ? " she asks, 
 pondering. 
 
 " How should I know ? " 
 
 " Haven't you a sweetheart, upon your soul?" 
 
 " None." 
 
 She is moving away, with another " Bless ye, 
 and thankee, deary!" when he adds: "You 
 were to tell me something ; you may as well do 
 so." 
 
 " So I was, so I was. Well, then. Whisjoer. 
 You be thankful that your name ain't Ned." 
 
 He looks at her quite steadily as he asks : 
 " "VA'hy ? " 
 
 " Because it's a bad name to have just now." 
 
 *' How a bad name ? " 
 
 "A threatened name. A dangerous name." 
 
 *' The proverb says that threatened men live 
 long," he tells her lightly. 
 
 " Then Xed — so threatened is he, wherever 
 he may be while I am talking to you, deary — 
 should live to all eternity ! " replies the woman. 
 
 She has leaned forward to say it in his ear, 
 with her forefinger shaking before his eyes, and 
 now huddles herself together, and with another 
 " Bless ye, and thankee ! " goes away in the 
 direction of the Travellers' Lodging-House. 
 
 This is not an inspiriting close to a dull day. 
 Alone, in a sequestered place, surrounded by 
 vestiges of old time and decay, it rather has a 
 tendency to call a shudder into being. He 
 makes for the better-lighted streets, and re- 
 solves, as he walks on, to say nothing of this 
 to-night, but to mention it to Jack (who alone 
 calls him Ned) as an odd coincidence, to- 
 morrow ; of course only as a coincidence, and 
 not as anything better worth remembering. 
 
 Still, it holds to him, as many things much 
 better worth remembering never did. He has 
 another mile or so, to linger out before the 
 dinner hour; and, when he walks over the 
 bridge and by the river, the woman's words are 
 in the rising wind, in the angry sky, in the 
 troubled water, in the flickering lights. There 
 is some solemn echo of them even in the 
 cathedral chime, which strikes a sudden sur- 
 
 prise to his heart as he turns in under the 
 archway of the gatehouse. 
 
 And so he goes up the postern stair. 
 
 John Jasper passes a more agreeable and 
 cheerful day than either of his guests. Having 
 no music lessons to give in the holiday season, 
 his time is his own, but for the cathedral ser- 
 vices. He is early among the shop-keepers, 
 ordering little table luxuries that his nephew 
 likes. His nephew will not be with him long, 
 he tells his provision dealers, and so must be 
 petted and made much of. While out on his 
 hospitable preparations, he looks in on Mr. 
 Sapsea ; and mentions that dear Ned, and that 
 inflammable young spark of j\Ir. Crisparkle's, 
 are to dine at the gatehouse to-day, and make 
 up their difference. Mr. Sapsea is by no means 
 friendly towards the inflammable young spark. 
 He says that his complexion is " Un-English." 
 And, when Mr. Sapsea has once declared any- 
 thing to be Un-ICnglish, he considers that thing 
 everlastingly sunk in the bottomless pit. 
 
 John Jasper is truly sorry to hear Mr. Sapsea 
 speak thus, for he knows right well that Mr, 
 Sapsea never speaks without a meaning, and 
 that he has a subtle trick of being right. I\Ir. 
 Sapsea (by a very remarkable coincidence) is ot 
 exactly that opinion. 
 
 Mr. Jasper is in beautiful voice this day. In 
 the pathetic supplication to have his heart in- 
 clined to keep this law, he quite astonishes his 
 fellows by his melodious power. He has never 
 sung difficult music with such skill and harmony 
 as in this day's Anthem. His nervous tempe- 
 rament is occasionally prone to take difiicult 
 music a little too quickly; to-day his time is 
 l^erfect. 
 
 These results are probably attained through a 
 grand composure of the spirits. The mere 
 mechanism of his throat is a little tender, for 
 he wears, both with his singing-robe and with 
 his ordinary dress, a large black scarf of strong 
 close-woven silk, slung loosely round his neck. 
 But his composure is so noticeable, that Mr. 
 Crisparkle speaks of it as they come out from 
 Vespers. 
 
 " I must thank you, Jasper, for the pleasure 
 with which I have heard you to-day. Beautiful ! 
 Delightful ! You could not have so outdone 
 yourself, I hope, without being wonderfully well." 
 
 " I a>n wonderfully well," 
 • " Nothing unequal," says the Minor Canon 
 with a smooth motion of his hand : " nothing 
 unsteady, nothing forced, nothing avoided ; all 
 thoroughly done in a masterly manner, with 
 perfect self-command." 
 
72 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 "Thank you. I hope so, if it is not too 
 
 much to say." 
 
 " One would think, Jasper, you had been 
 trying a new medicine for that occasional indis- 
 position of yours." 
 
 " No, really ? That's well observed ; for I 
 have." 
 
 " Then stick to it, my good fellow," says Mr. 
 Crisparkle, clapping him on the shoulder with 
 friendly encouragement, " stick to it." 
 
 " I will." 
 
 " I congratulate you," Mr. Crisparkle pursues 
 as they come out of the cathedral, " on all 
 accounts." 
 
 " Thank you again. I will walk round to the 
 Corner with you, if you don't object; I have 
 plenty of time before my company come ; and I 
 want to say a word to you, which I think you 
 will not be displeased to hear." 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " Well ! We were speaking, the other evening, 
 of my black humours." 
 
 ]\Ir. Crisparkle's face falls, and he shakes his 
 head deploringly. 
 
 " I said, you know, that I should make you 
 an antidote to those black humours ; and you 
 said you hoped I would consign them to the 
 flames." 
 
 " And I still hope so, Jasper." 
 
 " With the best reason in the world ! I mean 
 to burn this year's Diary at the year's end." 
 
 " Because you " Mr. Crisparkle brightens 
 
 greatly as he thus begins. 
 
 " You anticipate me. Because I feel that I 
 have been out of sorts, gloomy, bihous, brain- 
 oppressed, whatever it may be. You said I had 
 been exaggerative. So I have." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle's brightened face brightens 
 still more. 
 
 " I couldn't see it then, because I was out of 
 sorts ; but I am in a healthier state now, and I 
 acknowledge it with genuine pleasure. I made 
 a great deal of a very little; that's the fact." 
 
 " It does me good," cries Mr. Crisparkle, " to 
 hear you say it ! " > 
 
 " A man leading a monotonous life," Jasper 
 proceeds, "and getting his nerves, or his stomach, 
 out of order, dwells upon an idea until it loses 
 its proportions. That was my case with the idea 
 in question. So I shall burn the evidence of 
 my case when the book is full, and begin the 
 next volume with a clearer vision." 
 
 " This is better," says Mr. Crisparkle, stopping 
 at the steps of his own door to shake hands, 
 " than I could have hoped." 
 
 " Why, naturally," returns Jasper. " You had 
 but little reason to hope that I should become 
 
 more like yourself. You are always training your- 
 self to be, mind and body, as clear as crystal, 
 and you always are, and never change ; whereas 
 I am a muddy, sohtary, moping weed. How- 
 ever, I have got over that mope. Shall I wait 
 while you ask if Mr. Neville has left for my 
 place ? If not, he and I may walk round 
 together." 
 
 " I think," says Mr. Crisparkle, opening the 
 entrance-door with his key, " that he left some 
 time ago ; at least, I know he left, and I think 
 he has not come back. But I'll inquire. You 
 won't come in ? " 
 
 " My company wait," said Jasper with a smile. 
 
 The Minor Canon disappears, and in a few 
 moments returns. As he thought, Mr. Neville 
 has not come back ; indeed, as he remembers 
 now, Mr. Neville said he would probably go 
 straight to the gatehouse. 
 
 " Bad manners in a host ! " says Jasper. " My 
 company will be there before me ! What will 
 you bet that I don't find my company em- 
 bracing ? " 
 
 " I will bet — or I would, if ever I did bet," 
 returns Mr. Crisparkle, " that your company will 
 have a gay entertainer this evening." 
 
 Jasper nods, and laughs good night ! 
 
 He retraces his steps to the cathedral door, 
 and turns down past it to the gatehouse. He 
 sings, in a low voice and with delicate expres- 
 sion, as he walks along. It still seems as if a 
 false note were not within his power to-night, 
 and as if nothing could hurry or retard him. 
 Arriving thus under the arched entrance of his 
 dwelling, he pauses for an instant in the shelter 
 to pull off that great black scarf, and hang it in 
 a loop upon his arm. For that brief time his 
 face is knitted and stern. But it immediately 
 clears as he resumes his singing, and his way. 
 
 And so he goes up the postern stair. 
 
 The red light burns steadily all the evening 
 in the lighthouse on the margin of the tide of 
 busy life. Softened sounds and hum of trathc 
 pass it and flow on irregularly into the lonely 
 Precincts ; but very little else goes by, save 
 violent rushes of wind. It comes on to blow a 
 boisterous gale. 
 
 The Precincts are never particularly well 
 lighted; but the strong blasts of wind blowing 
 out many of the lamps (in some instances shat- 
 tering the frames too, and bringing the glass 
 rattling to the ground), they are unusually dark 
 to-night. The darkness is augmented and con- 
 fused by flying dust from the earth, dry twigs 
 from the trees, and great ragged fragments from 
 the rooks' nests up in the tower. The trees 
 
A BOISTEROUS CHRISTMAS-EVE. 
 
 n 
 
 themselves so toss and creak, as this tangible 
 l\irt of the darkness madly whirls about, that 
 they seem in peril of being torn out of the 
 earth ; while ever and again a crack, and a 
 rushing fall, denote that some large branch has 
 yielded to the storm. 
 
 No such ])o\ver of wind has blown for many a 
 winter ni^ht. Chimneys topple in the streets, 
 and peo[ile hold to posts and corners, and to 
 one another, to keep themselves upon their feet. 
 The violent rushes abate not, but increase in 
 frequency and fury until at midnight, when the 
 streets are empty, the storm goes thundering 
 along them, rattling at all the latches, and tear- 
 ing at all the shutters, as if warning the people 
 to get up and fly w'ith it, rather than have the 
 roots brought down upon their brains. 
 
 Still, the reil light burns steadily. Nothing 
 is steady but the red liglit. 
 
 All through the night the wind blows, and 
 abates not. But early in the morning, when 
 there is barely enough light in the east to dim 
 the stars, it begins to lull. From that time, 
 with occasional wild charges, like a wounded 
 monster dying, it drops and sinks ; and at full 
 dayliglit it is dead. 
 
 It is then seen that the hands of the cathedral 
 clock are torn off; that lead from the roof has 
 been stripped away, rolled up, and blown into 
 the Close; and that some stones have been dis- 
 placed from the summit of the great tower. 
 Christmas morning though it be, it is necessary 
 to send up workmen to ascertain the extent of 
 the damage done. These, led by Durdles, go 
 aloft ; while Air. Tope and a crowd of early 
 idlers gather down in Minor Canon Corner, 
 shading their eyes and watching for their ap- 
 pearance up there. 
 
 This cluster is suddenly broken and put aside 
 by the hands of Mr. Jasper. All the gazing 
 eyes are brought down, to the earth by his 
 loudly inquiring of Mr. Crisparkle, at an open 
 window^ : 
 
 " Where is my nephew ?" 
 
 " He has not been here. Is he not with 
 you?" 
 
 " No. He went down to the river last night, 
 with Mr. Neville, to look at the storm, and has 
 not been back. Call Mr. Neville ! " 
 
 " He left this morning early." 
 
 "Left this morning early? Let me in! let 
 me in ! " 
 
 There is no more looking up at the tower 
 now. All the assembled eyes are turned on 
 Mr. Jasper, white, half-dressed, ])anting, and 
 clinging to the rail before the Minor Canon's 
 house. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 IMI'E.VCHED. 
 
 LANDLESS had started 
 so early and walked at so good a 
 pace, that when the church bells 
 began to ring in Cloisterham for 
 morning service, he was eight miles 
 away. As he wanted his Ijreakfast by 
 that time, having set forth on a crust of 
 bread, he stopped at the next roadside 
 tavern to refresh. 
 
 Visitors in want of breakfost — unless they 
 were horses or cattle, for which class of guests 
 there was preparation enough in the way of water 
 trough and hay — were so unusual at the sign of 
 the Tilted Waggon, that it took a long time tO' 
 get the waggon into the track of tea and toast 
 and bacon ; Neville, in the interval, sitting in a 
 sanded parlour, wondering in how long a time 
 after he had gone the sneezy fire of damp fag- 
 gots would begin to make somebody else warm. 
 
 Indeed, the Tilted Waggon, as a cool esta- 
 blishment on the top of a hill, where the ground 
 before the door was puddled with damp hoofs 
 and trodden straw; where a scolding landlady 
 slapped a moist baby (with one red sock on, 
 and one wanting) in the bar ; where the cheese 
 was cast aground upon a shelf, in company with 
 a mouldy table-cloth and a green-handled knife, 
 in a sort of cast-iron canoe; where the pale- 
 faced bread shed tears of crumb over its ship- 
 wreck in another canoe ; where the family-linen, 
 half washed and half dried, led a public life of 
 lying about ; where everything to drink was 
 drunk out of mugs, and everything else was sug- 
 gestive of a rhyme to mugs ; the Tilted Waggon, 
 all these things considered, hardly kept its 
 painted promise of providing good entertain- 
 ment for Man and Beast. However, ]\Lan, in 
 the present case, was not critical, but took what 
 entertainment he could get, and went on agair^ 
 after a longer rest than he needed. 
 
 He stopped at some quarter of a mile from 
 the house, hesitating whether to pursue the road, 
 or to follow a cart track between two high hedge- 
 rows, which led across the slope of a breezy 
 heath, and evidently struck into the road again 
 by-and-by. He decided in favour of this latter 
 tiack, and pursued it with some toil ; the rise 
 being steep, and the way worn into deep ruts. 
 
 He was labouring along, when he became 
 aware of some other pedestrians behind liim. 
 As they were coming up at a faster pace than 
 his, he stood aside, against one of the high 
 banks, to let them pass. But their manner was. 
 
74 
 
 TH^ MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 very curious. Only four of them passed. Other 
 four slackened speed, and loitered as intending 
 to follow him when he should go on. The re- 
 mainder of the party (half-a-dozen, perhaps) 
 turned, and went back at a great rate. 
 
 He looked at the four behind him, and ne 
 looked at tlie four before him. They all returned 
 his look. He resumed his way. The four in 
 advance went on, constantly looking back ; the 
 four in the rear came closing up. 
 
 When they all ranged out from the narrow 
 track upon the open slope of the heath, and 
 this order was maintained, let him diverge as he 
 would to either side, there was no longer room 
 to doubt that he was beset by these fellows. He 
 stopped, as a last test; and they all stopped. 
 
 " Why do you attend upon me in this way ?" 
 he asked the whole body. " Are you a pack of 
 thieves ? " 
 
 " Don't answer him," said one of the number ; 
 he did not see which. " Better be quiet." 
 
 " Better be quiet ? " repeated Neville. " Who 
 said so ? " 
 
 Nobody replied. 
 
 " It's good advice, whichever of you skulkers 
 gave it," he went on angrily. " I will not sub- 
 mit to be penned in between four men there, 
 and four men there. I wish to pass, and I mean 
 to pass, those four in front." 
 
 They were all standing still; himself in- 
 cluded. 
 
 " If eight men, or four men, or two men, set 
 upon one," he proceeded, growing more en- 
 raged, " the one has no chance but to set his 
 mark upon some of them. And, by the Lord, 
 I'll do it, if I am interrupted any farther ! " 
 
 Shouldering his heavy stick, and quickening 
 his pace, he shot on to pass the four ahead. 
 The la'-gest and strongest man of the number 
 changed swiftly to the side on which he came 
 up, and dexterously closed with him and went 
 down with him ; but not before the heavy stick 
 had descended smartly. 
 
 " Let him be ! " said this man in a suppressed 
 voice, as they struggled together on the grass. 
 " Fair play ! His is the build of a girl to mine, 
 and he's got a weight strai:)ped to his back 
 besides. Let him alone. I'll manage him." 
 
 After a little rolling about in a close scuffle 
 which caused the faces of both to be besmeared 
 with blood, the man took his knee from Neville's 
 chest, and rose, saying : " There ! Now take 
 him arm-in-arm, any two of you ! " 
 
 It was immediately done. 
 
 "As to our being a pack of thieves, Mr. 
 Landless," said the man as he spat out some 
 blood, and wiped more from his face, " you 
 
 know better than that at mid-day. We wouldn't 
 have touched you if you hadn't forced us. We're 
 going to take you round to the high-road, any- 
 how, and you'll find hel]) enough against thieves 
 there, if you want it. — Wipe his face, somebody ; 
 see how it's a trickling down him ! " 
 
 When his face was cleansed, Neville recog- 
 nised in the speaker Joe, driver of the Cloister- 
 ham omnibus, whom he had seen but once, and 
 that on the day of his arrival. 
 
 " And what I recommend you for the present 
 is, don't talk, Mr. Landless. You'll find a 
 friend waiting for you at the high-road — gone 
 ahead by the other way when we split into two 
 parties — and you had much better say nothing 
 till you come up with him. Bring that stick 
 along, somebody else, and let's be moving ! " 
 
 Utterly bewildered, Neville stared around 
 him and said not a word. Walking between 
 his two conductors, who held his arms in theirs, 
 he went on, as in a dream, until they came 
 again into the high-road, and into the midst of 
 a little group of people. The men who had 
 turned back were among the group ; and its 
 central figures were Mr. Jasper and Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle. Neville's conductors took him up to 
 the Minor Canon, and there released him, as an 
 act of deference to that gentleman. 
 
 "What is all this, sir? What is the matter? 
 I feel as if I had lost my senses ! " cried Neville, 
 the group closing in around him. 
 
 " Where is my nephew ? " asked Mr. Jasper 
 wildly. 
 
 "Where is your nephew?" repeated Neville. 
 "Why do you ask me ?" 
 
 " I ask you," retorted Jasper, " because you 
 were the last person in his company, and he is 
 not to be found." 
 
 " Not to be found ! " cried Neville, aghast. 
 
 " Stay, stay ! " said Mr. Crisparkle. " Permit 
 me, Jasper. Mr. Neville, you are confounded; 
 collect your thoughts ; it is of great importance 
 that you should collect your thoughts ; attend 
 to me." 
 
 " I will try, sir, but I seem mad." 
 
 " You left INIr. Jasper last night with Edwin 
 Drood ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " At what hour ? " 
 
 " Was it at twelve o'clock ? " asked Neville, 
 with his hand to his confused head, and appeal- 
 ing to Jasi)er. 
 
 "Quite right," said Mr. Crisparkle; "the 
 hour INIr. Jasper has already named to me. 
 You went down to the river together ? " 
 
 " Undoubtedly. To see the action of the 
 wind there." 
 
WANTED— ED WIN DROOD. 
 
 75 
 
 " What followed ? How long did you stay 
 there?" 
 
 '•' About ten minutes ; I should say not more. 
 We then walked together to your house, and he 
 took leave of me at the door." 
 
 " Did he say that he was going down to the 
 river again ? " 
 
 *' No. He said that he was going straight 
 back." 
 
 The bystanders looked at one another, and at 
 Mr. Crisparkle. To Avhom INIr. Jasper, who had 
 been intensely watching Neville, said in a low, 
 distinct, suspicious voice : " What are those 
 stains upon his dress ? " 
 
 All eyes were turned towards the blood upon 
 his clothes. 
 
 " And here are the same stains upon this 
 stick ! " said Jasper, taking it from the hand of 
 the man who held it. " I know the stick to be 
 his, and he carried it last night. What does 
 this mean ? " 
 
 *'■ In the name of God, say what it means, 
 Neville ! " urged ]\Ir. Crisparkle. 
 
 " That man and I," said Neville, pointing 
 out his late adversar}', " had a struggle for the 
 stick just now, and you may see the same marks 
 on him, sir. What Avas I to suppose when I 
 found myself molested by eight people? Could 
 I dream of the true reason, when they would 
 give me none at all ? " 
 
 They admitted that they had thought it dis- 
 creet to be silent, and that the struggle had 
 taken place. And yet the very men who had 
 seen it looked darkly at the smears which the 
 bright cold air had already dried. 
 
 "We must return, Neville," said Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle. " Of course you will be glad to come 
 back to clear yourself?" 
 
 " Of course, sir." 
 
 " Mr. Landless will walk at my side," the 
 Minor Canon continued, looking around him. 
 " Come, Neville ! " 
 
 They set forth on the walk back ; and the 
 others, with one exception, straggled after them 
 at various distances. Jasper walked on the 
 other side of Neville, and never quitted that 
 position. He was silent, while Mr. Crisparkle 
 more than once repeated his former questions, 
 and while Neville repeated his former answers ; 
 also, while they both hazarded some explanatory 
 conjectures. He was obstinately silent, be- 
 cause Mr. Crisparkle's manner directly appealed 
 to him to take some part in the discussion, 
 and no appeal would move his fixed face. 
 ^^'^hen they drew near to the city, and it 
 was suggested by the ISIinor Canon tliat they 
 might do well in calling on the Mayor at once, | 
 
 he assented with a stern nod ; but he spake 
 no word until they stood in Mr. Sapsea's 
 parlour. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea being informed by Mr. Crisparkle 
 of the circumstances under which they desired 
 to make a voluntary statement before him, Mr. 
 Jasper broke silence by declaring that he placed 
 his whole reliance, humanly speaking, on Mr. 
 Sapsea's penetration. There was no conceiv- 
 able reason Avhy his nephew should have sud- 
 denly absconded, unless Mr. Sapsea could sug- 
 gest one, and then he would defer. There 
 was no intelligible likelihood of his having re- 
 turned to the river, and been accidentally 
 drowned in the dark, unless it should appear 
 likely to Mr. Sapsea, and then again he would 
 defer. He washed his hands as clean as he 
 could of all horrible suspicions, unless it should 
 appear to Mr. Sapsea that some such were in- 
 separable from his last companion before his 
 disappearance (not on good terms with pre- 
 viously), and then, once more, he would defer. 
 His own state of mind, he being distracted 
 with doubts, and labouring under dismal appre- 
 hensions, was not to be safely trusted ; but Mr. 
 Sapsea's was. 
 
 Mr. Sapsea expressed his opinion that the 
 case had a dark look ; in short (and here his 
 eyes rested full on Neville's countenance), an 
 Un-English complexion. Having made this 
 grand point, he wandered into a denser haze 
 and maze of nonsense than even a mayor might 
 have been expected to disport himself in, and 
 came out of it with the brilliant discovery that 
 to take the life of a fellow-creature was to take 
 something that didn't belong to you. He 
 wavered whether or no he should at once issue 
 his warrant for the committal of Neville Land- 
 less to gaol, under circumstances of grave sus- 
 picion ; and he might have gone so far as to do 
 it but for the indignant protest of the Minor 
 Canon : who undertook for the young man's re- 
 maining in his own house, and being produced 
 by his own hands, whenever demanded. Mr. 
 Jasper then understood Mr. Sapsea to suggest 
 that the river should be dragged, that its banks 
 should be rigidly examined, that particulars of 
 the disappearance should be sent to all outlying 
 places and to London, and that placards and 
 advertisements should be widely circulated im- 
 ploring Edwin Drood, if for any unknown rea- 
 son he had withdrawn himself from his uncle's 
 home and society, to take pity on that loving 
 kinsman's sore bereavement and distress, and 
 somehow inform him that he was yet alive. 
 Mr. Sapsea was perfectly understood, for this 
 was exactly his meaning (though he had said 
 
76 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 nothing about it) ; and measures were taken 
 
 towards all these ends immediately. ^ 
 
 It would be difficult to determine which was 
 the more oppressed with horror and amazement : 
 Neville Landless or John Jasper. But that 
 Jasper's position forced him to be active, while 
 Neville's forced him to be passive, there would 
 have been nothing to choose between them. 
 Each was bowed down and broken. 
 
 With the earliest light of the next morning, 
 men were at work upon the river, and other 
 men — most of whom volunteered for the service 
 — were examining the banks. All the livelong 
 day the search went on ; upon the river, with 
 barge and pole, and drag and net ; upon the 
 muddy and rushy shore, with jack-boots, hatchet, 
 spade, rope, dogs, and all imaginable appliances. 
 Even at night the river was specked with 
 lanterns, and lurid with fires ; far-off creeks, into 
 which the tide washed as it changed, had their 
 knots of watchers, listening to the lapping of 
 the stream, and looking out for any burden it 
 might bear ; remote shingly causeways near the 
 sea, and lonely points off which there was a race 
 of water, had their unwonted flaring cressets and 
 rough-coated figures when the next day dawned ; 
 but no trace of Edwin Drood revisited the light 
 of the sun. 
 
 All that day, again, the search went on. Now 
 in barge and boat ; and now ashore among the 
 osiers, or tramping amidst mud and stakes and 
 jagged stones in low-lying places, where solitary 
 water-marks and signals of strange shapes showed 
 like spectres, John Jasper worked and toiled. 
 But to no purpose ; for still no trace of Edwin 
 Drood revisited the light of the sun. 
 
 Setting his watches for that night again, so 
 that vigilant eyes should be kept on every change 
 of tide, he went home exhausted. Unkempt 
 and disordered, bedaubed with mud that had 
 dried upon him, and with much of his clothing 
 torn in rags, he had but just dropped into his 
 easy-chair, when Mr. Grewgious stood before him. 
 
 " This is strange news," said Mr. Grewgious. 
 
 "Strange and fearful news." 
 
 Jasper had merely lifted up his heavy eyes to 
 say it, and now dropped them again as he 
 drooped, worn out, over one side of his easy- 
 chair. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious smoothed his head and face, 
 and stood looking at the fire. 
 
 '• How is your ward ? " asked Jasper after a 
 time, in a faint, fatigued voice. 
 
 " Poor little thing ! You may imagine her 
 condition." 
 
 " Have you seen his sister ? " inquired Jasper 
 as before. 
 
 " Whose ? " 
 
 The curtness of the counter-question, and the 
 cool slow manner in which, as he put it, Mr. 
 Grewgious moved his eyes from the fire to his 
 companion's face, might at any other time have 
 been exasperating. In his depression and ex- 
 haustion, Jasper merely opened his eyes to say : 
 " The suspected young man's." 
 
 " Do you suspect him ? ' asked Mr. Grew- 
 gious. 
 
 " I don't know what to think. I cannot make 
 up my mind." 
 
 " Nor I," said Mr. Grewgious. " But, as you 
 spoke of him as the suspected young man, I 
 thought you had made up your mind. — I have 
 just left Miss Landless." 
 
 " What is her state ? " 
 
 " Defiance of all suspicion, and unbounded 
 faith in her brother." 
 
 " Poor thing ! " 
 
 " However," pursued Mr. Grewgious, " it is 
 not of her that I came to speak. It is of my 
 ward. I have a communication to make that 
 will surprise you. At least, it has surprised me." 
 
 Jasper, with a groaning sigh, turned wearily 
 in his chair. 
 
 " Shall I put it off till to-morrow ? " said Mr. 
 Grewgious. " Mind, I warn you that I think it 
 will surprise you ! " 
 
 More attention and concentration came into 
 John Jasper's eyes as they caught sight of Mr. 
 Grewgious smoothing his head again, and again 
 looking at the fire ; but now with a compressed 
 and determined mouth. 
 
 " What is it ? " demanded Jasper, becoming 
 upright in his chair. 
 
 " To be sure," said Mr. Grewgious, provok- 
 ingly slowly and internally, as he kept his eyes 
 on the fire, " I might have known it sooner ; 
 she gave me the opening ; but I am such an 
 exceedingly Angular man, that it never occurred 
 to me; 1 took all for granted." 
 
 " What is it ? " demanded Jasper once more. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious, alternately opening and shut- 
 ting the palms of his hands as he warmed them 
 at the fire, and looking fixedly at him sideways, 
 and never changing either his action or his look 
 in all that follow^ed, went on to reply. 
 
 " This young couple, the lost youth and Miss 
 Rosa, my ward, though so long betrothed, and 
 so long recognising their betrothal, and so near 
 being married " 
 
 Mr. Grewgious saw a staring white face, and 
 two quivering white lips, in the easy-chair, and 
 saw two muddy hands gripping its sides. But 
 for the hands, he might have thought he had 
 never seen the face. 
 
MR. GREWGIOUS PRODUCES A STARTLING EFFECT. 
 
 77 
 
 '= — This young couple came gradually to the 
 discovery (made on both sides pretty eciually, 1 
 think) that they would be happier and better, 
 both in their present and their future lives, as 
 aftectionate friends, or say ratlier as brother and 
 sister, than as husband and wife." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious saw a lead-coloured face in 
 the easy-chair, and on its surface dreadful start- 
 ing drops or bubbles, as if of steel. 
 
 "This young couple formed at length the 
 healthy resolution of interchanging their disco- 
 veries openly, sensibly, and tenderly. They met 
 for that purpose. Alter some innocent and gene- 
 rous talk, they agreed to dissolve their existing, 
 and their intended, relations for ever and ever." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious saw a ghastly figure rise, open- 
 mouthed, from the easy-chair, and lift its out- 
 spread hands towards its head. 
 
 ''■ One of this young couple, and that one 
 your nephew, fearful, however, that in the ten- 
 derness of your affection for him you would be 
 bitterly disappointed by so wide a departure 
 from his projected life, forbore to tell you the 
 secret for a i<t\\- days, and left it to be disclosed 
 by me, when I should come down to speak to 
 you, and he would be gone. I speak to you, 
 and he is gone." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious saw the ghastly figure throw 
 back its head, clutch its hair with its hands, and 
 turn with a writhing action from him. 
 
 " I have now said all I have to say : except 
 that this young couple parted firmly, though 
 not without tears and sorrow, on the evening 
 when you last saw them together." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious heard a terrible shriek, and 
 saw no ghastly figure, sitting or standing; saw 
 nothing but a heap of torn and miry clothes 
 upon the floor. 
 
 Not changing his action even then, he opened 
 and shut the palms of his hands as he warmed 
 them, and looked down at it. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 WHEN John Jasper recovered from his fit 
 or swoon, he found himself being tended 
 by Mr. and ]\Irs. Tope, whom his visitor had 
 summoned for the purpose. His visitor, wooden 
 of aspect, sat stiffly in a chair, with his hands 
 upon his knees, watching his recovery. 
 
 "There! You've come to nicely now, sir," 
 said the tearful IMrs. Tope; "you were tho- 
 roughly worn out, and no wonder ! " 
 
 " A man," said Mr. Grewgious, with his usual 
 air of repeating a lesson, " cannot have his re^.t 
 broken, and his mind cruelly tormented, and his 
 body overtaxed by fatigue, without being tho- 
 roughly worn out." 
 
 " I fear I have alarmed you ? " Jasper apolo- 
 gised faintly when he was heli)ed into his easy- 
 chair. 
 
 " Not at all, I thank you," answered Mr. 
 Grewgious. 
 
 " You are too considerate." 
 " Not at all, I thank you," answered Grew- 
 gious again. 
 
 " You must take some wine, sir," said Mrs. 
 Tope, " and the jelly that I had ready for you, 
 and that you wouldn't put your lips to at noon, 
 though I warned you what would come of it, 
 you know, and you not breakfasted ; and you 
 must have a wing of the roast fowl that has been 
 put back twenty times, if it's been put back 
 once. It shall all be on table in five minutes, 
 and this good gentleman belike will stop and 
 see you take it." 
 
 This good gentleman replied with a snort, 
 which might mean yes or no, or anything or 
 nothing, and which Mrs. Tope would have 
 found highly mystifying, but that her attention 
 was divided by the service of the table. 
 
 " You will take something with me ? " said 
 Jasper as the cloth was laid. 
 
 " I couldn't get a morsel down my tliroat, I 
 thank you," answered Mr. Grewgious. 
 
 Jasper both ate and drank almost voraciously. 
 Combined with the hurry in his mode of doing 
 it, was an evident indifference to the taste of 
 what he took, suggesting that he ate and drank 
 to fortify himself against any other failure of the 
 spirits, far more than to gratify his palate. Mr. 
 Grewgious, in the meantime, sat upright, with 
 no expression in his face, and a hard kind ot 
 imperturbably polite protest all over him : as 
 though he would have said, in reply to some 
 invitation to discourse : " I couldn't originate 
 the faintest approach to an observation on any 
 subject whatever, I thank you." 
 
 '• Do you know," said Jasper when lie had 
 pushed away his plate and glass, and had sat 
 meditating for a few minutes: "do you know 
 that I find some crumbs ol comfort in the com- 
 munication with whicli you have so much 
 amazed me ? " 
 
 "i;^you?" returned Mr. Grewgious; pretty 
 plainly adding the unspoken clause : " I don't, 
 I thank you ! " 
 
 "After recovering from the shock of a piece 
 of news of my dear boy so entirely unexpected, 
 and so destructive of all the castles I had built 
 
78 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 for him ; and after having had time to think of 
 it; yes." 
 
 " I shall be glad to pick up your crumbs/' 
 said Mr. Grewgious drily. 
 
 " Is there not, or is there — if I deceive myself, 
 tell me so, and shorten my pain — is there not, 
 or is there, hope that, finding himself in this 
 new position, and becoming sensitively alive to 
 the awkward burden of explanation, in this 
 quarter, and that, and the other, with which it 
 would load him, he avoided the awkwardness, 
 and took to flight ? " 
 
 " Such a thing might be," said Mr. Grewgious, 
 pondering. 
 
 " Such a tiling has been. I have read of 
 cases in which people, rather than face a seven 
 days' wonder, and have to account for them- 
 selves to the idle and impertinent, have taken 
 themselves away, and been long unheard of." 
 
 " I believe such things have happened," said 
 Mr. Grewgious, pondering still. 
 
 " When I had, and could have, no suspicion," 
 pursued Jasper, eagerly following the new track, 
 " that the dear lost boy had withheld anythingfrom 
 me — niost of all, such a leading matter as this — 
 what gleam of light was there for me in the whole 
 black sky ? When I supposed that his intended 
 wife was here, and his marriage close at hand, 
 how could I entertain the possibility of his volun- 
 tarily leaving this place in a manner that would 
 be so unaccountable, capricious, and cruel? 
 But now that I know what you have told me, is 
 there no little chink through which day pierces ? 
 Supposing him to have disappeared of his own 
 act, is not his disappearance more accountable 
 and less cruel? The fact of his having just 
 parted from your ward is in itself a sort of rea- 
 son for his going away. It does not make his 
 m.ysterious departure the less cruel to me, it is 
 true ; but it relieves it of cruelty to her." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious could not but assent to this. 
 
 "And even as to me," continued Jasper, still 
 pursuing the new track with ardour, and, as he 
 did so, brightening with hope: "he knew that 
 you were coming to me ; he knew that you were 
 intrusted to tell me what you have told me ; if 
 your doing so has awakened a new train of 
 thought in my perplexed mind, it reasonably 
 follows that, from the same premises, he might 
 have foreseen the inferences that I should draw. 
 Grant that he did foresee them ; and even the 
 cruelty to me — and who am I ? — John Jasper, 
 Music Master, vanishes ! " 
 
 Once more, Mr. Grewgious could not but 
 assent to this. 
 
 " I have had my distrusts, and terrible dis- 
 trusts they have been," said Jasper; " but your 
 
 disclosure, overpowering as it was at first — 
 showing me that my own dear boy had had a 
 great disappointing reservation from me, who so 
 fondly loved him, kindles hope within me. You 
 do not extinguish it when I state it, but admit it 
 to be a reasonable hope. I begin to believe it 
 possible :" here he clasped his hands : " that he 
 may have disappeared from among us of his 
 own accord, and that he may yet be alive and 
 well." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle came in at the moment. To 
 whom Mr. Jasper repeated : 
 
 " I begin to believe it possible that he may 
 have disappeared of his own accord, and may 
 yet be alive and well." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle taking a seat, and inquiring : 
 " Why so ? " Mr. Jasper repeated the arguments 
 he had just set forth. If they had been less 
 plausible than they were, the good Minor 
 Canon's mind would have been in a state of 
 preparation to receive them, as exculpatory of 
 his unfortunate pupil. But he, too, did really 
 attach great importance to the lost young man's 
 having been, so immediately before his disap- 
 pearance, placed in a new and embarrassing re- 
 lation towards every one acquainted with his 
 projects and affairs ; and the fact seemed to him 
 to present the question in a new light. 
 
 " I stated to Mr. Sapsea, when we waited on 
 him," said Jasper : as he really had done : " that 
 there was no quarrel or difiterence between the 
 two young men at their last meeting. We all 
 know that their first meeting was unfortunately 
 very far from amicable ; but all went smoothly 
 and quietly when they were last together at my 
 house. My dear boy was not in his usual spirits ; 
 he was depressed — I noticed that — and I am 
 bound henceforth to dwell upon the circum- 
 stance the more, now that I know there was a 
 special reason for his being depressed : a reason, 
 moreover, which may possibly have induced him 
 to absent himself." 
 
 " I pray to Heaven it may turn out so ! " ex- 
 claimed Mr. Crisparkle. 
 
 "/pray to Heaven it may turn out so !" re- 
 peated Jasper. " You know — and Mr. Grew- 
 gious should now know likewise — that I took a 
 great prepossession against Mr. Neville Land- 
 less, arising out of his furious conduct on that 
 first occasion. You know that I came to you, ex- 
 tremely apprehensive, on my dear boy's behalf, of 
 his mad violence. You know that I even entered 
 in my Diary, and showed the entry to you, that 
 I had dark forebodings against him. Mr. Grew- 
 gious ought to be possessed of the whole case. 
 He shall not, through any suppression of mine, 
 be informed of a part of it, and kept in ignorance 
 
SOMETHING UNUSUAL ABOUT CLOISTERHAM WEIR. 
 
 79 
 
 of another part of it. I wish him to be good 
 enough to understand that the communication 
 he has made to me has hopefully influenced my 
 mind, in spite of its having been, before this 
 mysterious occurrence took place, profoundly 
 impressed against young I.amlless." 
 
 This fairness troubled the Minor Canon much. 
 He felt that he was not as open in his own 
 dealing. He charged against himself reproach- 
 fully that he had suppressed, so for, the two 
 points of a second strong outbreak of temper 
 against Edwin Drood on the part of Neville, and 
 of the passion of jealousy having, to his own 
 certain knowledge, flamed up in Neville's breast 
 against him. He was convinced of Neville's 
 innocence of any part in the ugly disappearance ; 
 and yet so many litde circumstances combined 
 so woefully against him, that he dreaded to add 
 two more to their cumulative weight. He was 
 among the truest of men; but he had been 
 balancing in his mind, much to its distress, 
 whether his volunteering to tell these two frag- 
 ments of truth, at this time, would not be tanta- 
 mount to a piecing together of falsehood in the 
 place of truth. 
 
 However, here was a model before him. He 
 hesitated no longer. Addressing Mr. Grewgious, 
 as one placed in authority by the revelation he 
 had brought to bear on the mystery (and sur- 
 passingly Angular ]\Ir. Grewgious became when 
 he found himself in that unexpected position), 
 Mr. Crisparkle bore his testimony to Mr. Jasper's 
 strict sense of justice, and, expressing his abso- 
 lute confidence in the complete clearance of his 
 pupil from the least taint of suspicion, sooner or 
 later, avowed that his confidence in that young 
 gentleman had been formed, in spite of his con- 
 fidential knowledge that his temper was of the 
 hottest and fiercest, and that it was directly in- 
 censed against Mr. Jasper's nephew by the cir- 
 cumstance of his romantically supposing himself 
 to be enamoured of the same young lady. The 
 sanguine reaction manifest in jNIr. Jasper was 
 proof even against this unlooked-for declaration. 
 It turned him paler ; but he repeated that he 
 would cling to the hope he had derived from Mr. 
 Grewgious ; and that if no trace of his dear boy 
 were found, leading to the dreadful inference that 
 he had been made away with, he would cherish 
 unto the last stretch of possibility the idea that 
 he might have absconded of his own wild will. 
 
 Now, it fell out that Mr. Crisparkle, going 
 away from this conference still very uneasy in 
 his mind, and very much troubled on behalf of 
 the young man whom he held as a kind of 
 prisoner in his own house, took a memorable 
 night walk. 
 
 He walked to Cloisterham Weir. 
 
 He often did so, and consecjuently there was 
 nothing remarkable in his footsteps tending that 
 way. But the preoccupation of his mind so 
 hindered him from planning any walk, or taking 
 heed of the objects he i)assed, that his first con- 
 sciousness of being near the Weir was derived 
 from the sound of the falling water close at hand. 
 
 " How did I come here ?" was his first thought 
 as he stopped. 
 
 " Why did I come here ?" was his second. 
 
 Then he stood intently listening to the water. 
 A familiar passage in his reading, about airy 
 tongues that syllable men's names, rose so un- 
 bidden to his ear, that he put it from him with 
 his hand, as if it were tangible. 
 
 It was starlight. The AVeir was full two miles 
 above the spot to which the young men had re- 
 paired to watch the storm. No search had 
 been made up here, for the tide had been run- 
 ning strongly down at that time of the night of 
 Christmas-eve, and the likeliest places for the 
 discovery of a body, if a fatal accident had hap- 
 pened under such circumstances, all lay — both 
 when the tide ebbed, and when it flowed again 
 — between that spot and the sea. The water 
 came over the Weir with its usual sound on a 
 cold starlight night, and little could be seen of 
 it ; yet Mr. Crisparkle had a strange idea that 
 something unusual hung about the place. 
 
 He reasoned with himself: What was it? 
 Where was it? Put it to the proof. Which 
 sense did it address ? 
 
 No sense reported anything unusual there. 
 He listened again, and his sense of hearing 
 again checked the water coming over the Weir 
 with its usual sound on a cold starlight night. 
 
 Knowing very well that the m)stery with 
 which his mind was occupied might of itself give 
 the place this haunted air, he strained those 
 hawk's eyes of his for the correction of his sight. 
 He got closer to the Weir, and peered at its 
 well-knoAvn posts and timbers. Nothing in the 
 least unusual was remotely shadowed forth. But 
 he resolved that he would come back early in 
 the morning. 
 
 ■ The Weir ran through his broken sleep all 
 night, and he was back again at sunrise. It 
 was a bright frosty morning. The whole com- 
 position before him, when he stood where he 
 had stood last night, was clearly discernible in 
 its minutest details. He had surveyed it closely 
 for some minutes, and was about to withdraw 
 his eyes, when they were attracted keenly to 
 one spot. 
 
 He turned his back upon the Weir, and looked 
 far away at the sky, and at the earth, and then 
 
So 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 looked again at that one spot. It caught his 
 sight again immediately, and he concentrated 
 his vision upon it. He could not lose it now, 
 though it was but sucli a speck in tlie landscape. 
 It fascinated his sigiit. His hands began pluck- 
 ing off his coat. For it struck iiini that at that 
 spot — a corner of the Weir— something glistened, 
 ■which did not move and come over with the 
 •glistening water drops, but remained stationar)\ 
 He assured himself of this, he threw off his 
 clothes, he plunged into the icy water, and swam 
 for the spot. Climbing the timbers, he took 
 
 from them, caught among their interstices by its 
 chain, a gold w^tch, bearing engraved upon its 
 back E. D. 
 
 He brought the watch to the bank, swam to 
 the Weir again, climbed it, and dived off. He 
 knew every hole and corner of all the depths, 
 and dived and dived and dived, until he could 
 bear the cold no more. His notion was, that 
 he would find the body ; he only found a shirt- 
 pin sticking in some mud and ooze. 
 
 With these discoveries he returned to Clois- 
 terham, and, taking Neville Landless with him, 
 
 MK. GREWGIOUS HAS HIS SUSPICIONS. 
 
 went straight to the Mayor. ]\Ir. Jasper was 
 •sent for, the watch and shirt-pin were identified, 
 Neville was detained, and the wildest frenzy and 
 fatuity of evil report rose against him. He was 
 of that vindictive and violent nature, that but 
 for his poor sister, who alone had influence over 
 him, and out of whose sight he was never to be 
 trusted, he would be in the daily commission of 
 murde.. Before coming to England he had 
 caused to be wliipped to death sundry " Natives " 
 — nomadic persons, encamping now in Asia, 
 now in Africa, now in the West Indies, and now 
 
 at the North Pole — vaguely supposed in Clois- 
 terham to be always black, always of great 
 virtue, always calling themselves Me, and ever)'- 
 body else Massa or Missie (according to sex), 
 and always reading tracts of the obscurest mean- 
 ing, in broken English, but always accurately 
 understanding them in the purest mother tongue. 
 He had nearly brought Mrs. Crisparkle's grey 
 hairs with sorrow to the grave. (Those original 
 expressions were Mr. Sapsea's.) He had re- 
 peatedly said he would have Mr. Crisparkle's 
 life. He had repeatedly said he would have 
 
THE CASE AGAINST NEVILLE. 
 
 Si 
 
 everybody's life, and become, in effect, the last 
 man. He had been brought down to Cloister- 
 ham, from London, by an eminent Philan- 
 thropist, and why ? Because that Philanthropist 
 had expressly declared : " I owe it to my fellow- 
 creatures that he should be, in the words of 
 Bentham, where he is the cause of the greatest 
 danger to the smallest number." 
 
 These dropping shots from the blunderbusses 
 of blunder-headedness might not have hit him 
 in a vital place. But he had to stand against a 
 trained and well-directed fire of arms of pre- 
 cision too. He had notoriously threatened the 
 lost young man, and had, according to the show- 
 ing of his own faithful friend and tutor who 
 strove so hard for him, a cause of bitter ani- 
 mosity (created by himself, and stated by him- 
 self) against that ill-starred fellow. He had 
 armed himself with an offensive weapon for the 
 fatal night, and he had gone off early in the 
 morning, after making preparations for departure. 
 He had been found with traces of blood on 
 him ; truly, they might have been wholly caused 
 as he represented, but they might not, also. On 
 a search-warrant being issued for the examina- 
 tion of his room, clothes, and so forth, it was 
 discovered that he had destroyed all his papers, 
 and rearranged all his possessions, on the very 
 afternoon of the disappearance. The watch 
 found at the Weir was challenged by the 
 jeweller as one he had wound and set for Edwin 
 Drood, at twenty minutes past two on that 
 same afternoon ; and it had run down before 
 being cast into the water; and it was the 
 jeweller's positive opinion that it had never been 
 rewound. This would justify the hypothesis 
 that the watch was taken from him not long 
 after he left Mr. Jasper's house at midnight, in 
 company with the last person seen with him, 
 and that it had been thrown away after being 
 retained some hours. Why thrown away? If 
 he had been murdered, and so artfully disfigured, 
 or concealed, or both, as that the murderer 
 hoped identification to be impossible, except 
 from something that he wore, assuredly the 
 murderer would seek to remove from the body 
 the most lasting, the best known, and the most 
 easily recognisable things upon it. Those things 
 would be the watch and shirt-pin. As to his 
 opportunities of casting them into the river, if 
 he were the object of these suspicions, they were 
 easy. For, he had been seen by many persons 
 wandering about on that side of the city — in- 
 deed, on all sides of it — in a miserable and seem- 
 ingly half-distracted manner. As to the choice of 
 the spot, obviously such criminating evidence had 
 better take its chance of being found anywhere, 
 Edwin Drood, 6. 
 
 rather than upon himself, or in his possession. 
 Concerning the reconciliatory nature of the ap- 
 jwinted meeting between the two young men, 
 very little could be made of that in young Land- 
 less's favour ; for it distinctly appeared that the 
 meeting originated, not with him, but with Mr. 
 Crisparkle, and that it had been urged on by 
 Mr. Crisparkle ; and who could say how un- 
 willingly, or in what ill-conditioned mood, his 
 enforced pupil had gone to it ? The more his 
 case was looked into, the weaker it became in 
 every point. Even the broad suggestion that 
 the lost young man hatl abscondetl was ren- 
 dered additionally improbable on the showing 
 of the young lady from whom he had so lately 
 parted ; for, what did she say, with great ear- 
 nestness and sorrow, when interrogated ? That 
 he had, expressly and enthusiastically, planned 
 with her that he would await the arrival of her 
 guardian, Mr. Grewgious. And yet, be it ob- 
 served, he disappeared before that gentleman 
 appeared. 
 
 On the suspicions thus urged and supported 
 Neville was detained, and re-detained, and the 
 search was pressed on every hand, and Jasper 
 laboured night and day. But nothing more was 
 found. No discovery being made which proved 
 the lost man to be dead, it at length became 
 necessary to release the person suspected of 
 having made away with him. Neville was set 
 at large. Then, a consequence ensued which 
 Mr. Crisparkle had too well foreseen. Neville 
 must leave the place, for the place shunned him 
 and cast him out. Even had it not been so, 
 the dear old china shepherdess would have 
 worried herself to death with fears for her son, 
 and with general trepidation occasioned by their 
 having such an inmate. Even had that not 
 been so, the authority to which the Minor Canon 
 deferred ofticially would have settled the point. 
 
 "Mr. Crisparkle," quoth the Dean, " human 
 justice may err, but it must act according to its- 
 lights. The days of taking sanctuary are past. 
 This young man must not take sanctuary with us." 
 
 " You mean that he must leave my house, sir?" 
 
 " Mr. Crisparkle," returned the prudent Dean,. 
 " I claim no authority in your house. I merely 
 confer with you on the painful necessity you find, 
 yourself under of depriving this young man of the 
 great advantages of your counsel and instruction." 
 
 " It is very lamentable, sir," Mr. Crisparkle 
 represented. 
 
 " Very much so," the Dean assented. 
 
 " And if it be a necessity " Mr. Crisparkle 
 
 faltered. 
 
 " As you unfortunately find it to be," returned 
 the Dean. 
 
82 
 
 THE MYSTER V OF ED WIN DROOD. 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle bowed submissively. " It is 
 hard to prejudge his case, sir, but I am sensible 
 that " 
 
 " Just so. Perfectly. As you say, Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle," interposed the Dean, nodding his head 
 smoothly, " there is nothing else to be done. 
 No doubt, no doubt. There is no alternative, 
 as your good sense has discovered." 
 
 " I am entirely satisfied of his perfect inno- 
 cence, sir, nevertheless." 
 
 '• We-e-ell ! " said the Dean in a more confi- 
 dential tone, and slightly glancing around him. 
 " I would not say so, generally. Not generally. 
 
 Enough of suspicion attaches to him to 
 
 No, I think I would not say so, generally." 
 
 Mr. Crisjiarkle bowed again. 
 
 " It does not become us, perhaps," pursued 
 the Dean, " to be partisans. Not partisans. We 
 clergy keep our hearts warm and our heads 
 cool, and we hold a judicious middle course." 
 
 " I hope you do not object, sir, to my having 
 stated in public, emphatically, that he will re- 
 appear here whenever any new suspicion may 
 be awakened, or any new circumstance may 
 come to light in this extraordinary matter ? " 
 
 " Not at all," returned the Dean. " And yet, 
 do you know, I don't think," with a very nice 
 and neat emphasis on those two words : " I 
 doiit think I would state it emphatically. State 
 it? Ye-e-es ! But emphatically? No-o-o. I 
 think not. In point of fact, Mr. Crisparkle, 
 keeping our hearts warm and our heads cool, 
 we clergy need do nothing emphatically." 
 
 So Minor Canon Row knew Neville Landless 
 no more : and he went whithersoever he would, 
 or could, with a blight upon his name and fame. 
 
 It was not until then that John Jasper silently 
 resumed his place in the choir. Haggard and 
 red-eyed, his hopes plainly had deserted him, 
 his sanguine mood was gone, and all his worst 
 misgivings had come back. A day or two after- 
 wards, while unrobing, he took his Diary from 
 a pocket of his coat, turned the leaves, and with 
 an impressive look, and without one spoken 
 word, handed this entry to Mr. Crisparkle to 
 read : 
 
 " My dear boy is murdered. The discovery of the 
 watch and shirt-pin convinces me that he was murdered 
 that night, and that his jewelleiy was taken from him to 
 prevent identification by its means. All the delusive 
 hopes I had founded on his separation from his betrothed 
 ■wile I give to the winds. They perish before this fatal 
 discovery. I now swear, and record the oath on this 
 page, That I never more will discuss this mysterj' with any 
 human creature until I hold the clue to it in my hand. 
 That I never will relax in my secrecy or in my search. 
 That I will fasten the crime of the murder of my dear 
 dead boy upon the murderer. And, That I devote 
 myself to his destruction." 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 
 PHILANTHROPY, PROFESSIONAL AND UNPRO- 
 FESSIONAL. 
 
 I^ULL half a year had come and gone, 
 and Mr. Crisparkle sat in a waiting- 
 room in the London chief offices of 
 the Haven of Philanthropy until he 
 could have audience of Mr. Honey- 
 thunder. 
 In his college days of athletic exer- 
 cises, Mr. Crisparkle had known profes- 
 sors of the Noble Art of fisticufts, and had 
 attended two or three of their gloved gatherings. 
 He had now an opportunity of observing that as 
 to the phrenological formation of the backs of 
 their heads, the Professing Philanthropists were 
 uncommonly like the Pugilists. In the develop- 
 ment of all those organs which constitute, or 
 attend, a propensity to "pitch into" your fellow- 
 creatures, the Philanthropists were remarkably 
 favoured. There were several Professors passing 
 in and out, with exactly the aggressive air upon 
 them of being ready for a turn-up with any 
 Novice who might happen to be on hand, that 
 Mr. Crisparkle well remembered in the circles 
 of the Fancy. Preparations were in progress 
 for a moral little Mill somewhere on the rural 
 circuit, and other Professors were backing this 
 or that Heavy-Weight as good for such or such 
 speech -making hits, so very much after the 
 manner of the sporting publicans, that the in- 
 tended Resolutions might have been Rounds. 
 In an official manager of these displays much 
 celebrated for his platform tactics, Mr. Crisparkle 
 recognised (in a suit of black) the counterpart 
 of a deceased benefactor of his species, an emi- 
 nent public character, Once known to fame as 
 Frosty-faced Fogo, who in days of yore super- 
 intended the formation of the magic circle with 
 the ropes and stakes. There were only three 
 conditions of resemblance wanting between these 
 Professors and those. Firstl)', the Philanthro- 
 pists were in very bad training : much too fleshy, 
 and presenting, both in face and figure, a super- 
 abundance of what is known to Pugihstic Ex- 
 perts as Suet Pudding. Secondly, the Philan- 
 thropists had not the good temper of the Pugilists, 
 and used worse language. Thirdly, their fighting 
 code stood in great need of revision, as empower- 
 ing them not only to bore their man to the ropes, 
 but to bore him to the confines of distraction ; 
 also to hit him when he was down, hit him any- 
 where and anyhow, kick him, stamp upon him, 
 gouge him, and maul him behind his back with- 
 out mercy. In these last particulars the Pro- 
 
PHILANTHROPIC VIEWS. 
 
 83 
 
 fessors of the Noble Art were much nobler than 
 the Professors of Philanthropy. 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle v/as so completely lost in 
 musing on these similarities and dissimilarities, 
 at the same time watching the crowd which 
 came and went by, always, as it seemed, on 
 errands of antagonistically snatching something 
 from somebody, and never giving anything to 
 anN'bod}-, that his name was called before he 
 heard it. On his at length responding, he was 
 shown by a miserably shabby and under-paid 
 stipendiary Philanthropist (who could hardly 
 have done worse if he had taken service with a 
 declared enemy of the human race) to Mr. 
 Honeythunder's room. 
 
 " Sir," said ]\Ir. Honeythunder in his tremen- 
 dous voice, like a schoolmaster issuing orders 
 to a boy of whom he had a bad opinion, " sit 
 down." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle seated himself. 
 
 Mr. Honeythunder having signed the remain- 
 ing few score of a itw thousand circulars, calling 
 upon a corresponding number of families without 
 means to come forward, stump up instantly, and 
 be Philanthropists, or go to the Devil, another 
 shabby stipendiary Philanthropist (highly dis- 
 interested, if in earnest) gathered these into a 
 basket and walked off with them. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Crisparkle," said Mr. Honey- 
 thunder, turning his chair half round towards 
 him when they were alone, and squaring his 
 arms with his hands on his knees, and his brows 
 knitted, as if he added, I am going to make 
 short work of yoii : " now, Mr. Crisparkle, we 
 entertain different views, you and I, sir, of the 
 sanctity of human life." 
 
 " Do we ? " returned the Minor Canon. 
 
 " We do, sir." 
 
 " Might I ask you," said the Minor Canon, 
 " what are your views on that subj ect ? " 
 
 " That human life is a thing to be held sacred, 
 sir." 
 
 " Might I ask you," pursued the Minor Canon 
 as before, " what you suppose to be my views 
 on that subject ?" 
 
 " By George, sir ! " returned the Philanthro- 
 pist, squaring his arms still more, as he frowned 
 on Mr, Crisparkle, " they are known to your- 
 self." 
 
 " Readily admitted. But you began by saying 
 that we took different views, you know. There- 
 fore (or you could not say so) you must have 
 set up some views as mine. Pray what views 
 /lave you set up as mine ? " 
 
 " Here is a man — and a young man," said 
 Mr. Honeythunder, as if that made the matter 
 infinitely worse, and he could have easily borne 
 
 the loss of an old one, " swept off the face of 
 the earth by a deed of violence. What do you 
 call that ? " 
 
 " Murder," said the Minor Canon. 
 
 " What do you call the doer of that deed, sir ? " 
 
 " A murderer," said the Minor Canon. 
 
 " I am glad to hear you admit so much, sir," 
 retorted Mr. Honeythunder in his most offen- 
 sive manner ; " and I candidly tell you that I 
 didn't expect it." Here he lowered heavily at 
 Mr. Crisparkle again. 
 
 '■' Be so good as to explain what you mean by 
 those very unjustifiable expressions." 
 
 " I don't sit here, sir," returned the Philan- 
 thropist, raising his voice to a roar, " to be 
 browbeaten." 
 
 " As the only other person present, no one 
 can possibly know that better than I do," re- 
 turned the Minor Canon very quietly. " But I 
 interrupt your explanation." 
 
 " Murder ! " proceeded Mr. Honeythunder in 
 a kind of boisterous reverie, with his platform 
 folding of his arms, and his platform nod of 
 abhorrent reflection after each short sentiment 
 of a word. " Bloodshed ! Abel ! Cain ! I hold 
 no terms with Cain. I repudiate with a shudder 
 the red hand when it is offered me." 
 
 Instead of instantly leaping into his chair and 
 cheering himself hoarse, as the Brotherhood in 
 public meeting assembled would infallibly have 
 done on this cue, Mr. Crisparkle merely re- 
 versed the quiet crossing of his legs, and said 
 mildly : " Don't let me interrupt your explana- 
 tion — when you begin it." 
 
 " The Commandments say, no murder. NO 
 murder, sir ! " proceeded Mr. Honeythunder, 
 platformally pausing as if he took Mr. Crisjxirkle 
 to task for having distinctly asserted that they 
 said : You may do a little murder, and then 
 leave off. 
 
 "And they also say, you shall bear no false 
 witness," observed Mr. Crisparkle. 
 
 " Enough ! " bellowed Mr. Honeythunder with 
 a solemnity and severity that would have brought 
 the house down at a meeting. " E — e — nough ! 
 My late wards being now of age, and I being 
 released from a trust which I cannot contem- 
 plate without a thrill of horror, there are the 
 accounts which you have undertaken to accept 
 on their behalf, and there is a statement of the 
 balance which you have undertaken to receive, 
 and which you cannot receive too soon. And 
 let me tell you, sir, I wish that, as a man and a 
 i\Iinor Canon, you were better employed," with 
 a nod. " Better employed,"' with another nod. 
 " Bet — ter em — ployed ! " with another and the 
 three nods added up. 
 
84 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle rose; a little heated in the 
 face, but with ])erfcct command of himself. 
 
 " Mr. Honeythunder," he said, taking up the 
 papers referred to, " my being better or worse 
 employed than I am at present is a matter of 
 taste and opinion. You might think me better 
 employed in enrolling myself a member of your 
 Society." 
 
 " Ay, indeed, sir ! " retorted Mr. Honey- 
 thunder, shaking his head in a threatening 
 manner. " It would have been better for you 
 if you had done that long ago ! " 
 
 " I think otherwise." 
 
 " Or," said Mr. Honeythunder, shaking his 
 head again, " I might think one of your pro- 
 fession better employed in devoting himself to 
 the discovery and punishment of guilt than in 
 leaving that duty to be undertaken by a layman." 
 
 " I may regard my profession from a point 
 of view which teaches me that its first duty is 
 towards those who are in necessity and tribula- 
 tion, who are desolate and oppressed," said Mr. 
 Crisparkle. " However, as I have quite clearly 
 satisfied myself that it is no part of my profes- 
 sion to make professions, I say no more of that. 
 But I owe it to Mr. Neville, and to Mr. Neville's 
 sister (and in a much lower degree to myself), 
 to say to you that I kno7u I was in the full pos- 
 session and understanding of Mr, Neville's mind 
 and heart at the time of this occurrence; and 
 that, without in the least colouring or concealing 
 what was to be deplored in him and required to 
 be corrected,^ feel certain that his tale is true. 
 Feeling that certainty, I befriend him. As long 
 as that certainty shall last, I will befriend him. 
 And, if any consideration could shake me in 
 this resolve, I shoultl be so ashamed of myself 
 for my meanness, that no man's good opinion 
 — no, nor no woman's — so gained, could com- 
 pensate me for the loss of my own." 
 
 Good fellow ! manly fellow ! And he was so 
 modest, too. There was no more self-assertion 
 in the Minor Canon than in the school-boy who 
 had stood in the breezy playing-fields keeping a 
 wicket. He was simply and staunchly true to 
 his duty alike in the large case and in the small. 
 So all true souls ever are. So every true soul 
 ever was, ever is, and ever will be. There is 
 nothing little to the really great in spirit. 
 
 "Then who do you make out did the deed?" 
 asked Mr. Honeythunder, turning on him 
 abruj)tly. 
 
 " Heaven forbid," said Mr. Crisparkle, " that 
 in my desire to clear one man I should lightly 
 criminate another ! I accuse no one." 
 
 " Tcha ! " ejaculated Mr. Honeythunder with 
 great disgust; for this was by no means the 
 
 principle on which the Philanthropic Brother- 
 hood usually proceeded. "And, sir, you arc 
 not a disinterested witness, we must bear in 
 mind." 
 
 " How am I an interested one ? " inquired 
 Mr. Crisparkle, smiling innocently, at a loss to 
 imagine. 
 
 " There was a certain stipend, sir, paid to 
 you for your pupil, which may have warped 
 your judgment a bit," said Mr. Honeythunder 
 coarsely. 
 
 "Perhaps I expect to retain it still?" Mr. 
 Crisparkle returned, enlightened. '' Do you 
 mean that too ? " 
 
 " Well, sir," returned the professional Philan- 
 thropist, getting up and thrusting his hands dowiii 
 into his trousers pockets, " I don't go about 
 measuring people for caps. If people find I have 
 any about me that fit 'em, they can put 'em on 
 and wear 'em, if they like. That's their look- 
 out : not mine." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle eyed him with a just indigna- 
 tion, and took him to task thus : 
 
 " Mr. Honeythunder, I hoped when I came 
 in here that I might be under no necessity of 
 commenting on the introduction of platform 
 manners or platform manoeuvres among the de- 
 cent forbearances of private life. But you have 
 given me such a specimen of both, that I should 
 be a fit subject for both if I remained silent 
 respecting them. They are detestable." 
 
 " They don't s\i\t you, I dare say, sir." 
 
 " They are," repeated Mr. Crisparkle, without 
 noticing the interruption, "detestable. They 
 violate equally the justice that should belong to 
 Christians, and the restraints that should belong 
 to gentlemen. You assume a great crime to 
 have been committed by one whom I, acquainted 
 with the attendant circumstances, and having 
 numerous reasons on my side, devoutly believe 
 to be innocent of it. Because I difter from you 
 on that vital point, what is your platform re- 
 source? Instantly to turn upon me, charging 
 that I have no sense of the enormity of the 
 crime itself, but am its aider and abettor ! So, 
 another time — taking me as representing your 
 opponent in other cases — you set up a platform 
 credulity; amoved and seconded and carried- 
 unanimously profession of faith in some ridicu- 
 lous delusion or mischievous imposition. I 
 decline to believe it, and you fall back upon 
 your platform resource of proclaiming that I 
 believe nothing; that because I will not bow 
 down to a false god of your making, I deny the 
 true God ! Another time you make the plat- 
 form discovery that war is a calamity, and you 
 propose to abolish it by a string of twisted reso- 
 
MR. CRISPARKLE ON THE PLATEORM. 
 
 85 
 
 lutlons tossed into the air like the tail of a kite. 
 I do not aihnit the discovery to be yours in the 
 least, and I have not a grain of faith in your 
 remedy. Again, your platform resource of re- 
 presenting me as revelling in the horrors of a 
 battle-field like a fiend incarnate ! Another time, 
 in another of your undiscriminating platform 
 rushes, you would punish the sober for the 
 drunken. I claim consideration for the comfort, 
 convenience, and refreshment of the sober; and 
 you presently make platform proclamation that 
 I have a depraved desire to turn Heaven's crea- 
 tures into swine and wild beasts ! In all such 
 cases your movers, and your seconders, and 
 your supporters — your regular Professors of all 
 degrees, run amuck like so many mad Malays ; 
 habitually attributing the lowest and basest 
 motives with the utmost recklessness (let me 
 call your attention to a recent instance in your- 
 self for which you should blush), and quoting 
 figures which you know to be as wilfully one- 
 siiled as a statement of any complicated account 
 that should be all Creditor side and no Debtor, 
 or all Debtor side and no Creditor. Therefore 
 it is, IVIr. Honeythunder, that I consider the 
 platform a sufficiently bad example and a suffi- 
 ciently bad school, even in public life ; but 
 hold that, carried into private life, it becomes 
 an unendurable nuisance." 
 
 " These are strong words, sir ! " exclaimed 
 the Philanthropist. 
 
 " I hope so," said Mr. Crisparkle. " Good 
 morning." 
 
 He walked out of the Haven at a great rate, 
 but soon fell into his regular brisk pace, and soon 
 had a smile upon his face as he went along, Avon- 
 dering what the china shepherdess would have 
 said if she had seen him pounding Mr. Honey- 
 thunder in the late little lively affair. For Mr. 
 Crisparkle had just enough of harmless vanity to 
 hope that he had hit hard, and to glow with the 
 belief that he had trimmed the Philanthropic 
 jacket pretty handsomely. 
 
 He took himself to Staple Inn, but not to 
 P. J. T. and Mr. Grewgious. Full many a creak- 
 ing stair he climbed before he reached some 
 attic rooms in a corner, turned the latch of their 
 unbolted door, and stood beside the table of 
 Neville Landless. 
 
 An air of retreat and solitude hung about the 
 rooms and about their inhabitant. He was 
 much worn, and so were they. Their sloping 
 ceilings, cumbrous rusty locks and grates, and 
 heavy wooden bins and beams, slowly moulder- 
 ing withal, had a prisonous look, and he had 
 the haggard face of a ])risoner. Yet the sunlight 
 shone in at the ugly garret window, which had a 
 
 pent-house to itself thrust out among the tiles ; 
 and on the cracked and smoke-blackened parapet 
 beyond, some of the deluded si)arrows of the 
 place rheumatically hopped, like little feathered 
 cripples who had left their crutches in their 
 nests \ and there was a play of living leaves at 
 hand that changed the air, and made an imper- 
 fect sort of music in it that would have been 
 melody in the country. 
 
 The rooms were sparely furnished, but with 
 good store of books. Everything expressed the 
 abode of a poor student. That Mr. Crisparkle 
 had been either chooser, lender, or donor of the 
 books, or that he combined the three characters, 
 might have been easily seen in the friendly beam 
 of his eyes upon them as he entered. 
 
 " How goes it, Neville?" 
 
 " I am in good heart, Mr. Crisparkle, and 
 working away." 
 
 " I wish your eyes were not quite so large and 
 not quite so bright," said the Minor Canon, 
 slowly releasing the hand he had taken in his. 
 
 " They brighten at the sight of you," returned 
 Neville. " If you were to fall away from me, 
 they would soon be dull enough." 
 
 " Rally, rally ! " urged the other in a stimu- 
 lating tone. " Fight for it, Neville ! " 
 
 " If I were dying, I feel as if a word from you 
 would rally me ; if my pulse had stopped, I feel 
 as if your touch would make it beat again," said 
 Neville. " But I have rallied, and am doing 
 famously." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle turned him with his face a 
 little more towards the light. 
 
 " I want to see a ruddier touch here, Neville," 
 he said, indicating his own healthy cheek by 
 way of pattern. " I want more sun to shine 
 upon you." 
 
 Neville drooped suddenly as he replied, in a- 
 lowered voice : " I am not hardy enough for 
 that yet. I may become so, but I cannot bear it 
 yet. If you had gone through those Cloisterham 
 streets as I did ; if you had seen, as I did, those 
 averted eyes, and the better sort of people 
 silently giving me too much room to pass, that I 
 might not touch them or come near them, you 
 wouldn't think it quite unreasonable that I can- 
 not go about in the daylight." 
 
 " My poor fellow ! " said the Minor Canon in 
 a tone so purely sympathetic that the young man 
 caught his hand, " I never said it was unreason- 
 able ; never thought so. Rut I should like you 
 to do it." 
 
 " And that would give me the strongest motive 
 to do it. But I cannot yet. I cannot persuade 
 myself that the eyes of even the stream of 
 strangers I pass in this vast city look at me 
 
86 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF ED WIN DROOD. 
 
 without suspicion. I feel marked and tainted, 
 even when I go out — as I do only — at night. 
 But the darkness covers me then, and I take 
 courage from it." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle laid a hand upon his shoulder, 
 and stood looking down at him. 
 
 " If I could have changed my name," said ^ 
 Neville, " I would have done so. But, as you 
 wisely pointed out to me, I can't do that, for it 
 would look like guilt. If I could have gone to 
 some distant place, I might have found relief in 
 that, but the thing is not to be thought of, for 
 the same reason. Hiding and escai)ing would 
 be the construction in either case. It seems a 
 little hard to be so tied to a stake, and inno- 
 cent; but I don't complain." 
 
 " And you must expect no miracle to help you, 
 Neville," said Mr. Crisparkle compassionately. 
 
 " No, sir, I know that. The ordinary fulness 
 of time and circumstances is all I have to trust 
 to." 
 
 " It will right you at last, Neville." 
 
 " So I believe, and I hope I may live to 
 know it." 
 
 But perceiving that the despondent mood into 
 which he was falling cast a shadow on the 
 Minor Canon, and (it may be) feeling that the 
 broad hand upon his shoulder was not then 
 quite as steady as its own natural strength had 
 rendered it when it first touched him just now, 
 he brightened and said : 
 
 " Excellent circumstances for study, anyhow ; 
 and you know, j\Ir. Crisparkle, what need I have 
 of study in all ways. Not to mention that you 
 have advised me to study for the difficult pro- 
 fession of the law, specially, and lliat of course 
 I am guiding myself by the advice of such a 
 friend and helper. Such a good friend and 
 helper ! " 
 
 He took the fortifying hand from his shoulder, 
 and kissed it. Mr. Crisparkle beamed at the 
 books, but not so brightly as when he had 
 entered. 
 
 " I gather from your silence on the subject that 
 my late guardian is adverse, Mr. Crisparkle ? " 
 
 The Minor Canon answered : " Your late 
 guardian is a — a most unreasonable person, 
 and it signifies nothing to any reasonable per- 
 son whether he is adverse, or pcrvexse, or the 
 reverse." 
 
 " Well for me that I have enough with eco- 
 nomy to live upon," sighed Neville, half wearily 
 and half cheerily, "while I wait to be learned, 
 and wait to be righted. I'Use I might have 
 proved the proverb, that while the grass grows 
 the steed starves ! " 
 
 He opened some books as he said it, and was 
 
 soon immersed in their interleaved and anno- 
 tated passages ; while Mr. Crisparkle sat be- 
 side him, expounding, correcting, and advising. 
 The Minor Canon's cathedral duties made these 
 visits of his difficult to accomplish, and only to 
 be compassed at intervals of many weeks. But 
 they were as serviceable as they were precious 
 to Neville Landless. 
 
 When they had got through sucli studies as 
 they had in hand, they stood leaning on the 
 window-sill, and looking down upon the patch 
 of garden. " Next week," said Mr. Crisparkle, 
 " you will cease to be alone, and will have a 
 devoted companion." 
 
 "And yet," returned Neville, "this seems an 
 uncongenial place to bring my sister to." 
 
 " I don't think so," said the Minor Canon. 
 " There is duty to be done here ; and there are 
 womanly feeling, sense, and courage wanted 
 here." 
 
 " I meant," explained Neville, " that the 
 surroundings are so dull and unwomanly, and 
 that Helena can have no suitable friend or 
 society here." 
 
 " You have only to remember," said Mr. 
 Crisparkle, " that you are here yourself, and 
 that she has to draw you into the sun-light." 
 
 They were silent for a little while, and then 
 Mr. Crisparkle began anew. 
 
 " When we first spoke together, Neville, you 
 told me that your sister had risen out of the 
 disadvantages of your past lives as superior to 
 you as the tower of Cloisterham Cathedral is 
 higher than the chimneys of Minor Canon Cor- 
 ner. Do you remember that?" 
 
 " Right well ! " 
 
 " I was inclined to think it at the time an en- 
 thusiastic flight. No matter what I think it 
 now. What I would emphasize is, that under 
 the head of Pride your sister is a great and 
 opportune example to you." 
 
 " Under all heads that are included in the 
 composition of a fine character, she is." 
 
 " Say so ; but take this one. Your sister has 
 learnt how to govern what is proud in her 
 nature. She can dominate it even when it is 
 wounded through her sympathy with you. No 
 doubt she has suffered deeply in those same 
 streets where you suffered deeply. No doubt 
 her life is darkened by the cloud that darkens 
 yours. But bending her pride into a grand 
 composure that is not haughty or aggressive, 
 but is a sustained confidence in you and in the 
 truth, she has won her way through those 
 streets until she passes along them as high in 
 the general respect as any one who treads them. 
 Every day and hour of her life since Edwin 
 
PRINCIPALL V CONCERNING MR. JASPER. 
 
 S7 
 
 Drood's disappearance she has faced mah'gnity 
 and folly — for you — as only a brave nature well 
 directed can. So it will be with her to the end. 
 Another and weaker kind of pride might sink 
 broken-hearted, but never such a pride as hers : 
 which knows no shrinking, and can get no 
 mastery over her." 
 
 The pale cheek beside him flushed under the 
 comparison, and the hint implied in it. 
 
 " I will do all I can to imitate her," said 
 Neville. 
 
 " Do so, and be a truly brave man, as she is 
 a truly brave woman," answered Mr. Crisparkle 
 stoutly. " It is growing dark. Will you go my 
 way with me when it is quite dark ? Mind ! it 
 is not I who wait for darkness." 
 
 Neville replied that he would accompany him 
 directly. But Mr. Crisparkle said he had a 
 moment's call to make on Mr. Grewgious as an 
 act of courtesy, and would run across to that 
 gentleman's chambers, and rejoin Neville on his 
 own door-step, if he would come down there to 
 meet him. 
 
 Mr. Grewgious, bolt upright as usual, sat tak- 
 ing his wine in the dusk at his open window ; 
 his wine-glass and decanter on the round table 
 at his elbow ; himself and his legs on the win- 
 dow-seat ; only one hinge in his whole body, 
 like a bootjack. 
 
 "How do you do, reverend sir?" said Mr. 
 Grewgious with abundant offers of hospitality, 
 which Avere as cordially declined as made. 
 " And how is your charge getting on over the 
 way in the set that I had the pleasure of recom- 
 mending to you as vacant antl eligible ? " 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle replied suitably. 
 
 " I am glad you approve of them," said Mr. 
 Grewgious, " because I entertain a sort of fancy 
 for having him under my eye." 
 
 As Mr. Grewgious had to turn his eye up 
 considerably before he could see the chambers, 
 the phrase was to be taken figuratively, and not 
 literally. 
 
 " And how did you leave Mr. Jasper, reve- 
 rend sir ? " said Mr. Grewgious. 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle had left him pretty well. 
 
 " And where did you leave Mr. Jasper, 
 reverend sir ? " 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle had left him at Cloisterham. 
 
 " And when did you leave Mr. Jasper, 
 reverend sir ? " 
 
 That morning. 
 
 " Umps ! " said Mr. Grewgious. " He didn't 
 say he was coming, perhaps ? " 
 
 " Coming where ?" 
 
 "Anywhere, for instance?" said Mr. Grew- 
 gious. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Because here he is," said Mr. Grewgious, 
 who had asked all these questions with his pre- 
 occupied glance directed out at window. " And 
 he don't look agreeable, does he ? " 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle was craning towards the 
 window, when Mr. Grewgious added : 
 
 " If you will kindly step round here behind 
 me, in the gloom of the room, and will cast 
 your eye at the second-floor landing window in 
 yonder house, I think you will hardly fail to see 
 a slinking individual in whom I recognise our 
 local friend." 
 
 " You are right ! " cried Mr. Crisparkle. 
 
 " Umps ! " said Mr. Grewgious. Then he 
 added, turning his face so abruptly that his head 
 nearly came into collision with Mr. Crisparkle's : 
 " What should you say that our local friend was 
 up to ? " 
 
 The last passage he had been shown in the 
 Diary returned on Mr. Crisparkle's mind with 
 the force of a strong recoil, and he asked Mr. 
 Grewgious if he thought it possible that Neville 
 was to be harassed by the keeping of a watch 
 upon him ? 
 
 " A watch ? " repeated Mr. Grewgious 
 musingly. " Ay ! " 
 
 " Which would not only of itself haunt and 
 torture his life," said Mr. Crisparkle warmly, 
 " but would expose him to the torment of a 
 perpetually-reviving suspicion, whatever he 
 might do, or wherever he might go." 
 
 " Ay ! " said Mr. Grewgious, musingly still. 
 " Do I see him waiting for you ? " 
 
 " No doubt you do." 
 
 " Then would you have the goodness to 
 excuse my getting up to see you out, and to go 
 out to join him, and to go the way that you 
 were going, and to take no notice of our local 
 friend ? " said Mr. Grewgious. " I entertain a 
 sort of fancy for having him under my eye to- 
 night, do you know." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle, with a significant nod, com- 
 plied ; and, rejoining Neville, went away with 
 him. They dined together, and parted at the 
 yet unfinished and undeveloped railway station : 
 Mr. Crisparkle to get home ; Neville to walk 
 the streets, cross the bridges, make a wide 
 round of the city in the friendly darkness, and 
 tire himself out. 
 
 It was midnight when he returned from his 
 solitary expedition and climbed his staircase. 
 The night was hot, and the windows of the stair- 
 case were all wide open. Coming to the top, it 
 gave him a passing chill of surprise (there being 
 no rooms but his up there) to find a stranger 
 sitting on the window-sill, more after the 
 
8S 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 manner of a venturesome glazier than an 
 amateur ordinarily careful of his neck ; in 
 fact, so much more outside the window than 
 inside as to suggest the thought that he must 
 liave come up by the water-spout instead of the 
 stairs. 
 
 The stranger said nothing until Neville put 
 his key in his door ; then, seeming to make sure 
 of his identity from the action, he spoke : 
 
 " I beg your pardon," he said, coming from 
 the window with a frank and smiling air, and a 
 prepossessing address ; " the beans." 
 
 Neville was quite at a loss. 
 
 " Runners," said the visitor. "Scarlet. Next 
 door at tlie back." 
 
 " Oh ! " returned Neville. "And the migno- 
 nette and wallflower? " 
 
 " The same," said the visitor. 
 
 " Pray walk in." 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 Neville lighted his candles, and the visitor sat 
 down. A handsome gentleman, with a young 
 face, but with an older figure in its robustness 
 and its breadth of shoulder ; say a man of eight- 
 and-twenty, or at the utmost thirty ; so extremely 
 sunburnt that the contrast between his brown 
 visage and the white forehead shaded out of 
 doors by his hat, and the glimpses of white 
 throat below the neckerchief, would have been 
 almost ludicrous but for his broad temples, 
 bright blue eyes, clustering brown hair, and 
 laughing teeth. 
 
 " I have noticed " said he. " My name 
 
 is Tartar." 
 
 Neville inclined his head. 
 
 " — I have noticed (excuse me) that you shut 
 yourself up a good deal, and that you seem to 
 like my garden aloft here. If you would like a 
 little more of it, I could throw out a few lines 
 and stays between my windows and yours, which 
 the runners would take to directly. And I have 
 some boxes, both of mignonette and wallflower, 
 that I could shove on along the gutter (with a 
 boat-hook I have by me) to your windows, and 
 draw back again when they wanted watering or 
 gardening, and shove on again when they were 
 ship-shape ; so that they would cause you no 
 trouble. I couldn't take this liberty without 
 asking your permission, so I venture to ask it. 
 Tartar, corresponding set, next door." 
 
 " You are very kind." 
 
 " Not at all. I ought to apologise for look- 
 ing in so late. But, having noticed (excuse me) 
 that you generally walk out at night, I thought 
 I should inconvenience you least by awaiting 
 your return. I am always afraid of inconveni- 
 encing busy men, being an idle man." 
 
 '* I should not have thought so from your 
 appearance." 
 
 "No? I take it as a comijliment. In fact, 
 I was bred in the Royal Navy, and was First 
 Lieutenant when I quitted it. But, an uncle 
 disappointed in the service leaving me his pro- 
 perty on condition that I left the Navy, I ac- 
 cepted the fortune, and resigned my commis- 
 sion." 
 
 " Lately, I presume." 
 
 " Well, I had had twelve or fifteen years of 
 knocking about first. I came here some nine 
 months before you ; I had had one crop before 
 you came. I chose this place because, having 
 served last in a little corvette, I knew I should 
 feel more at home where I had a constant op- 
 portunity of knocking my head against the ceil- 
 ing. Besides, it would never do for a man who 
 had been aboard ship from his boyhood to turn 
 luxurious all at once. . Besides, again, having 
 been accustomed to a very short allowance of 
 land all my life, I thought I'd feel my way to the 
 command of a landed estate by beginning in 
 boxes." 
 
 Whimsically as this was said, there was a 
 touch of merry earnestness in it that made it 
 doubly whimsical. 
 
 " However," said the Lieutenant, " I have 
 talked quite enough about myself. It is not my 
 way. I hope ; it has merely been to present my- 
 self to you naturally. If you will allow me to 
 take the liberty I have described, it will be a 
 charity, for it will give me something more to 
 do. And you are not to suppose that it will 
 entail any interruption or intrusion on you, for 
 that is far from my intention." 
 
 Neville replied that he was greatly obliged, 
 and that he thankfully accepted the kind pro- 
 posal. 
 
 " I am very glad to take your windows in 
 tow," said the Lieutenant. " From what I have 
 seen of you when I have been gardening at 
 mine, and you have been looking on, I have 
 thought you (excuse me) rather too studious 
 and delicate. May I ask, is your health at all 
 affected ? " 
 
 " I have undergone some mental distress," 
 said Neville, confused, " which has stood me in 
 the stead of illness." 
 
 " Pardon me," said Mr. Tartar. 
 
 With the greatest delicacy he shifted his 
 ground to the windows again, and asked if he 
 could look at one of them. On Neville's open- 
 ing it, he immediately sprang out, as if he were 
 going aloft with a whole watch in an emergency, 
 and were setting a bright example. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake," cried Neville, " don't 
 
DICK DATCIIERY, 
 
 89 
 
 do that I A\"here are you going, Mr. Tartar? 
 You'll be dashed to pieces ! " 
 
 " All well I " said the Lieutenant, coolly look- 
 ing about him on the housetop. " All taut 
 and trim here. Those lines and stays shall be 
 rigged before you turn out in the morning. May 
 I take this short cut home, and say good 
 night ?'' 
 
 ^'- Mr. Tartar!" urged Neville. "Pray! It 
 makes me giddy to see you ! " 
 
 Lut Mr. Tartar, with a wave of his hand and 
 the deftness of a cat, had already dipped through 
 his scuttle of scarlet-runners without breaking a 
 leaf, and " gone below." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious, his bedroom window blind 
 held aside with his hand, happened at that mo- 
 ment to have Neville's chambers under his eye 
 for the last time that night. Fortunately his eye 
 was on the front of the house, and not the back, 
 or this remarkable appearance and disappear- 
 ance might have broken his rest as a phenome- 
 non. But Mr. Grewgious seeing nothing there, 
 not even a light in the windows, his gaze wan- 
 dered from the windows to the stars, as if he 
 would ha\'e read in them something that was 
 hidden from him. Many of us would, if we 
 could ; but none of us so much as know 
 our letters in the stars yet — or seem likely to 
 do it in this state of existence — and few lan- 
 guages can be read until their alphabets are 
 mastered. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 A SETTLER IX CLOI3TERHAM. 
 
 T about this time a stranger appeared 
 in Cloisterham ; a white-haired per- 
 sonage, with black eyebrows. Being 
 buttoned up in a tightish blue sur- 
 tout, with a bufif waistcoat and grey 
 trousers, he had something of a 
 
 ^^^2) ■'' military air ; but he announced hunselt 
 at the Crozier (the orthodox hotel, where 
 he put up with a portmanteau) as an idle dog 
 who lived upon his means ; and he farther an- 
 nounced that he had a mind to take a lodging in 
 the picturesque old city for a month or two, with 
 a view of settling down there altogether. Both 
 announcements were made in the coffee-room of 
 the Crozier, to all whom it might or might not 
 concern, by the stranger as he stood with his 
 back to the empty fire-place, waiting for his 
 fried sole, veal cutlet, and pint of sherry. And 
 the waiter (business being chronically slack at 
 the Crozier) represented all whom it might or 
 
 might not concern, and absorbed the whole of 
 the information. 
 
 This gentleman's white head was unusually 
 large, and his shock of white hair was unusually 
 thick and ample. " I suppose, waiter," he said, 
 shaking his shock of hair, as a Newfoundland 
 dog might shake his before sitting down to din- 
 ner, " that a fair lodging for a single buffer might 
 be found in these parts, eh ? " 
 
 The waiter had no doubt of it. 
 
 "Something old," said the gentleman. "Take 
 my hat tlown for a moment from that peg, will 
 you ? No, I don't want it ; look into it. What 
 do you see written there ? " 
 
 The waiter read : " Datchery." 
 
 " Now you know my name," said the gentle- 
 man ; " Dick Datchery. Hang it up again. I 
 was saying something old is what I should 
 prefer, something odd and out of the way ; 
 something venerable, architectural, and incon- 
 venient." 
 
 " We have a good choice of inconvenient 
 lodgings in the town, sir, I think," replied the 
 waiter, with modest confidence in its resources 
 that way ; " indeed, I have no doubt that we 
 could suit you that far, liowever particular you 
 might be. But a architectural lodging ! " That 
 seemed to trouble the waiter's heatl, and he 
 shook it. 
 
 " Anything Cathedraly, now," Mr. Datchery 
 suggested. 
 
 " Mr. Tope," said the waiter, brightening, as 
 he rubbed his chin with his hand, " would be 
 the likeliest party to inform in that line." 
 
 " Who is Mr. Tope ?" inquired Dick Datchery. 
 
 The waiter explained that he was the verger, 
 and that Mrs. Tope had, indeed, once upon a 
 time let lodgings herself — or offered to let them ; 
 but that, as nobody had ever taken them, Mrs. 
 Tope's window-bill, long a Cloisterham Institu- 
 tion, had disappeared ; probably had tumbled 
 down one day, and never been put up again. 
 
 " I'll call on Mrs. Tope," said Mr. Datchery, 
 " after dinner." 
 
 So, when he had done his dinner, he was 
 duly directed to the spot, and sallied out for it. 
 But the Crozier being an hotel of a most re- 
 tiring disposition, and the waiter's directions 
 being fatally precise, he soon became bev.'il- 
 dered, and went boggling about and about the 
 cathedral tower, whenever he could catch a 
 glimpse of it, with a general impression on his 
 mind that Mrs. Tope's was somewhere very 
 near it, and that, like the children in the game 
 of hot boiled beans and very good butter, he 
 was warm in his search when he saw the tower, 
 and cold when he didn't see it. 
 
90 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 He was getting very cold indeed when he 
 came upon a fragment of burial-ground in which 
 an unhappy sheep was grazing. Unhappy, be- 
 cause a hideous small boy was stoning it through 
 the railings, and had already lamed it in one leg, 
 and was much excited by the benevolent sports- 
 manlike purpose of breaking its other three legs, 
 and bringing it down. 
 
 " 'It 'im agin ! " cried the boy as the poor 
 creature leaped ; " and made a dint in his wool." 
 
 " Let him be ! " said I\Ir. Datchery. " Don't 
 you see you have lamed him ? " 
 
 " Yer lie ! " returned the sportsman. " E went 
 and lamed isself. I see 'im do it, and I giv' 
 'im a shy as a Widdy-warning to 'im not to go a 
 bruisin' 'is master's mutton any more." 
 
 " Come here." 
 
 "I won't; I'll come when yer can ketch 
 me. 
 
 " Stay there, then, and show me which is Mr. 
 Tope's." 
 
 " 'Ow can I stay here and show you which is 
 Topeseses, when Topeseses is t'other side the 
 Kinfreederal, and over the crossings, and round 
 ever so many corners ? Stoo-pid ! Ya-a-ah ! " 
 
 " Show me where it is, and I'll give you 
 something." 
 
 " Come on, then." 
 
 This brisk dialogue concluded, the boy led 
 the way, and by-and-by stopped at some distance 
 from an arched passage, pointing. 
 
 " Lookie yonder. You see that there winder 
 and door?" 
 
 "That's Tope's?" 
 
 " Yer lie ; it ain't. That's Jarsper's." 
 
 " Indeed ? " said Mr. Datchery, with a second 
 look of some interest. 
 
 " Yes, and I ain't a-goin' no nearer 'Im, I tell 
 yer," 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " 'Cos I ain't a-goin' to be lifted off my legs 
 and 'ave my braces bust and be choked ; not if 
 I knows it, and not by 'Im. Wait till I set a 
 jolly good flint a flyin' at the back o' 'is jolly 
 old 'ed some day ! Now look t'other side the 
 harch ; not the side where Jarsper's door is ; 
 t'other side." 
 
 " I see." 
 
 " A little way in, o' that side, there's a low 
 door, down two steps. That's Topeseses, with 
 'is name on a hoval plate." 
 
 " Good ! See here," said Mr. Datchery, pro- 
 ducing a shilling. " You owe me half of this." 
 
 ■' Yer lie ; I don't owe yer nothing ; I never 
 seen yer." 
 
 " I tell you you owe me half of this, because 
 I have no sixpence in my pocket. So, the next 
 
 time you meet me, you shall do something else 
 for me, to pay me." 
 
 " All right, give us 'old." 
 
 " What is your name, and where do you live?" 
 
 " Deputy. Travellers' Twopenny, 'cross the 
 green." 
 
 The boy instantly darted off with the shilling, 
 lest Mr. Datchery should repent, but stopped at 
 a safe distance, on the happy chance of his being 
 uneasy in his mind about it, to goad him with a 
 demon dance expressive of its irrevocability. 
 
 Mr. Datchery, taking off his hat to give that 
 shock of white hair of his another sliake, seemed 
 quite resigned, and betook himself whither he 
 had been directed. 
 
 Mr. Tope's official dwelling, communicating 
 by an upper stair with Mr. Jasper's (lience INIrs. 
 Tope's attendance on that gentleman), was of 
 very modest proportions, and partook of the 
 character of a cool dungeon. Its ancient walls 
 were massive, and its rooms rather seemed to 
 have been dug out of them than to have been 
 designed beforehand with any reference to them. 
 The main door opened at once on a chamber 
 of no describable shape, with a groined roof, 
 which in its turn opened on another chamber of 
 no describable shape, with another groined roof: 
 their windows small, and in the thickness of the 
 walls. These two chambers, close as to their 
 atmosphere, and swarthy as to their illumination 
 by natural light, were the apartments which 
 Mrs. Tope had so long offered to an unappre- 
 ciative city. Mr. Datchery, however, was more 
 appreciative. He found that, if he sat with the 
 main door open, he would enjoy the passing 
 society of all comers to and fro by the gateway, 
 and would have light enough. He found that 
 if Mr. and Mrs. Tope, living overhead, used for 
 their own egress and ingress a little side-stair 
 that came plump into the Precincts by a door 
 opening outward, to the surprise and inconve- 
 nience of a limited public of pedestrians in a 
 narrow way, he would be alone, as in a separate 
 residence. He found the rent moderate, and 
 everything as quaintly inconvenient as he could 
 desire. He agreed, therefore, to take the lodg- 
 ing then and there, and money do\\n, possession 
 to be had next evening, on condition that re- 
 ference was permitted him to Mr. Jasper, as 
 occupying the gatehouse, of which, on the other 
 side of the gateway, the verger's hole-in-the-wall 
 was an appanage or subsidiary part. 
 
 The poor dear gentleman was very solitary 
 and very sad, Mrs. Tope said, but she had no 
 doubt he would " speak for her." Perhaps ]\Ir. 
 Datchery had heard something of what had 
 occurred there last winter ? 
 
THE WORSHIPFUL THE MAYOR. 
 
 91 
 
 Mr. Datchery had as confused a knowledge 
 of the event in question, on trying to recall it, 
 as he well could have. He begged Mrs. Tope's 
 pardon when she found it incumbent on her to 
 correct him in every detail of his summary of 
 the facts, but pleaded that he was merely a single 
 buffer getting through life upon his means as 
 idly as he could, and that so many people were 
 so constantly making away with so many other 
 people, as to render it difficult for a buffer of an 
 easy temper to preserve the circumstances of the 
 several cases unmixed in his mind. 
 
 Mr. Jasper proving willing to speak for Mrs. 
 Tope, Mr. Datchery, who had sent \\\> his card, 
 was invited to ascend the postern staircase. The 
 Mayor was there, Mr. Tope said ; but he was 
 not to be regarded in the light of company, as 
 he and Mr. Jasper were great friends. 
 
 " I beg pardon," said Mr. Datchery, making 
 a leg with his hat under his arm, as he addressed 
 himself equally to both gentlemen; "a selfish 
 precaution on my part, and not personally in- 
 teresting to anybody but myself. But as a buffer 
 living on his means, and having an idea of doing 
 it in this lovely place in peace and quiet, for 
 remaining span of life, I beg to ask if the Tope 
 family are quite respectable ? " 
 
 Mr. Jasper could answer for that without the 
 slightest hesitation. 
 
 '• That is enough, sir," said Mr. Datchery. 
 
 " My friend the Mayor," added Mr. Jasper, 
 presenting Mr. Datchery with a courtly motion 
 of his hand towards that potentate, " whose re- 
 commendation is actually much more important 
 to a stranger than that of an obscure person like 
 myself, will testify in their behalf, I am sure." 
 
 " The Worshipful the Mayor," said Mr. Datch- 
 ery with a low bow, " places me under an in- 
 finite obligation." 
 
 " Very good people, sir, IMr. and Mrs. Tope," 
 said Mr. Sapsea with condescension. " Very 
 good opinions. Very well behaved. Very re- 
 spectful, ]\Iuch approved by the Dean and 
 Chapter." 
 
 " The Worshipful the Mayor gives them a 
 character," said Mr. Datchery, " of which they 
 may indeed be proud. I would ask His Honour 
 (if I might be permitted) whether there are not 
 many objects of great interest in the city which 
 is under his beneficent sway ? " 
 
 " We are, sir," returned Mr. Sapsea, " an 
 ancient city, and an ecclesiastical city. We are 
 a constitutional city, as it becomes such a city 
 to be, and we uphold and maintain our glorious 
 privileges." 
 
 " His Honour," said Mr. Datchery, bowing, 
 '• inspires me with a desire to know more of the 
 
 city, and confirms me in my inclination to end 
 my days in the city." 
 
 " Retired from the Army, sir ?" suggested Mr. 
 Sapsea. 
 
 " His Honour the Mayor does me too much 
 credit," returned Mr. Datchery. 
 
 "Navy, sir?" suggested Mr. Sapsea. 
 
 " Again," repeated Mr. Datchery, " His Ho- 
 nour the Mayor does me too much credit." 
 
 " Diplomacy is a fine profession," said Mr. 
 Sapsea as a general remark. 
 
 " There, I confess. His Honour the Mayor is 
 too many for me," said Mr. Datchery with an 
 ingenious smile and bow ; " even a diplomatic 
 bird must fall to such a gun." 
 
 Now this was very soothing. Here was a 
 gentleman of a great, not to say a grand, address, 
 accustomed to rank and dignity, really setting a 
 fine example how to behave to a Mayor. There 
 was something in that third-person style of bemg 
 spoken to, that Mr. Sapsea found particularly 
 recognisant of his merits and position. 
 
 " But I crave pardon," said Mr. Datchery. 
 " His Honour the Mayor will bear with me, if 
 for a moment I have been deluded into occupy- 
 ing his time, and have forgotten the humble 
 claims upon my own, of my hotel, the Crozier." 
 
 " Not at all, sir," said Mr. Sapsea. " I am 
 returning home, and, if you would like to take 
 the exterior of our cathedral in your way, I shall 
 be glad to point it out." 
 
 " His Honour the Mayor," said Mr. Datchery, 
 " is more than kind and gracious." 
 
 As Mr. Datchery, when he had made his 
 acknowledgments to Mr. Jasper, could not be 
 induced to go out of the room before the Wor-' 
 shipful, the Worshipful led the way down-stairs ; 
 Mr. Datchery following with his hat under his 
 arm, and his shock of white hair streaming in 
 the evening breeze. 
 
 " Might I ask His Honour," said j\Ir. Datch- 
 ery, "whether that gentleman we have just 
 left is the gentleman of w^hom I have heard in 
 the neighbourhood as being much afflicted by 
 the loss of a nephew, and concentrating his life 
 on avenging the loss ? " 
 
 " That is the gentleman. John Jasper, sir." 
 
 " Would His Honour allow me to inquire 
 whether there are strong suspicions of any one ?" 
 
 " More than suspicions, sir," returned Mr. 
 Sapsea ; " all but certainties." 
 
 " Only think now ! " cried Mr. Datchery. 
 
 " But proof, sir, proof must be built up stone 
 by stone," said the Mayor. " As I say, the end 
 crowns the work. It is not enough that Justice 
 should be morally certain ; she must be im- 
 morally certain — legally, that is." 
 
92 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 " His Honour," said Mr. Datchery, " reminds 
 me of the nature of the law. Immoral. How 
 true ! " 
 
 " As I say, sir," pompously went on the 
 Mayor, " the arm of the law is a strong arm, 
 and a long arm. That is the way I put it. A 
 strong arm and a long arm." 
 
 " How forcible ! And yet, again, how true !" 
 murmured Mr. Datchery. 
 
 " And without betraying what I call the 
 
 secrets of the prison-house " said Mr. Sap- 
 
 :sea. " The secrets cf the prison-house is the 
 term I used on the bench." 
 
 " And what other term than His Honour's 
 would express it ? " said Mr. Datchery. 
 
 " — Without, I say, betraying them, I predict 
 to you, knowing the iron will of the gentleman 
 we have just left (I take the bold step of calling 
 it iron, on account of its strength), that in this 
 case the long arm will reach, and the strong arm 
 will strike. — This is our cathedral, sir. The 
 best judges are pleased to admire it, and the 
 best among our townsmen own to being a little 
 vain of it." 
 
 All this time Mr. Datchery had walked with 
 his hat under his arm, and his white hair stream- 
 ing. He had an odd momentary appearance 
 upon him of having forgotten his hat, when Mr. 
 Sapsea now touched it ; and he clapped his hand 
 up to his head, as if with some vague expecta- 
 tion of finding another hat upon it. 
 
 " Pray be covered, sir," entreated Mr. Sap- 
 sea ; magnificently implying : " I shall not mind 
 it, I assure you." 
 
 " His Honour is very good, but I do it for 
 coolness," said Mr. Datchery. 
 
 Then Mr. Datchery admired the cathedral, 
 and Mr. Sapsea pointed it out as if he himself 
 had invented and built it : there were a few 
 details, indeed, of which he did not approve, but 
 those he glossed over, as if the workmen had 
 made mistakes in his absence. The cathedral 
 disposed of, he led the way by the churchyard, 
 and stopped to extol the beauty of the evening 
 — by chance — in the immediate vicinity of Mrs, 
 Sapsea's epitaph. 
 
 "And, by-the-bye," said Mr. Sapsea, appear- 
 ing to descend from an elevation to remember 
 it all of a sudden ; like Apollo shooting down 
 from Olympus to pick up his forgotten lyre ; 
 " that is one of our small lions. The partiality 
 of our people has made it so, and strangers have 
 been seen taking a copy of it now and then. I 
 am not a judge of it myself, for it is a little 
 work of my own. But it was troublesome to 
 turn, sir ; I may say, difficult to turn with 
 elegance." 
 
 Mr. Datchery became so ecstatic over Mr. 
 Sapsea's composition, that in spite of his inten- 
 tion to end his days in Cloistcrham, and there- 
 fore his probably having in reserve many oppor- 
 tunities of copying it, he would have transcribed 
 it into his pocket-book on the spot, but for the 
 slouching towards them of its material producer 
 and perpetuator, Durdles, whom Mr. Sapsea 
 hailed, not sorry to show him a bright example 
 of behaviour to superiors. 
 
 " Ah, Durdles ! This is the mason, sir ; one 
 of our Cloisterham worthies ; everybody here 
 knows Durdles. Mr. Datchery, Durdles ; a 
 gentleman who is going to settle here." 
 
 " I wouldn't do it if I was him," growled 
 Durdles. " We're a heavy lot." 
 
 " You surely don't speak for yourself, Mr. 
 Durdles," returned Mr. Datchery, " any more 
 than for His Honour.'' 
 
 "Who's His Honour?" demanded Durdles. 
 
 " His Honour the Mayor." 
 
 " I never was brought afore him," said Dur- 
 dles, with anything but the look of a loyal sub- 
 ject of the mayoralty, " and it'll be time enough 
 for me to Honour him when I am. Until 
 which, and when, and where, 
 
 ' Mister Sapsea is his name, 
 England is his nation, 
 Cloistei ham's his dwelhnfj-place, 
 Aukshneer's his occupation.' " 
 
 Here, Deputy (preceded by a flying oyster 
 shell) appeared upon the scene, and requested 
 to have the sum of threepence instantly 
 "chucked" to him by Mr. Durdles, whom he 
 had been vainly seeking up and down, as lawful 
 wages overdue. While that gentleman, with 
 his bundle under his arm, slowly found and 
 counted out the money, Mr. Sapsea informed 
 the new settler of Durdles's habits, pursuits, 
 abode, and reputation. " I suppose a curious 
 stranger might come to see you and your works, 
 Mr. Durdles, at any odd time ? " said Mr. 
 Datchery upon that. 
 
 "Any gentleman is welcome to come and see 
 me any evening, if he brings licjuor for two with 
 him," returned Durdles. with a i)enny between 
 his teeth and certain halfpence in his hands ; 
 " or, if he likes to make it twice two, he'll be 
 doubly welcome." 
 
 " I shall come. Master Deputy, what do you 
 owe me ? " 
 
 "A job." 
 
 " Mind you pay me hone.'^lly wiii^i the job of 
 showing me Mr. Durdles's house when I want 
 to go there." 
 
 Deputy, with a piercing broadside of whistle 
 
AN UNWELCOME VISITOR. 
 
 93- 
 
 through the whole gap in his mouth, as a receipt 
 in full ibr all arrears, vanished. 
 
 The Worshipful and the Worshipper then 
 ])assed on together until they parted, with many 
 ceremonies, at the Worshipful's door ; even 
 then the Worshipper carried his hat under his 
 arm, and ga\e his streaming white hair to the 
 breeze. 
 
 Said Mr. Datchery to himself that night, as 
 he looked at his white hair in the gas-lighted 
 looking-glass over the coffee-room chimney- 
 piece at the Crozier, and shook it out : " For a 
 single bufter, of an easy temper, living idly on 
 his means, I have had a rather busy after- 
 noon ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 SHADOW ON THE SUN-DIAL. 
 
 GAIN Miss Twinkleton has deli- 
 vered her valedictory address, with 
 the accompaniments of white wine 
 and pound-cake, and again the 
 young ladies have departed to their 
 several homes. Helena Landless 
 has left the Nuns' House to attend 
 her brother's fortunes, and pretty 
 Rosa is alone. 
 
 Cloisterham is so bright and sunny in these 
 summer days, that the cathedral and the monas- 
 tery ruin show as if their strong walls were 
 transparent. A soft glow seems to shine from 
 within them, rather than upon them from with- 
 out, such is their mellowness as they look forth 
 on the hot corn-fields and the smoking roads 
 that distantly wind among them. The Cloister- 
 ham gardens blush with ripening fruit. Time 
 was when travel-stained pilgrims rode in 
 clattering parties through the city's welcome 
 shades ; time is when wayfarers, leading a gipsy 
 life between hay-making time and harvest, and 
 looking as if they were just made of the dust of 
 the earth, so very dusty are they, lounge about 
 on cool door-steps, trying to mend their un- 
 mendable shoes, or giving them to the city 
 kennels as a hopeless job, and seeking others in 
 the buntUes that they carry, along with their yet 
 unused sickles swathed in bands of straw. At 
 all the more public pumps there is much cool- 
 ing of bare feet, together with much bubbling 
 and gurgling of drinking with hand to spout on 
 the part of these Bedouins ; the Cloisterham 
 police meanwhile looking askant from their 
 beats with suspicion, and manifest impatience 
 that the intruders should depart from Avithin the 
 
 civic bounds, and once more fry themselves on 
 the simmering high-roads. 
 
 On the afternoon of such a day, when the 
 last cathedral service is done, and when that 
 side of the High Street on which the Nuns' 
 House stands is in grateful shade, save where 
 its quaint old garden opens to the west between 
 the boughs of trees, a servant informs Rosa, to 
 her terror, that Mr. Jasper desires to see her. 
 
 If he had chosen his time for finding her at a 
 disadvantage, he could have done no better. 
 Perhaps he has chosen it. Helena Landless is 
 gone, Mrs. Tisher is absent on leave. Miss 
 Twinkleton (in her amateur state of existence) 
 has contributed herself and a veal pie to a 
 picnic. 
 
 " Oh, why, why, why did you say I was at 
 home ? " cries Rosa helplessly. 
 
 The maid replies that Mr. Jasper never asked 
 the question. That he said he knew she was at 
 home, and begged she might be told that he 
 asked to see her. 
 
 " What shall I do ? what shall I do ? " thinks 
 Rosa, clasping her hands. 
 
 Possessed by a kind of desperation, she adds, 
 in the next breath, that she will come to Mr. 
 Jasper in the garden. She shudders at the 
 thought of being shut up with him in the house ; 
 but many of its windows command the garden, 
 and she can be seen as well as heard there, ancl 
 can shriek in the free air and run away. Such 
 is the wild idea that flutters through her mind. 
 
 She has never seen him since the fatal night,, 
 except when she was questioned before the Mayor, 
 and then he was present in gloomy watchful- 
 ness, as representing his lost nephew, and burn- 
 ing to avenge him. She hangs her garden hat 
 on her arm, and goes out. The moment she 
 sees him from the porch, leaning on the sun- 
 dial, the old horrible feeling of being compelled 
 by him asserts its hold upon her. She feels 
 that she would even then go back, but that he 
 draws her feet towards him. She cannot resist, 
 and sits down, with her head bent, on the 
 garden seat beside the sun-dial. She cannot 
 look up at him for abhorrence, but she has 
 perceived that he is dressed in dee]) mourning. 
 So is she. It was not so at first ; but the lost 
 has long been given up, and mourned for, as 
 dead. 
 
 He would begin by touching her hand. She 
 feels the intention, and draws her hand back. 
 His eyes are then fixed upon her, she knows, 
 though her own see nothing but the grass. 
 
 " I have been waiting," he begins, "for some 
 time, to be summoned back to my duty near 
 you." 
 
94 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 After several times forming her lips, whicli 
 she knows he is closely watching;, into the shape 
 of some other hesitating rei)ly, and then into 
 none, she answers : " Duty, sir ? " 
 
 " The duty of teaching you, serving you as 
 your faithful music-master." 
 
 " I have left off tliat study." 
 
 " Not leit off, I think. Discontinued. I was 
 told by your guardian that you discontinued it 
 under the shock that we have all felt so acutely. 
 When will you resume ? " 
 
 " Never, sir." 
 
 ** Never ? You could have done no more if 
 you had loved my dear boy." 
 
 " I did love him ! " cried Rosa with a flash of 
 anger. 
 
 " Yes ; but not quite — not quite in the right 
 way, shall I say ? Not in the intended and 
 expected way. INIuch as my dear boy was, 
 unhappily, too self-conscious and self-satisfied 
 (I'll draw no parallel between him and you in 
 that respect) to love as he should have loved, 
 or as any one in his place would have loved — 
 must have loved ! " 
 
 She sits in the same still attitude, but shrink- 
 ing a little more. 
 
 " Then, to be told that you discontinued your 
 study with me, was to be politely told that you 
 abandoned it altogether ? " he suggested. 
 
 "Yes," says Rosa with sudden spirit. " The 
 politeness was my guardian's, not mine. I told 
 him that I was resolved to leave off, and that I 
 was determined to stand by my resolution." 
 
 "And you still are?" 
 
 " I still am, sir. And I beg not to be ques- 
 tioned any more about it. At all events, I 
 will not answer any more ; I have that in my 
 power." 
 
 She is so conscious of his looking at her with 
 a gloating admiration of the touch of anger on 
 her, and the fire and animation it brings with 
 it, that even as her spirit rises, it falls again, and 
 she struggles with a sense of shame, affront, and 
 fear, much as she did that night at the piano. 
 
 " I will not question you any more, since you 
 object to it so much. I will confess " 
 
 " I do not wish to hear you, sir," cries Rosa, 
 rising. 
 
 This time he does touch her with his out- 
 stretched hand. In shrinking from it, she shrinks 
 into her seat again. 
 
 " We must sometimes act in opposition to 
 our wishes," he tells her in a low voice. " You 
 must do so now, or do more harm to others than 
 you can ever set right." 
 
 " What harm ? " 
 
 " Presently, presently. You question me, you 
 
 see, and surely that's not fair when you forbid 
 me to question you. Nevertheless, I will answer 
 the (juestion presently. Dearest Rosa ! Charm- 
 ing Rosa !" 
 
 She starts up again. 
 
 This time he does not touch her. But his 
 face looks so wicked and menacing, as he stands 
 leaning against the sun-dial — setting, as it were, 
 his black mark upon the very face of day — that 
 her flight is arrested by horror as she looks at 
 him. 
 
 " I do not forget how many windows com- 
 mand a view of us," he says, glancing towards 
 them. " I will not touch you again ; I Avill 
 come no nearer to you than 1 am. Sit down, 
 and there will be no mighty wonder in your 
 music-master's leaning idly against a pedestal 
 and speaking with you, remembering all that 
 lias hajipened, and our shares in it. Sit down, 
 my beloved." 
 
 She would have gone once more — was all but 
 gone — and once more his face, darkly threat- 
 ening what would follow if she went, has stopped 
 her. Looking at him with the expression of the 
 instant frozen on her face, she sits down on the 
 seat again. 
 
 " Rosa, even when my dear boy was afiianced 
 to you, I loved you madly ; even when I thought 
 his happiness in having you for his wife was 
 certain, I loved you madly; even when I strove 
 to make him more ardently devoted to you, I 
 loved you madly ; even when he gave me the 
 picture of your lovely face so carelessly traduced 
 by him, which I feigned to hang always in my 
 sight for his sake, but Avorshipped in torment 
 for years, I loved you madly ; in the distasteful 
 work of the day, in the wakeful misery of the 
 night, girded by sordid realities, or wandering 
 through Paradises and Hells of visions into 
 which I rushed, carrying your image in my 
 arms, I loved you madly." 
 
 If anything could make his words more hideous 
 to her than they are in themselves, it would be 
 the contrast between the violence of his look 
 and delivery, and the composure of his assumed 
 attitude. 
 
 " I endured it all in silence. So long as you 
 were his, or so long as I supposed you to be 
 his, I hid my secret loyally. Did I not ?" 
 
 This lie, so gross, while the mere words in 
 which it is told are so true, is more than Rosa 
 can endure. She answers Avith kindling indig- 
 nation : " You were as false throughout, sir, as 
 you are now. You were false to him, daily 
 and hourly. You know that you made my life 
 unhappy by your pursuit of me. You know that 
 you made me afraid to open his generous eyes, 
 
MAD LOVE. 
 
 95 
 
 and that you forced me, for his own trusting, 
 good, good sake, to keep the truth from him, 
 tliat you were a bad, bad man ! " 
 
 His preservation of his easy attitude rendering 
 his workiniT features and his convulsive hands 
 absolutely diabolical, he returns, wuh a fierce 
 extreme of admiration : 
 
 " How beautiful you are ! You are more 
 
 ' beautiful in anger than in repose. I don't ask 
 
 you for your love ; give me yourself and your 
 
 ( hatred ; give me yourself and that pretty rage ; 
 
 I give me yourself and that enchanting scorn ; it 
 
 will be enough for me." 
 
 Impatient tears rise to the eyes of the trem- 
 bling little beauty, and her face flames ; but as 
 she again rises to leave him in indignation, and 
 seek protection within the house, he stretches 
 out his hand towards the porch, as though he 
 invited her to enter it. 
 
 " I told you, you rare charmer, you sweet 
 witch, that you must stay and hear me, or do 
 more harm than can ever be undone. You 
 asked me what harm. Stay, and I will tell you. 
 Go, and I will do it ! " 
 
 Again Rosa quails before his threatening face, 
 though innocent of its meaning, and she remains. 
 Her panting breathing comes and goes as if it 
 would choke her; but, with a repressive hand 
 upon her bosom, she remains. 
 
 " I have made my confession that my love is 
 mad. It is so mad, that had the ties between me 
 and my dear lost boy been one silken thread 
 less strong, I might have swept even him from 
 your side when you favoured him." 
 
 A film comes over the eyes, she raises for an 
 instant, as though he had turned her faint. 
 
 "Even him," he repeats. "Yes, even him! 
 Rosa, you see me and you hear me. Judge for 
 yourself whether any other admirer shall love 
 you and live, whose life is in my hand." 
 
 " 'What do you mean, sir ? " 
 
 " I mean to show you how mad my love is. 
 It was hawked through the late inquiries, by 
 ]\Ir. Crisparkle, that young Landless had con- 
 fessed to him that he was a rival of my lost boy. 
 That is an inexpiable offence in my eyes. The 
 same Mr. Crisparkle knows under my hand that 
 I have devoted myself to the murderer's dis- 
 covery and destruction, be he whom he might, 
 and that I determined to discuss the mystery 
 with no one until I should hold the clue in 
 which to entangle the murderer as in a net. I 
 have since worked patiently to wind and wind it 
 round him ; and it is slowly winding as I speak." 
 
 " Your belief, if you believe in the criminality 
 of ISIr. Landless, is not Mr. Crisparkle's belief, 
 and he is a good man," Rosa retorts. 
 
 "My belief is my own; and I reserve it, 
 
 worshipped of my soul ! Circumstances may 
 accumulate so strongly rc'cn against an innocent 
 man, that directed, sliarpened, and pointed, 
 they may slay him. One wanting link dis- 
 covered by perseverance against a guilty man 
 proves his guilt, however slight its evidence 
 before, and he dies. Young Landless stands in 
 deadly peril either way." 
 
 _ " If you really suppose," Rosa pleads with 
 him, turning paler, "that I favour Mr. Landless, 
 or that Mr. Landless has ever in any way ad- 
 dressed himself to me, you are wrong." 
 
 He puts that from him with a slighting action 
 of his hand and a curled lip. 
 
 " I was going to show you how madly I love 
 you. More madly now than ever, for I am 
 willing to renounce the second object that has 
 arisen in my life to divide it with you ; and 
 henceforth to have no object in existence but 
 you only. Miss Landless has become your 
 bosom friend. You care for her peace of 
 mind ? " 
 
 " I love her dearly." 
 
 " You care for her good name ? " 
 
 " I have said, sir, I love her dearly." 
 
 " I am unconsciously," he observes with a 
 smile, as he folds his hands upon the sun-dial 
 and leans his chin upon them, so that his talk 
 would seem from the windows (faces occasion- 
 ally come and go there) to be of the airiest and 
 playfullest — " I am unconsciously giving offence 
 by questioning again. I will simply make state- 
 ments, therefore, and not put questions. You 
 do care for your bosom friend's good name, and 
 you do care for her peace of mind. Then 
 remove the shadow of the gallows from her, 
 dear one ! " 
 
 " You dare propose to me to " 
 
 " Darling, I dare propose to you. Stop there. 
 If it be bad to idolise you, I am the worst of 
 men ; if it be good, I am the best. My love 
 for you is above all other love, and my truth to 
 you is above all other truth. Let me have 
 hope and favour, and I am a forsworn man for 
 your sake." 
 
 Rosa puts her hands to her temples, and, 
 pushing back her hair, looks wildly and abhor- 
 rently at him, as though she were trying to piece 
 together what it is his deep purpose to present 
 to her only in fragments. 
 
 " Reckon up nothing at this moment, angel, 
 but the sacrifices that I lay at those dear feet, 
 which I could fall down among the vilest ashes 
 and kiss, and put upon my head as a poor 
 savage might. There is my fidelity to my dear 
 boy after death. Tread upon it ! " 
 
96 
 
 TJIl'l MYSTERY OF EDWIN DKOOD. 
 
 With an action of his hands, as though he 
 cast down something precious. 
 
 " There is the inexpiable offence against my 
 adoration of you. Spurn it ! " 
 
 With a similar action. 
 
 " There are my labours in the cause of a 
 just vengeance for six toiling months. Crush 
 them ! " 
 
 With another repetition of the action. 
 
 " There is my past and my present wasted 
 life. There is the desolation of my heart and 
 
 my soul. There is my peace; there is my 
 despair. Stamp them into the dust ; so that 
 you take me, were it even mortally hating 
 me!" 
 
 The frightful vehemence of the man, now 
 reaching its full height, so additionally terrifies 
 her as to break the spell that has held her to 
 the spot. She swiftly moves towards the porch ; 
 but in an instant he is at her side, and speaking 
 in her ear. 
 
 " Rosa, I am self-repressed again. I am 
 
 w^i«m^^. 
 
 JASPERS SACRIFICES. 
 
 walking calmly beside you to the house. I 
 shall wait for some encouragement and hope. 
 I shall not strike too soon. Give me a sign 
 that you attend to me." 
 
 She slightly and constrainedly moves her 
 hand. 
 
 " Not a word of this to any one, or it will 
 bring down the blow, as cerUvinly as night 
 follows day. Another sign that you attend to 
 me." 
 
 She moves her hand once more. 
 
 " I love you, love you, love you ! If you 
 
 were to cast me ofif now — but you will not — 
 you would never be rid of me. No one should 
 come between us. I would pursue you to the 
 death." 
 
 The handmaid coming out to open the gate 
 for him, he quietly pulls off his hat as a parting 
 salute, and goes away with no greater show^ of 
 agitation than is visible in the effigy of Mr. 
 Sapsea's father opposite. Rosa faints in going 
 up-stairs, and is carefully carried to her room 
 and laid down on her bed. A thunder-storm is 
 coming on, the maids sav, and the hot and 
 
JiOSA STAKES UP HER MIND WHAT TO DO. 
 
 97 
 
 stifling air has overset the pretty dear : no 
 wonder; they have felt their own knees all of 
 a tremble all day long. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A FLIGHT. 
 
 OSA no sooner came to herself than 
 the whole of the late interview was 
 before her. It even seemed as if it 
 had pursued her into her insensi- 
 bility, and she had not had a mo- 
 ment's unconsciousness of it. What 
 to do she was at a frightened loss to know : 
 the only one clear thought in her mind 
 was, that she must fly from this terrible man. 
 
 But where could she take refuge, and how 
 could she go ? She had never breathed her 
 dread of him to any one but Helena. If she 
 went to Helena, and told her what had passed, 
 that very act might bring down the irreparable 
 mischief that he threatened he had the power, 
 and that she knew he had the will, to do. The 
 more fearful he appeared to her excited memory 
 and imagination, the more alarming her respon- 
 sibility appeared ; seeing that a slight mistake 
 on her part, either in action or delay, might let 
 his malevolence loose on Helena's brother. 
 
 Rosa's mind throughout the last six months 
 had been stormily confused. A half-formed, 
 wholly unexpressed suspicion tossed in it, now 
 heaving itself up, and now sinking into the 
 deep ; now gaining palpability, and now losing 
 it. Jasper's self-absorption in his nephew when 
 he was alive, and his unceasing pursuit of the 
 inquiry how he came by his death, if he were 
 dead, were themes so rife in the place, that no 
 one appeared able to suspect the possibility of 
 foul play at his hands. She had asked herself 
 the question, " Am I so wicked in my thoughts 
 as to conceive a wickedness that others cannot 
 imagine?" Then she had considered, Did the 
 suspicion come of her previous recoiling from 
 him before the fact ? And if so, was not that a 
 proof of its baselessness ? Then she had re- 
 flected, "What motive could he have, according 
 accusation?" She was ashamed to 
 in her mind, " The motive of gaining 
 And covered her face, as if the lightest 
 shadow of the idea of founding murder on such 
 an idle vanity were a crime almost as great. 
 
 She ran over in her mind again all that he 
 
 had said by the sun-dial in the garden. He 
 
 had persisted in treating the disappearance as 
 
 murder, consistently with his whole public 
 
 Edwin Drood, 7. 
 
 to my 
 answer 
 vie!'' 
 
 course since the finding of the watch and sliirt- 
 pin. If he were afraid of the crime being traced 
 out, would he not rather encourage the idea of 
 a voluntary disappearance? He had even de- 
 clared that if the ties between him and his 
 nephew had been less strong, he might have 
 swept " even him " away from her side. Was 
 that like his having really done so? He had 
 spoken of laying his six months' labours in the 
 cause of a just vengeance at her feet. Would 
 he have done that, with that violence of pas- 
 sion, if they were a pretence ? Would he have 
 ranged them with his desolate heart and soul, 
 his wasted life, his peace and his despair ? The 
 very first sacrifice that he represented himself as 
 making for her was his fidelity to his dear boy 
 after death. Surely these facts Avere strong 
 against a fancy that scarcely dared to hint itself. 
 And yet he was so terrible a man ! In short, 
 the poor girl (for what could she know of the 
 criminal intellect, which its own professed stu- 
 dents perpetually misread, because they persist 
 in trying to reconcile it with the average intel- 
 lect of average men, instead of identifying it as 
 a horrible wonder apart ?) could get by no road 
 to any other conclusion than that he tvas a 
 terrible man, and must be fled from. 
 
 She had been Helena's stay and comfort 
 during the whole time. She had constantly 
 assured her of her full belief in her brother's 
 innocence, and of her sympathy with him in his 
 misery. But she had never seen him since the 
 disappearance, nor had Helena ever spoken one 
 \Yord of his avowal to Mr. Crisparkle in regard 
 of Rosa, though, as a part of the interest of the 
 case, it was well known far and wide. He was 
 Helena's unfortunate brother, to her, and 
 nothing more. The assurance she had given 
 her odious suitor was strictly true, though it 
 would have been better (she considered now) if 
 she could have restrained herself from so giving 
 it. Afraid of him as the bright and delicate 
 little creature was, her spirit swelled at the 
 thought of his knowing it from her own lips. 
 
 But where was she to go ? Anywhere beyond 
 his reach was no reply to the question. Some- 
 where must be thought of. She determined to 
 go to her guardian, and to go immediately. 
 The feeling she had imparted to Helena, on 
 the night of their first confidence, was so strong 
 upon her — the feeling of not being safe from 
 him, and of the solid walls of the old convent 
 being powerless to keep out his ghostly follow- 
 ing of her — that no reasoning of her own could 
 calm her terrors. The fascination of repulsion 
 had been upon her so long, and now culminated 
 so darkly, that she felt as if he had ppwer to 
 
98 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 bind her by a spell. Glancing out at window, 
 even now, as she rose to dress, the sight of the 
 sun-dial on which he had leaned when he de- 
 clared himself, turned her cold, and made her 
 shrink from it, as though he had invested it 
 with some awful quality from his own nature. 
 
 She wrote a hurried note to Miss Twinkleton, 
 saying that she had sudden reason for wishing 
 to see her guardian promptly, and had gone to 
 him; also, entreating the good lady not to be 
 uneasy, for all was well with her. Slie hurried 
 a few quite useless articles into a very little bag, 
 left the note in a conspicuous place, and went 
 out, softly closing the gate after her. 
 
 It was the first time she had ever been even 
 in Cloisterham High Street alone. But, know- 
 ing all its ways and windings very well, she 
 hurried straight to the corner from which the 
 omnibus departed. It was at that very moment 
 going off. 
 
 " Stop and take me, if you i)lease, Joe. I am 
 obliged to go to London." 
 
 In less than another minute she was on her 
 road to the railway, under Joe's protection. 
 Joe waited on her when she got there, put her 
 safely into the railway carriage, and handed in 
 the very little bag after her, as though it were 
 some enormous trunk, hundredweights heavy, 
 which she must on no account endeavour to lift. 
 
 " Can you go round, when you get back, and 
 tell Miss Twinkleton that you saw me safely off, 
 Joe?" 
 
 " It shall be done, miss." 
 
 "With my love, please, Joe." 
 
 "Yes, miss — and I wouldn't mind having it 
 myself!" But Joe did not articulate the last 
 clause ; only thought it. 
 
 Now that she was whirling away for London 
 in real earnest, Rosa was at leisure to resume 
 the thoughts Avhich her personal hurry had 
 checked. The indignant thought that his de- 
 claration of love soiled her ; that she could only 
 be cleansed from the stain of its impurity by 
 appealing to the honest and true ; supported 
 her for a time against her fears, and confirmed 
 her in her hasty resolution. But, as the evening 
 grew darker and darker, and the great city im- 
 pended nearer and nearer, the doubts usual in 
 such cases began to rise. \Miether this was not 
 a wild proceeding, after all ; how Mr. Grewgious 
 might regard it ; whether she should find him at 
 the journey's end ; how she would act if he were 
 absent ; what might become of her, alone, in a 
 place so strange and crowded ; how if she had 
 but waited and taken counsel first ; whether, if 
 she could now go back, she would not do it 
 thankfully ; a multitude of such uneasy specula- 
 
 tions disturbed her, more and more as they 
 accumulated. At length the train came into 
 London over the housetops ; and down below 
 lay the gritty streets with their yet unneeded 
 lamjis aglow, on a hot light summer night. 
 
 " Hiram Grewgious, Esquire, Staple Inn, 
 London." This was all Rosa knew of her 
 destination ; but it was enough to send her 
 rattling away again in a cab, through deserts of 
 gritty streets, where many people crowded at 
 the corner of courts and by-ways to get some 
 air, and where many other people walked with 
 a miserably monotonous noise of shuffling of 
 feet on hot paving-stones, and where all the 
 people and all their surroundings were so gritty 
 and so shabby ! 
 
 There was music playing here and there, but 
 it did not enliven the case. No barrel-organ 
 mended the matter, and no big drum beat dull 
 care away. Like the chapel bells that were 
 also going here and there, they only seemed to 
 evoke echoes from brick surfaces, and dust from 
 e\'erything. As to the flat wind instruments, 
 they seemed to have cracked their hearts and 
 souls in pining for the country. 
 
 Her jingling conveyance stopped at last at a 
 fast-closed gateway, which appeared to belong 
 to somebody who had gone to bed very early, 
 and was much afraid of housebreakers. Rosa, 
 discharging her conveyance, timidly knocked at 
 this gateway, and was let in, very little bag and 
 all, by a watchman. 
 
 "Does Mr. Grewgious live here?" 
 
 " Mr. Grewgious lives there, miss," said the 
 watchman, pointing further in. 
 
 So Rosa went further in, and, when the clocks 
 were striking ten, stood on P. J. T.'s door-steps, 
 wondering what P. J. T. had done with his 
 street-door. 
 
 Guided by the painted name of ]\Ir. Grew- 
 gious, she went ui)-stairs, and softly tapped and 
 tapped several times. But no one answering, 
 and Mr. Grewgious's door-handle yielding to 
 her touch, she went in, and saw her guardian 
 sitting on a window-seat at an open window, 
 with a shaded lamp placed far from him on a 
 table in a corner, 
 
 Rosa drew nearer to him in the twilight of 
 the room. He saw her, and he said, in an 
 under-tone : " Good Heaven ! " 
 
 Rosa fell upon his neck with tears, and then 
 he said, returning her embrace : 
 
 " My child, my child ! 1 thought you were 
 your mother ! — But what, what, what," he 
 added soothingly, " has happened ? My dear, 
 what has brought you here? Who has brought 
 you here ? " 
 
A PREUX CHEVALIER. 
 
 99 
 
 " No one. I came alone." 
 
 "Lord bless me!" ejaculated Mr. Grew- 
 gious. "Came alone! Why didn't you write 
 to me to come and fetch you ? " 
 
 " I had no time. I took a sudden resolu- 
 tion. Poor, poor Eddy ! " 
 
 "Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow !" 
 
 " His uncle has made love to me. I cannot 
 bear it," said Rosa, at once with a burst of tears, 
 and a stamp of her little foot ; " I shudder with 
 horror of him, and I have come to you to pro- 
 tect me and all of us from him, if yon will ! " 
 
 " I will ! " cried Mr. Grewgious with a sudden 
 rush of amazing energy. " Damn him ! 
 
 ' Confound his politics I 
 Frustrate his knavish tricks ! 
 On Thee his hopes to fix ? 
 Damn him again I ' " 
 
 After this most extraordinary outburst, Mr. 
 Grewgious, quite beside himself, plunged about 
 the room, to all appearance undecided whether 
 he was in a fit of loyal enthusiasm or combative 
 denunciation. 
 
 He stopped and said, wiping his face : " I 
 beg your pardon, my dear, but you will be glad 
 to know I feel better. Tell me no more just 
 now, or I might do it again. You must be 
 refreshed and cheered. What did you take 
 last ? Was it breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or 
 supper ? And what will you take next ? Shall 
 it be breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, or supper ? " 
 
 The respectful tenderness with which, on one 
 knee beforf her, he helped her to remove her 
 hat, and disentangle her pretty hair from it, was 
 quite a chivalrous sight. Yet who, knowing 
 him only on the surface, would have expected 
 chivalry — and of the true sort, too ; not the 
 spurious — from Mr. Grewgious ? 
 
 " Your rest, too, must be provided for," he 
 went on ; " and you shall have the prettiest 
 chamber in Furnival's. Your toilet must be 
 provided for, and you shall have everything that 
 an unlimited head chambermaid — by which ex- 
 pression I mean a head chambermaid not limited 
 as to outlay- — can procure. Is that a bag ? " he 
 looked hard at it ; sooth to say, it required hard 
 looking at to be seen at all in a dimly-lighted 
 room : " and is it your property, my dear ? " ,' 
 
 " Yes, sir. I brought it with me." 
 
 " It is not an extensive bag," said Mr. Grew- 
 gious candidly, "though admirably calculated 
 to contain a day's provision for a canary bird. 
 Perhaps you brought a canary bird ? " 
 
 Rosa smiled and shook her head. 
 
 " If you had, he should have been made 
 welcome," said Mr. Grewgious, "and I think 
 he would have been pleased to be hung upon a 
 
 nail outside, and pit himself against our Staple 
 sparrows, whose execution must be admitted to 
 be not quite equal to tlieir intention. Which is 
 the case with so many of us ! You didn't say 
 what meal, my dear. Have a nice jumble of all 
 meals." 
 
 Rosa thanked him, but said she could only 
 take a cup of tea. Mr. Grewgious, after several 
 times running out, and in again, to mention 
 such supplementary items as marmalade, eggs, 
 water-cresses, salted fish, and frizzled ham, ran 
 across to Furnival's without his hat, to give his 
 various directions. And soon afterwards they 
 were realised in practice, and the board was 
 spread. 
 
 " Lord bless my soul ! " cried Mr. Grewgious, 
 putting the lamji upon it, and taking his seat 
 opposite Rosa; "what a new sensation for a 
 poor old Angular bachelor, to be sure ! " 
 
 Rosa's expressive little eyebrows asked him 
 what he meant ? 
 
 " The sensation of having a sweet young pre- 
 sence in the place, that whitewashes it, paints 
 it, papers it, decorates it with gilding, and 
 makes it Glorious ! " said Mr. Grewgious. " Ah 
 me ! Ah me ! " 
 
 As there was something mournful in his sigh, 
 Rosa, in touching him with her teacup, ven- 
 tured to touch him with her small hand too. 
 
 " Thank you, my dear," said Mr. Grewgious. 
 " Ahem ! Let's talk ! " 
 
 " Do you always live here, sir ? " asked Rosa. 
 
 " Yes, my dear." 
 
 " And always alone ? " 
 
 " Always alone ; except that I have daily com- 
 pany in a gentleman by the name of Bazzard, 
 my clerk." 
 
 " He doesn't live here ? " 
 
 " No, he goes his way after office hours. In 
 fact, he is oft" duty here altogether just at pre- 
 sent ; and a firm down-stairs, with which I have 
 business relations, lend me a substitute. But 
 it would be extremely difficult to rej^lace Mr. 
 Bazzard." 
 
 " He must be very fond of you," said Rosa. 
 
 " He bears up against it with commendable 
 fortitude if he is," returned Mr. Grewgious after 
 considering the matter. " But I doubt if he is. 
 Not particularly so. You see he is discontented, 
 poor fellow." 
 
 " Why isn't he contented ? " was the natural 
 inquiry. 
 
 " Misplaced," said Mr. Grewgious with great 
 mystery. 
 
 Rosa's eyebrows resumed their inquisitive and 
 perplexed expression. 
 
 "So misplaced," Mr. Grewgious went on, 
 
100 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 " that I feel constantly apologetic towards him. 
 And he feels (though he doesn't mention it) that 
 I have reason to be." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious had by this time grown so 
 very mysterious, that Rosa did not know how to 
 go on. While she was thinking about it, Mr. 
 Grewgious suddenly jerked out of himself, for 
 the second time : 
 
 " Let's talk ! We were speaking of Mr. Baz- 
 zard. It's a secret, and, moreover, it is Mr. 
 Bazzard's secret ; but the sweet presence at my 
 
 table makes me so unusually expansive, that 
 I feel I must impart it in inviolable con- 
 fidence. What do you think Mr. Bazzard has 
 done?" 
 
 " Oh dear ! " cried Rosa, drawing her chair a 
 little nearer, and her mind reverting to Jasper, 
 " nothing dreadful, I hope ?" 
 
 " He has written a play," said Mr. Grewgious 
 in a solemn whisper. " A tragedy." 
 
 Rosa seemed much relieved. 
 
 " And nobody," pursued Mr. Grewgious in 
 
 MR. GREWGIOUS EXPERIENCES A KEW SEXSATIOX. 
 
 the same tone, " will hear, on any account what- 
 ever, of bringing it out." 
 
 Rosa looked reflective, and nodded her head 
 slowly ; as who should say, " Such things are, 
 and why are they?" 
 
 " Now, you know," said jNIr. Grewgious, " / 
 couldn't write a play." 
 
 " Not a bad one, sir? " said Rosa innocently, 
 with her eyebrows again in action. 
 
 " No. If I was under sentence of decapita- 
 tion, and was about to be instantly decapitated, 
 and an express arrived with a pardon for the 
 
 condemned convict Grewgious if he wrote a 
 play, I should be under the necessity of resum- 
 ing the block, and begging the executioner to 
 proceed to extremities, — meaning," said Mr. 
 Grewgious, passing his hand under his chin, 
 " the singular number, and this extremity." 
 
 Rosa appeared to consider what she would 
 do if the awkward supposititious case were 
 hers. 
 
 " Consequently," said Mr. Grewgious, '' Mr, 
 Bazzard would have a sense of my inferiority to 
 himself under any circumstances ; but when I 
 
THE THORN OF ANXIETY. 
 
 lor 
 
 am his master, you know, the case is greatly 
 aggravated." 
 
 Mr. Grewgioiis shook his head seriously, as if 
 he felt the offence to be a little too much, though 
 of his own committing. 
 
 " How came you to be his master, sir ? " asked 
 Rosa. 
 
 " A question that naturally follows," said Mr. 
 Grewgious. " Let's talk ! Mr. Bazzard's father, 
 being a Norfolk farmer, would have furiously 
 laid about him with a flail, a pitchfork, and every 
 agricultural implement available for assaulting 
 purposes, on the slightest hint of his son's hav- 
 ing written a play. So the son, bringing to me 
 the father's rent (which I receive), imparted his 
 secret, and pointed out that he was determined 
 to pursue his genius, and that it would put him 
 in peril of starvation, and that he was not formed 
 for it." 
 
 " For pursuing his genius, sir ? " 
 
 " No, my dear," said Mr. Grewgious, " for 
 starvation. It was impossible to deny the posi- 
 tion, that Mr. Bazzard was not formed to be 
 starved, and Mr. Bazzard then pointed out that 
 it was desirable that I should stand between him 
 and a fate so perfectly unsuited to his formation. 
 In that way Mr. Bazzard became my clerk, and 
 he feels it very much." 
 
 " I am glad he is grateful," said Rosa. 
 
 " I didn't quite mean that, my dear. I mean 
 that he feels the degradation. There are some 
 other geniuses that Mr. Bazzard has become ac- 
 quainted with, who have also written tragedies, 
 which likewise nobody will on any account what- 
 ever hear of bringing out, and these choice spirits 
 dedicate their plays to one another 'in a highly 
 panegyrical manner. Mr. Bazzard has been the 
 subject of one of these dedications. Now, you 
 know, /never had a play dedicated to wt'.^" 
 
 Rosa looked at him as if she would have liked 
 him to be the recipient of a thousand dedi- 
 cations. 
 
 "Which again, naturally, rubs against the 
 grain of Mr. Bazzard," said Mr. Grewgious. 
 " He is very short with me sometimes, and then 
 I feel that he is meditating, ' This blockhead is 
 my master ! A fellow who couldn't write a tra- 
 gedy on pain of death, and who will never have 
 one dedicated to him with the most compli- 
 mentary congratulations on the high position 
 he has taken in the eyes of posterity ! ' Very 
 trying, very trying. However, in giving him 
 directions, I reflect beforehand : ' Perhaps he 
 may not like this,' or ' He might take it ill if I 
 asked that;' and so Ave get on very well. In- 
 deed, better than I could have expected." 
 
 " Is the tragedy named, sir ? " asked Rosa. 
 
 " Strictly between ourselves," answered Mr. 
 Grewgious, " it has a dreadfully appropriate 
 name. It is called The Thorn of Anxiety. But 
 Mr. Bazzard hopes — and 1 hope — that it will 
 come out at last." 
 
 It was not hard to divine that Mr. Grewgious 
 had related the Bazzard history thus fully, at 
 least quite as much for the recreation of his 
 ward's mind from the subject that had driven 
 her there, as for the gratification of his own 
 tendency to be social and communicative. 
 
 " And now, my dear," he said at this point, 
 " if you are not too tired to tell me more ot what 
 passed to-day — but only if you feel quite able — 
 I should be glad to hear it. 1 may digest it the 
 better if I sleep on it to-night." 
 
 Rosa, composed now, gave him a faithful 
 account of the interview. Mr. Grewgious often 
 smoothed his head while it was in progress, and 
 begged to be told a second time those parts 
 which bore on Helena and Neville. When Rosa 
 had finished, he sat grave, silent, and meditative 
 for awhile. 
 
 " Clearly narrated," Avas his only remark at 
 last, " and, I hope, clearly put away here," 
 smoothing his head again. " See, my dear," 
 taking her to the open window, " where they 
 live. The dark windows over yonder." 
 
 "I may go to Helena to-morrow?" asked 
 Rosa. 
 
 " I should like to sleep on that question to- 
 night," he answered doubtfully. " But let me 
 take you to your own rest, for you must need it." 
 
 With that Mr. Grewgious helped her to get 
 her hat on again, and hung upon his arm the 
 very little bag that was of no earthly use, and 
 led her by the hand (with a certain stately awk- 
 v/ardness, as if he were going to walk a minuet) 
 across Holborn, and into Furnival's Inn. At 
 the hotel door he confided her to the Unlimited 
 head chambermaid, and said that, while she 
 went up to see her room, he would remain 
 below, in case she should wish it exchanged for 
 another, or should find that there was anything 
 she Avanted. 
 
 Rosa's room was airy, clean, comfortable, 
 almost gay. The Unlimited had laid in every- 
 thing omitted from the very little bag (that is to 
 say, everything she could possibly need), and 
 Rosa tripped doAvn the great many stairs again, 
 to thank her guardian for his thoughtful and 
 affectionate care of her. 
 
 •' Not at all, my dear," said Mr. GrcAvgious, 
 infinitely gratified ; " it is I Avho thank you for 
 your charming confidence and for your charm- 
 ing company. Your breakfast Avill be provided 
 for you in a neat, compact, and graceful little 
 
102 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 sitting-room (appropriate to your figure), and I 
 will come to you at ten o'clock in the morning. 
 I hope you don't feel very strange indeed in this 
 strange place." 
 
 " Oh no, I feel so safe ! " 
 
 " Yes, you may be sure that the stairs are 
 fire-proof," said Mr. Grewgious, " and that any 
 outbreak of the devouring element would be 
 perceived and suppressed by the watchmen." 
 
 " I did hot mean that," Rosa replied. " I 
 mean I feel so safe from him." 
 
 " There is a stout gate of iron bars to keep 
 him out," said Mr. Grewgious, smiling; "and 
 Furnival's is fire-proof, and specially watched 
 and lighted, and / live over the way." In the 
 stoutness of his knight-errantry, he seemed to 
 think the last-named protection all-sufficient. 
 In the same spirit he said to the gate-porter, as 
 he went out, " If some one staying in the hotel 
 should wish to send across the road to me in 
 the night, a crown will be ready for the messen- 
 ger." In the same spirit he walked up and 
 down outside the iron gate for the best part of 
 an hour, with some solicitude ; occasionally 
 looking in between the bars, as if he had laid a 
 dove in a high roost in a cage of lions, and had 
 it on his mind that she might tumble out. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 A RECOGNITION. 
 
 Nothing occurred in the night to 
 flutter the tired dove ; and the dove 
 arose refreshed. With Mr. Grew- 
 gious, when the clock struck ten in 
 the morning, came Mr. Crisparkle, 
 who had come at one plunge out of the 
 river at Cloisterham. 
 
 " Miss Twinkleton was so uneasy, 
 ]\Iiss Rosa," he explained to her, " and came 
 round to ma and me with your note, in such a 
 state of wonder, that, to quiet her, I volunteered 
 on this service by the very first train to be 
 caught in the morning. I wished at the time 
 that you had come to me ; but now I think it 
 best that you did as you did, and came to your 
 guardian." 
 
 " I did think of you," Rosa told him ; " but 
 
 Minor Canon Corner was so near him " 
 
 " I understand. It was quite natural." 
 
 " I have told Mr. Crisparkle," said Mr. 
 
 Grewgious, " all that you told me last night, 
 
 my dear. Of course I should have written it to 
 
 him immediately; but his coming was most op- 
 
 portune. And it was particularly kind of him to 
 come, for he had but just gone." 
 
 " Have you settled," asked Rosa, appealing 
 to them both, " what is to be done for Helena 
 and her brother?" 
 
 " Why, really," said Mr. Crisparkle, " I am in 
 great perplexity. If even Mr. Grewgious, whose 
 head is much longer than mine, and who is a 
 whole night's cogitation in advance of me, is 
 undecided, what must I be ? " 
 
 The Unlimited here put her head in at the 
 door — after having rapped, and been authorised 
 to present herself — announcing that a gentleman 
 wished for a word with another gentleman named 
 Crisparkle, if any such gentleman were there. If 
 no such gentleman were there, he begged par- 
 don for being mistaken. 
 
 " Such a gentleman is here," said Air. Cri- 
 sparkle, "but is engaged just now." 
 
 " Is it a dark gentleman ? " interposed Rosa, 
 retreating on her guardian. 
 
 " No, miss, more of a brown gentleman." 
 
 "You are sure not with black hair?" asked 
 Rosa, taking courage. 
 
 " Quite sure of that, miss. Brown hair and 
 blue eyes." 
 
 " Perhaps," hinted Mr. Grewgious with habi- 
 tual caution, " it might be well to see him, 
 reverend sir, if you don't object. When one is 
 in a difficulty or at a loss, one never knows in 
 what direction a way out may chance to open. 
 It is a business principle of mine, in such a case, 
 not to close up any direction, but to keep an 
 eye on every direction that may present itself. 
 I could relate an anecdote in point, but that it 
 would be premature." 
 
 " If ]\Iiss Rosa will allow me, then ? Let the 
 gentleman come in," said Mr. Crisparkle. 
 
 The gentleman came in ; apologised, with a 
 frank but modest grace, for not finding Mr. 
 Crisparkle alone ; turned to ]Mr. Crisparkle, and 
 smilingly asked the unexpected question : "Who 
 am I ? " 
 
 "You are the gentleman I saw smoking 
 under the trees in Staple Inn a few minutes 
 ago." 
 
 " True. There I saw you. Who else am I ? " 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle concentrated his attention on 
 a handsome face, much sunburnt ; and the 
 ghost of some departed boy seemed to rise, 
 gradually and dimly, in the room. 
 
 The gentleman saw a struggling recollection 
 lighten up the Minor Canon's features, and, 
 smiling again, said : " What will you have for 
 breakfast this morning ? You are out of 
 jam." 
 
 " Wait a moment ! " cried Mr. Crisparkle, 
 
MR. GREWGIOUS HAS AN IDEA. 
 
 103 
 
 raising his right hand. " Give me another in- 
 stant ! Tartar ! " 
 
 The two shook hands with the greatest hearti- 
 ness, and tlien went the wonderful length — for 
 Englishmen — of laying their hands each on the 
 other's shoulders, and looking joyfully each into 
 the other's face. 
 
 " My old fag ! " said Mr. Crisparkle. 
 
 " ]\Iy old master ! " said Mr. Tartar. 
 
 " You saved me from drowning ! " said ]Mr. 
 Crisparkle. 
 
 "After which you took to swimming, you 
 know ! " said Mr. Tartar. 
 
 " God bless my soul ! " said Mr. Crisparkle. 
 
 " Amen ! " said Mr. Tartar. 
 
 And then they fell to shaking hands most 
 heartily again. 
 
 " Imagine," exclaimed Mr. Crisparkle witli 
 glistening eyes : " Miss Rosa Bud and Mr. 
 Grewgious, imagine Mr. Tartar, when he was 
 the smallest of juniors, diving for me, catching 
 me, a big heavy senior, by the hair of the head, 
 and striking out for the shore with me like a 
 water-giant ! " 
 
 " Imagine my not letting him sink, as I was 
 his fag ! " said Mr. Tartar. " But the truth 
 being that he was my best protector and friend, 
 and did me more good than all the masters put 
 together, an irrational impulse seized me to pick 
 him up, or go down with him." 
 
 " Hem ! Permit me, sir, to have the honour," 
 said Mr. Grewgious, advancing with extended 
 hand, " for an honour I truly esteem it. I am 
 proud to make your acquaintance. I hope you 
 didn't take cold. I hope you were not incon- 
 venienced by swallowing too much water. How 
 have you been since ? " 
 
 It was by no means apparent that Mr. Grew- 
 gious knew what he said, though it was very 
 apparent that he meant to say something highly 
 friendly and appreciative. 
 
 If Heaven, Rosa thought, had but sent such 
 courage and skill to her poor mother's aid ! 
 And he to have been so slight and young 
 then ! 
 
 •' I don't wish to be complimented upon it, I 
 thank you ; but I think I have an idea," Mr. 
 Grewgious announced, after taking a jog-trot or 
 two across the room, so unexpected and un- 
 accountable that they all stared at him, doubt- 
 ful whether he was choking or had the cramp — " I 
 thitik I have an idea. I believe I have had the 
 pleasure of seeing Mr. Tartar's name as tenant 
 of the top set in the house next the top set in 
 the corner ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," returned Mr. Tartar. " You are 
 right so far." 
 
 " I am right so far," said Mr. Grewgious. 
 " Tick that off ; " which he did, with his right 
 thumb on his left. " Might you happen to 
 know the name of your neighbour in the top set 
 on the other side of tlie party-wall ? " coming 
 very close to Mr. Tartar, to lose notliing of his 
 face in his shortness of sight. 
 
 " Landless." 
 
 " Tick that off," said Mr. Grewgious, taking 
 another trot, and then coming back, " No per- 
 sonal knowledge, I suppose, sir ? " 
 
 " Slight, but some." 
 
 " Tick that off," said Mr. Grewgious, taking 
 another trot, and again coming back. '• Nature 
 of knowledge, Mr. Tartar ? " 
 
 " I thought he seemed to be a young fellow 
 in a poor way, and I asked his leave — only 
 within a day or so — to share my flowers up there 
 with him ; that is to say, to extend my flower 
 garden to his windows." 
 
 " Would you have the kindness to take seats?" 
 said Mr. Grewgious. " I have an idea ! " 
 
 They complied : Mr. Tartar none the less 
 readily for being all abroad ; and Mr. Grew- 
 gious, seated in the centre, with his hands upon 
 his knees, thus stated his idea, with his usual 
 manner of having got the statement by heart : 
 
 " I cannot as yet make up my mind whether 
 it is prudent to hold open communication under 
 present circumstances, and on the part of the 
 fair member of the present company, with Mr. 
 Neville or Miss Helena. I have reason to 
 know that a local friend of ours (on whom I beg 
 to bestow a passing but a hearty malediction, 
 with the kind permission of my reverend friend) 
 sneaks to and fro, and dodges up and down. 
 When not doing so himself, he may have some 
 informant skulking about, in the person of a 
 watchman, porter, or such-like hanger-on of 
 Staple. On the other hand. Miss Rosa very 
 naturally wishes to see her friend Miss Helena, 
 and it would seem important that at least Miss 
 Helena (if not her brother too, through her) 
 should privately know from Miss Rosa's lips 
 what has occurred, and what has been threatened. 
 Am I agreed with generally in the views I take ?" 
 
 '' I entirely coincide with them," said Mr. 
 Crisparkle, who had been very attentive. 
 
 " As I have no doubt I should," added Mr. 
 Tartar, smiling, " if I understood them." 
 
 " Fair and softly, sir," said Mr. Grewgious ; 
 " we shall fully confide in you directly, if you 
 will favour us with your permission. Now, if 
 our local friend should have any informant on 
 the spot, it is tolerably clear that such informant 
 can only be set to watch the chambers in the 
 occupation of Mr. Neville. He reporting, to 
 
104 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 our local friend, who comes and goes there, our 
 local friend would supply for himself, from his 
 own previous knowledge, tlie identity of the 
 parties. Nobody can be set to watch all Staple, 
 or to concern himself with comers and goers 
 to other sets of chambers: unless, indeed, 
 mine." 
 
 " I begin to understand to what you tend," 
 said Mr. Crisparkle, " and highly approve of 
 your caution." 
 
 " I needn't repeat that I know nothing yet of 
 the why and wherefore," said Mr. Tartar; "but 
 I also understand to what you tend, so let me 
 say at once that my chambers are freely at your 
 disposal." 
 
 " There ! " cried Mr. Grewgious, smoothing 
 his head triumphandy, " now we have all got the 
 idea. You have it, my dear?" 
 
 " I think I have," said Rosa, blushing a Httle 
 as Mr. Tartar looked (quickly towards her. 
 
 " You see, you go over to Staple with Mr. 
 Crisparkle and Mr. Tartar," said Mr. Grew- 
 gious ; " I going in and out, and out and in, 
 alone, in my usual way ; you go up with those 
 gentlemen to Vlx. Tartar's rooms ; you look into 
 ^lr. Tartar's flower garden; you wait for Miss 
 Helena's appearance there, or you signify to 
 Miss Helena that you are close by; and you 
 communicate with her freely, and no spy can be 
 the wiser." 
 
 •' I am very much afraid I shall be " 
 
 " Be what, my dear ? " asked Mr. Grewgious 
 as she hesitated. " Not frightened ? " 
 
 " No, not that," said Rosa shyly ; " in Mr. 
 Tartar's way. We seem to be appropriating 
 Mr. Tartar's residence so very coolly." 
 
 " I protest to you," returned that gentleman, 
 " that I shall think the better of it for evermore, 
 if your voice sounds in it only once." 
 
 Rosa, not quite knowing what to say about 
 that, cast down her eyes, and, turning to Mr. 
 Grewgious, dutifully asked if she should put her 
 hat on ? Mr. Grewgious being of opinion that 
 she could not do better, she withdrew for the 
 purpose. Mr. Crisparkle took the opportunity 
 of giving Mr. Tartar a summary of the distresses 
 of Neville and his sister ; the opportunity was 
 quite long enough, as the hat happened to re- 
 quire a little extra fitdng on. 
 
 Mr. Tartar gave his arm to Rosa, and Mr. 
 Crisparkle walked, detached, in front. 
 
 " Poor, poor Eddy ! " thought Rosa as they 
 went along. 
 
 Mr. Tartar waved his right hand as he bent 
 his head down over Rosa, talking in an animated 
 wa\'. 
 
 " It was not so powerful or so sun-browned 
 
 when it saved Mr. Crisparkle," thought Rosa, 
 glancing at it ; " but it must have been very 
 steady and determined even then." 
 
 Mr. Tartar told her he had been a sailor, 
 roving everywhere for years and years. 
 
 " When are you going to sea again ? " asked 
 Rosa. 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 Rosa wondered what the girls would say if 
 they could see her crossing the wide street on 
 the sailor's arm. And she fancied that the 
 passers-by must think her very little and very 
 helpless, contrasted with the strong figure that 
 could have caught her up and carried her out of 
 any danger, miles and miles without resting. 
 
 She was thinking, further, that his far-seeing 
 blue eyes looked as if they had been used to 
 watch danger afar off, and to w'atch it without 
 flinching, drawing nearer and nearer : when, 
 happening to raise her own eyes, she found that 
 he seemed to be thinking something about than. 
 
 This a little confused Rosebud, and may 
 account for her never afterwards quite knowing 
 how she ascended (with his help) to his garden 
 in the air, and seemed to get into a marvellous 
 country that came into sudden bloom like the 
 country on the summit of the magic bean-stalk. 
 May it flourish for ever ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXn. 
 
 A GRITTY STATE OF THINGS COMES ON. 
 
 'R. TARTAR'S chambers were the 
 neatest, the cleanest, and the best- 
 ordered chambers ever seen under 
 the sun, moon, and stars. The 
 floors were scrubbed to that extent, 
 that you might have supposed the Lon- 
 don blacks emancipated for ever, and 
 gone out of the land for good. Every 
 inch of brass-work in Mr. Tartar's possession 
 was polished and burnished till it shone like a 
 brazen mirror. No speck, nor spot, nor spatter 
 soiled the purity of any of Mr. Tartar's house- 
 hold gods, large, small, or middle-sized. His 
 sitting-room was like the admiral's cabin, his 
 bath-room was like a dairy, his sleeping- 
 chamber, fitted all about with lockers and 
 drawers, was like a seedsman's shop ; and his 
 nicely-balanced cot just stirred in the midst, as 
 if it breathed. Everything belonging to Mr. 
 Tartar had quarters of its own assigned to it : 
 his maps and charts had their quarters ; his 
 books had theirs ; his brushes had theirs ; his 
 
IN THE COUNTRY OF THE MAGIC BEAN-STAIK. 
 
 '05 
 
 boots had theirs ; his clothes had theirs ; his 
 case-bottles had theirs ; his telescopes and 
 other instruments had theirs. Everything was 
 readily accessible. Shelf, bracket, locker, hook, 
 and drawer were equally within reach, and were 
 equally contrived with a view to avoiding waste 
 of room, and providing some snug inches of 
 stowage for something that would have exactly 
 fitted nowhere else. His gleaming little service 
 of plate was so arranged upon his sideboard 
 as that a slack salt-spoon would have instantly 
 betrayed itself; his toilet implements were so 
 arranged upon his dressing-table as that a tooth- 
 pick of slovenly deportment could have been 
 reported at a glance. So with the curiosities 
 he had brought home from various voyages. 
 Stuffed, dried, repolished, or otherwise pre- 
 served, according to their kind ; birds, fishes, 
 reptiles, arms, articles of dress, shells, seaweeds, 
 grasses, or memorials of coral reef; each was 
 displayed in its especial place, and each could 
 have been displayed in no better place. Paint 
 and varnish seemed to be kept somewhere out 
 of sight, in constant readiness to obliterate stray 
 finger-marks, wherever any might become per- 
 ceptible in Mr. Tartar's chambers. No man-of- 
 war was ever kept more spick and span from 
 careless touch. On this bright summer day a 
 neat awning was rigged over Mr. Tartar's flower 
 garden as only a sailor could rig it ; and there 
 was a sea-going air upon the whole effect, so 
 delightfully complete, that the flower garden 
 might have a])pertained to stern-windows afloat, 
 and the whole concern might have bowled away 
 gallantly with all on board, if Mr. Tartar had 
 only clapped to his lips the speaking trumpet 
 that was slung in a corner, and given hoarse 
 orders to heave the anchor up, look alive there, 
 men, and get all sail upon her ! 
 
 Mr. Tartar doing the honours of this gallant 
 craft was of a piece with the rest. When a man 
 rides an amiable hobby that shies at nothing, 
 and kicks nobody, it is only agreeable to find 
 him riding it with a humorous sense of the droll 
 side of the creature. When the man is a cordial 
 and an earnest man by nature, and withal is 
 perfectly fresh and genuine, it may be doubted 
 whether he is ever seen to greater advantage 
 than at such a time. So Rosa would have 
 naturally thought (even if she hadn't been con- 
 ducted over the ship with all the homage due to 
 the First Lady of the Admiralty, or First Fairy 
 of the Sea) that it was charming to see and hear 
 Mr. Tartar half laughing at, and half rejoicing 
 in, his various contrivances. So Rosa would 
 have naturally thought, anyhow, that the sun- 
 burnt sailor showed to great advantage when, 
 
 the inspection finished, he delicately withdrew 
 out of his admiral's cabin, beseeching her to 
 consider herself its Queen, and waving her free 
 of his flower garden with the hand that had had 
 Mr. Crisparkle's life in it. 
 
 " Helena ! Helena Landless ! Are you 
 there ? " 
 
 " Who speaks to me? Not Rosa?" Then 
 a second handsome face appearing. 
 
 " Yes, my darling ! " 
 
 "Why, how did you come here, dearest?" 
 
 *' I — I don't quite know," said Rosa with a 
 blush ; " unless I am dreaming ! " 
 
 Why with a blush ? For their two faces were 
 alone with the other flowers. Are blushes 
 among the fruits of the country of the magic 
 bean-stalk ? 
 
 " / am not dreaming," said Helena, smiling. 
 " I should take more for granted if I were. 
 How do we come together — or so near together 
 — so very unexpectedly ? " 
 
 Unexpectedly indeed, among the dingy gables 
 and chimney-pots of P. J. T.'s connection, and 
 the flowers that had sprung from the salt sea. 
 But Rosa, waking, told in a hurry how they 
 came to be together, and all the why and 
 wherefore of that matter. 
 
 " And Mr. Crisparkle is here," said Rosa in 
 rapid conclusion ; " and, could you believe it ? 
 long ago he saved his life ! " 
 
 " I could believe any such thing of Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle," returned Helena with a mantling face. 
 
 (More blushes in the bean-stalk country !) 
 
 " Yes, but it wasn't Mr. Crisparkle," said 
 Rosa, quickly putting in the correction. 
 
 " I don't understand, love." 
 
 " It was very nice of Mr. Crisparkle to be 
 saved," said Rosa, " and he couldn't have shown 
 his high opinion of Mr. Tartar more expres- 
 sively. But it was Mr. Tartar who saved him." 
 
 Helena's dark eyes looked very earnestly at 
 the bright face among the leaves, and she asked 
 in a slower and more thoughtful tone : 
 
 " Is Mr. Tartar with you now, dear?" 
 
 " No ; because he has given up his rooms to 
 me — to us, I mean. It is such a beautiful 
 place ! " 
 
 "Is it?" 
 
 " It is like the inside of the most exquisite 
 ship that ever sailed. It is like — it is like " 
 
 " Like a dream ? " suggested Helena. 
 
 Rosa answered with a Httle nod, and smelled 
 the flowers. 
 
 Helena resumed after a short pause of silence, 
 during which she seemed (or it was Rosa's 
 fancy) to compassionate somebody: "My poor 
 Neville is reading in his own room, the sun 
 
io6 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 being so very bright on this side just now. I 
 think he had better not know that you are so 
 near." 
 
 " Oh, I think so too ! " cried Rosa very 
 readily. 
 
 " I suppose," pursued Helena doubtfully, 
 "that he must know by-and-by all you have 
 told me ; but I am not sure. Ask Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle's advice, my darling. Ask him whether 
 I may tell Neville as much or as little of what 
 you have told me as I think best." 
 
 Rosa subsided into her state cabin, and pro- 
 pounded the question. The Minor Canon was 
 for the free exercise of Helena's judgment. 
 
 " I thank him very much," said Helena when 
 Rosa emerged again with her report. " Ask 
 him whether it would be best to wait until any 
 more maligning and pursuing of Neville on the 
 part of this wretch shall disclose itself, or to try 
 to anticipate it : I mean, so far as to find out 
 whether any such goes on darkly about us?" 
 
 The Minor Canon found this point so difficult 
 to give a confident opinion on, that, after two 
 or three attempts and failures, he suggested a 
 reference to Mr. Grewgious. Helena acquies- 
 cing, he betook himself (with a most unsuccessful 
 assumption of lounging indifference) across the 
 quadrangle to P. J. T.'s, and stated it. Mr, 
 Grewgious held decidedly to the general prin- 
 ciple, that if you could steal a march upon a 
 brigand or a wild beast, you had better do it ; 
 and he also held decidedly to the special case, 
 that John Jasper was a brigand and a wild beast 
 in combination. 
 
 Thus advised, Mr. Crisparkle came back again 
 and reported to Rosa, who in her turn reported 
 to Helena. She now, steadily pursuing her 
 train of thought at her window, considered 
 thereupon. 
 
 " We may count on ]\Ir. Tartar's readiness to 
 help us, Rosa ? " she inquired. 
 
 Oh yes ! Rosa shyly thought so. Oh yes ! 
 Rosa shyly believed she could almost answer 
 for it. But should she ask Mr. Crisparkle ? 
 " I think your authority on the point as good as 
 his, my dear," said Helena sedately, " and you 
 needn't disappear again for that." Odd of 
 Helena ! 
 
 " You see, Neville," Helena pursued, after 
 more reflection, " knows no one else here : he 
 has not so much as exchanged a word with any 
 one else here. If Mr. Tartar would call to see 
 him openly and often ; if he would spare a 
 minute for the purpose frequently ; if he would 
 even do so almost daily ; something might come 
 of it." 
 
 " Something might come of it, dear ? " re- 
 
 peated Rosa, surveying her friend's beauty with 
 a highly-perplexed face. " Something might ? " 
 
 " If Neville's movements are really watched, 
 and if the purpose really is to isolate him from 
 all friends and acquaintance, and wear his daily 
 life out grain by grain (which would seem to be 
 the threat to you), does it not appear likely," 
 said Helena, " that his enemy would in some 
 way communicate with Mr. Tartar to warn him 
 off from Neville ? In which case, we might not 
 only know the fact, but might know from Mr. 
 Tartar what the terms of the communication 
 were." 
 
 " I see ! " cried Rosa. And immediately 
 darted into her state cabin again. 
 
 Presently her pretty face reappeared, with a 
 greatly-heightened colour, and she said that she 
 had told Mr. Crisparkle, and that Mr. Crisparkle 
 had fetched in Mr. Tartar, and that Mr. Tartar 
 — " who is waiting now in case you want him," 
 added Rosa, with a half-look back, and in not a 
 little confusion between the inside of the state 
 cabin and out — had declared his readiness to 
 act as she had suggested, and to enter on his 
 task that very day. 
 
 " I thank him from my heart," said Helena. 
 " Pray tell him so." 
 
 Again not a little confused between the Flower 
 Garden and the Cabin, Rosa dipped in with her 
 message, and dipped out again with more assur- 
 ances from Mr. Tartar, and stood wavering in a 
 divided state between Helena and him, which 
 proved that confusion is not always necessarily 
 awkward, but may sometimes present a very 
 pleasant appearance. 
 
 " And now, darling," said Helena, " we will 
 be mindful of the caution that has restricted us 
 to this interview for the present, and will part. 
 I hear Neville moving, too. Are you going 
 back ? " 
 
 " To Miss Twinkleton's ? " asked Rosa. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Oh, I could never go there any more; I 
 couldn't, indeed, after that dreadful interview ! " 
 said Rosa. 
 
 " Then where are you going, pretty one ? " 
 
 " Now I come to think of it, I don't know," 
 said Rosa. " I have settled nothing at all yet, 
 but my guardian will take care of me. Don't 
 be uneasy, dear. I shall be sure to be some- 
 where." 
 
 (It did seem likely.) 
 
 " And I shall hear of my Rosebud from Mr. 
 Tartar ? " inquired Helena. 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so ; from " Rosa looked 
 
 back again in a flutter, instead of supplying the 
 name. " But tell me one thing before we part, 
 
BILLICKIN'S. 
 
 107 
 
 dearest Helena. Tell me that you are sure, sure, 
 sure, I couldn't help it." 
 
 " Help it, love ? " 
 
 " Help making him malicious and revenge- 
 ful. I couldn't hold any terms with him, could 
 1?" 
 
 " You know how I love you, darling," answered 
 Helena with indignation; "but I would sooner 
 see you dead at his wicked feet." 
 
 " That's a great comfort to me ! And you 
 will tell your poor brother so, won't you ? And 
 you will give him my remembrance and my 
 sympathv ? And you will ask him not to hate 
 me ? ■' ' 
 
 With a mournful shake of the head, as if that 
 would be quite a superfluous entreaty, Helena 
 lovingly kissed her two hands to her friend, and 
 her friend's two hands were kissed to her ; and 
 then she saw a third hand (a brown one) appear 
 among the flowers and leaves, and help her 
 friend out of sight. 
 
 The refection that Mr. Tartar produced in the 
 Admiral's Cabin by merely touching the spring 
 knob of a locker and the handle of a drawer 
 was a dazzling, enchanted repast. Wonderful 
 macaroons, glittering liqueurs, magically -pre- 
 served tropical spices, and jellies of celestial 
 tropical fruits displayed themselves profusely at 
 an instant's notice. But I\Ir. Tartar could not 
 make time stand still ; and time, with his hard- 
 hearted fleelness, strode on so fast, that Rosa 
 was obliged to come down from the bean-stalk 
 country to earth and her guardian's chambers. 
 
 " And now, my dear," said Mr. Grewgious, 
 " what is to be done next ? To put the same 
 thought in another form : ^^ hat is to be done 
 with you ? " 
 
 Rosa could only look apologetically sensible 
 of being very much in her own way and in 
 everybody else's. Some passing idea of living, 
 fire-proof, up a good many stairs in Furnival's 
 Inn for the rest of her life, was the only thing 
 in the nature of a plan that occurred to her. 
 
 " It has come into my thoughts," said Mr. 
 Grewgious, " that as the respected lady. Miss 
 Twinkleton, occasionally repairs to London in 
 the recess, with the view of extending her con- 
 nection, and being available for interviews with 
 metropolitan parents, if any — whether, until we 
 have time in which to turn ourselves round, we 
 might invite ISIiss Twinkleton to come and stay 
 with you for a month ? " 
 
 " Stay where, sir?" 
 
 "Whether," explained Mr. Grewgious, "we 
 might take a furnished lodging in town for a 
 month, and invite Miss Twinkleton to assume 
 the charge of you in it for that period ? " 
 
 " And afterwards ? " hinted Rosa. 
 
 " And afterwards," said Mr. Grewgious, '* we 
 should be no worse off than we are now." 
 
 " I think that might smooth the way," assented 
 Rosa. 
 
 " Then let us," said Mr. Grewgious, rising, 
 " go and look for a furnished lodging. Nothing 
 could be more acceptable to me than the sweet 
 presence of last evening, for all the remaining 
 evenings of my existence ; but these are not fit 
 surroundings for a young lady. Let us set out 
 in quest of adventures, and look for a furnished 
 lodging. In the meantime, Mr. Crisparkle here, 
 about to return home immediately, will no doubt 
 kindly see Miss Twinkleton, and invite that lady 
 to co-operate in our plan." 
 
 Mr. Crisparkle, willingly accepting the com- 
 mission, took his departure ; Mr. Grewgious and 
 his ward set forth on their expedition. 
 
 As Mr. Grewgious's idea of looking at a fur- 
 nished lodging was to get on the opposite side 
 of the street to a house with a suitable bill in 
 the window, and stare at it ; and then work his 
 way tortuously to the back of the house, and 
 stare at that; and then not go in, but make 
 similar trials of another house, with the same 
 result ; their progress was but slow. At length 
 he bethought himself of a widowed cousin, divers 
 times removed, of Mr. Bazzard's, who had once 
 solicited his influence in the lodger world, and 
 who lived in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury 
 Square. This lady's name, stated in uncompro- 
 mising capitals of considerable size on a brass 
 door-plate, and yet not lucidly as to sex or con- 
 dition, was BiLLICKIN. 
 
 Personal faintness, and an overpow'cring per- 
 sonal candour, were the distinguishing features 
 of Mrs. Billickin's organisation. She came lan- 
 guishing out of her own exclusive back-parlour, 
 with the air of having been expressly brought-to 
 for the purpose from an accumulation of several 
 swoons. 
 
 " I hope I see you well, sir," said Mrs. Bil- 
 lickin, recognising her visitor with a bend. 
 
 " Thank you, quite well. And you, ma'am ? " 
 returned Mr. Grewgious. 
 
 " I am as well," said Mrs. Billickin, becoming 
 aspirational with excess of faintness, " as I hever 
 ham." 
 
 " My ward and an elderly lady," said Mr. 
 Grewgious, " wish to find a genteel lodging for 
 a month or so. Have you any apartments 
 available, ma'am ? " 
 
 " Mr. Grewgious," returned Mrs. Billickin, 
 " I will not deceive you ; far from it. I have 
 apartments available." 
 
 This with the air of adding : " Convey me to 
 
io8 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 the stake, if you will ; but, \Yhile I live, I will 
 be candid." 
 
 " And now, what apartments, ma'am ? " asked 
 Mr. Grewgious cosily. To tame a certain se- 
 verity a])parent on the part of Mrs. Billickin. 
 
 " There is this sitting-room — which, call it 
 what you will, it is the front parlour, miss," 
 said Mrs. Billickin, imi)ressing Rosa into the 
 conversation : " the back-parlour being wliat I 
 cling to, and never part with ; and there is two 
 bedrooms at the top of the 'ouse with gas laid 
 on, I do not tell you that your bedroom floors 
 is firm, for firm they are not. The gas-fitter 
 himself allowed that, to make a firm job, he 
 must go right under your jistes, and it were not 
 worth the outlay as a yearly tenant so to do. 
 The piping is carried above your jistes, and it 
 is best that it should be made known to you." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious and Rosa exclianged looks of 
 some dismay, though they had not the least idea 
 what latent horrors this carriage of the piping 
 might involve. Mrs. Billickin put her hand to 
 her heart, as having eased it of a load. 
 
 " Well ! The roof is all right, no doubt," 
 said Mr. Grewgious, plucking up a little. 
 
 " Mr. Grewgious," returned Mrs. Billickin, 
 " if I was to tell you, sir, that to have nothink 
 above you is to have a floor above you, I should 
 put a deception upon you which I will not do. 
 No, sir. Your slates will rattle loose at that 
 elewation in windy weather, do your utmost, 
 best or worst ! I defy you, sir, be you what you 
 may, to keep your slates tight, try how you 
 can." Here Mrs. Billickin, having been warm 
 with Mr. Grewgious, cooled a little, not to abuse 
 the moral power she held over him. " Conse- 
 quent," proceeded Mrs. Billickin more mildly, 
 but still firmly in her incorruptible candour : 
 " consequent it would be worse than of no use 
 for me to trapse and travel up to the top of the 
 'ouse with you, and for you to say, ' Mrs. Bil- 
 lickin, what stain do I notice in the ceiling, for 
 a stain I do consider it ?' and for me to answer, 
 ' I do not understand you, sir.' No, sir, I will 
 not be so underhand. I do understand you be- 
 fore you pint it out. It is the wet, sir. It do 
 come in, and it do not come in. You may lay 
 dry there half your lifetime ; but the time will 
 come, and it is best that you should know it, 
 when a dripping sop would be no name for 
 you." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious looked much disgraced by 
 being prefigured in this pickle. 
 
 " Have you any other apartments, ma'am ? " 
 he asked. ^ 
 
 " Mr. Grewgious," returned Mrs. Billickin 
 with much solemnity, " I have. You ask me 
 
 have I, and my open and my honest answer air, 
 I have. The first and second floors is wacant, 
 and sweet rooms." 
 
 " Come, come ! There's nothing against 
 them" said Mr. Grewgious, comforting himself. 
 
 " Mr. Grewgious," replied Mrs. Billickin, 
 "pardon me, there is the stairs. Unless your 
 mind is prepared for the stairs, it will lead to 
 inevitable disappointment. You cannot, miss," 
 said Mrs. Billickin, addressing Rosa reproach- 
 fully, " place a first floor, and far less a second, 
 on the level footing of a parlour. No, you can- 
 not do it, miss ; it is beyond your power, and 
 wherefore try ? " 
 
 Mrs. Billickin put it very feelingly, as if Rosa 
 had shown a headstrong determination to hold 
 the untenable position. 
 
 " Can we see these rooms, ma'am?" inquired 
 her guardian. 
 
 "Mr. Grewgious," returned Mrs. Billickin, 
 "you can, I will not disguise it from you, 
 sir ; you can," 
 
 Mrs. Billickin then sent into her back-parlour 
 for her shawl (it being a state fiction, dating 
 from immemorial antiquity, that ehe could never 
 go anywhere without being wrapped up), and, 
 having been enrolled by her attendant, led the 
 way. She made various genteel pauses on the 
 stairs for breath, and clutched at her heart in 
 the drawing-room as if it had very nearly got 
 loose, and she had caught it in the act of taking 
 wing. 
 
 "And the second floor?" said Mr. Grew- 
 gious, on finding the first satisfactory. 
 
 " Mr. Grewgious," replied Mrs. Billickin, 
 turning upon him with ceremony, as if the time 
 had now come when a distinct understanding 
 on a diflicult point must be arrived at, and a 
 solemn confidence established, " the second 
 floor is over this." 
 
 " Can we see that too, ma'am ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," returned Mrs. Billickin, " it is 
 open as the day." 
 
 That also proving satisfactory, ]\Ir. Grewgious 
 retired into a window with Rosa for a few words 
 of consultation, and then, asking for pen and 
 ink, sketched out a line or two of agreement. 
 In the meantime Mrs. Billickin took a seat, 
 and delivered a kind of Index to, or Abstract of, 
 the general question. 
 
 " Five-and-forty shillings per week by the 
 month certain at the time of year," said Mrs. 
 Billickin, "is only reasonable to both parties. 
 It is not Bond Street, nor yet St. James's 
 Palace; but it is not pretended that it is. 
 Neither is it attempted to be denied — for why 
 should it ? — that the Arching leads to a mews. 
 
UP THE RIVER. 
 
 109 
 
 Mewses must exist. Respecting attendance ; 
 two is kep', at liberal wages. Words has arisen 
 as to tradesmen, but dirty shoes on fresh hearth- 
 stoning was attributable, and no wish for a com- 
 mission on your orders. Coals is either by the 
 fire, or per the scuttle." She emphasized the 
 prepositions, as marking a subtle, but immense 
 difference. " Dogs is not viewed with faviour. 
 Besides litter, they gets stole, and sharing sus- 
 picions is apt to creep in, and unpleasantness 
 takes place." 
 
 By this time Mr. Grewgious had his agree- 
 ment-lines and his earnest-money ready. " I 
 have signed it for the ladies, ma'am," he said, 
 " and you'll have the goodness to sign it for 
 yourself, Christian and surname, there, if you 
 please." 
 
 " Mr. Grewgious," said Mrs. Billickin in a 
 new burst of candour, " no, sir ! You must 
 excuse the Christian name." 
 
 Mr. Grewgious stared at her. 
 
 " The door-plate is used as a protection," said 
 Mrs. Billickin, " and acts as such, and go from 
 it I will not." 
 
 ]\Ir. Grewgious stared at Rosa. 
 
 " No, Mr. Grewgious, you must excuse me. 
 So long as this 'ouse is known indefinite as Bil- 
 lickin's, and so long as it is a doubt with the 
 riffraff where Billickin may be hidin', near the 
 street-door or down the airy, and what his 
 weight and size, so long I feel safe. But com- 
 mit myself to a solitary female statement, no, 
 miss ! Nor would you for a moment wish," 
 said Mrs. Billickin with a strong sense of in- 
 jury, " to take that advantage of your sex, if you 
 were not brought to it by inconsiderate ex- 
 ample." 
 
 Rosa, reddening as if she had made some 
 most disgraceful attempt to overreach the good 
 lady, besought ]\Ir. Grewgious to rest content 
 with any signature. And accordingly, in a 
 baronial way, the sign-manual Billickin got 
 appended to the document. 
 
 Details were then settled for taking posses- 
 sion on the next day but one, when Miss 
 Twinkleton might be reasonably expected ; and 
 Rosa went back to Furnival's Inn on her guar- 
 dian's arm. 
 
 Behold Mr. Tartar walking up and down 
 Furnival's Inn, checking himself when he saw 
 them coming, and advancing towards them ! 
 
 " It occurred to me," hinted Mr. Tartar, 
 " that we might go up the river, the weather 
 being so delicious, and the tide serving. I have 
 a boat of my own at the Temple stairs." 
 
 " I have not been up the river for this many 
 a day," said Mr. Grewgious, tempted. 
 
 " I was never up the river," added Rosa. 
 
 Within half an hour they were setting this 
 matter right by going up the river. The tide 
 was running with them, the afternoon was charm- 
 ing. Mr. Tartar's boat was perfect. Mr. Tartar 
 and Lobley (Mr. Tartar's man) pulled a pair of 
 oars. Mr. Tartar had a yacht, it seemed, lying 
 somewhere down by Greenhithe ; and Mr. Tar- 
 tar's man had charge of this yacht, and was 
 detached upon his present service. He was a 
 jolly-favoured man, with tawny hair and whiskers, 
 and a big red face. He was the dead image of 
 the sun in old woodcuts, his hair and whiskers 
 answering for rays all around him. Resplendent 
 in the bow of the boat, he was a shining sight, 
 with a man-of-war's man's shirt on — or off, ac- 
 cording to opinion — and his arms and breast 
 tattooed all sorts of patterns. Lobley seemed 
 to take it easily, and so did Mr. Tartar; yet 
 their oars bent as they pulled, and the boat 
 bounded under them. Mr. Tartar talked as if 
 he were doing nothing, to Rosa who was really 
 doing nothing, and to Mr. Grewgious who was 
 doing this much — that he steered all wrong ; but 
 what did that matter, when a turn of Mr. Tar- 
 tar's skilful wrist, or a mere grin of Mr. Lobley's 
 over the bow, put all to rights ? The tide bore 
 them on in the gayest and most sparkling man- 
 ner, until they stopped to dine in some ever- 
 lastingly-green garden, needing no matter-of-fact 
 identification here ; and then the tide obligingly 
 turned — being devoted to that party alone for 
 that day ; and, as they floated idly among some 
 osier-beds, Rosa tried what she could do in the 
 rowing way, and came off splendidly, being much 
 assisted ; and Mr. Grewgious tried what he could 
 do, and came off on his back, doubled up with 
 an oar under his chin, being not assisted at all. 
 Then there was an interval of rest under boughs 
 (such rest !) what time Mr. Lobley mopped, 
 and, arranging cushions, stretchers, and the hke, 
 danced the tight-rope the whole length of the 
 boat like a man to whom shoes were a supersti- 
 tion and stockings slavery ; and then came the 
 sweet return among delicious odours of limes in 
 bloom, and musical ripplings ; and, all too soon, 
 the great black city cast its shadow on the waters, 
 and its dark bridges spanned them as death 
 spans life, and the everlastingly-green garden 
 seemed to be left for everlasting, unregainable 
 and far away. 
 
 " Cannot people get through life without 
 gritty stages, I wonder?" Rosa thought next 
 day, when the town was very gritty again, and 
 everything had a, strange and an uncomfortable 
 appearance of seeming to wait for something 
 I that wouldn't come. No. She began to think 
 
no 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 that, now the Cloisterham school-days had gUded 
 past and gone, the gritty stages would begin to 
 set in at intervals, and make themselves wearily 
 known ! 
 
 Yet what did Rosa expect? Did she expect 
 Miss Twinkleton ? Miss Twinkleton duly came. 
 Forth from her back-parlour issued the Lillickin 
 to receive Miss Twinkleton, and War was in the 
 Billickin's eye from that fell moment. 
 
 Miss Twinkleton brought a quantity of lug- 
 gage with her, having all Rosa's as well as her 
 own. The Billickin took it ill that Miss Twin- 
 kleton's mind, being sorely disturbed by this lug- 
 gage, failed to take in her personal identity with 
 that clearness of perception which was due to 
 its demands. Stateliness mounted her gloomy 
 throne upon the Billickin's brow in consequence. 
 And when Miss Twinkleton, in agitation taking 
 stock of her trunks and packages, of which 
 she had seventeen, particularly counted in the 
 Billickin herself as number eleven, the B. found 
 it necessary to repudiate. 
 
 " Things cannot too soon be put upon the 
 footing," said she with a candour so demon- 
 strative as to be almost obtrusive, " that the 
 person of the 'ouse is not a box, nor yet a 
 bundle, nor a carpet bag. No, I am 'ily obleeged 
 to you. Miss Twinkleton, nor yet a beggar." 
 
 This last disclainier had reference to Miss 
 Twinkleton's distractedly pressing two-and-six- 
 pence on her, instead of the cabman. 
 
 Thus cast off. Miss Twinkleton wildly inquired 
 " which gentleman " w-as to be paid ? There 
 being two gentlemen in that position (Miss 
 Twinkleton having arrived with two cabs), each 
 gentleman, on being paid, held forth his two- 
 and-sixpence on the flat of his open hand, and, 
 w'ith a speechless stare and a dropped jaw, dis- 
 played his wrong to heaven and earth. Terrified 
 by this alarming spectacle. Miss Twinkleton 
 placed another shilling in each hand ; at the 
 same time appealing to the law in flurried ac- 
 cents, and recounting her luggage this time with 
 the two gentlemen in, who caused the total to 
 come out complicated. Meanwhile the two 
 gentlemen, each looking very hard at the last 
 shilling grumblingly, as if it might become 
 eighteen-pence if he kept his eyes on it, de- 
 scended the door-steps, ascended their carriages, 
 and drove away, leaving Miss Twinkleton on a 
 bonnet box in tears. 
 
 The Billickin beheld this manifestation of 
 weakness without sympathy, and gave directions 
 for " a young man to be got in " to wrestle with 
 the luggage. When that gladiator had disap- 
 peared from the arena, peace ensued, and the 
 new lodgers dined. 
 
 But the Billickin had somehow come to the 
 knowledge that Miss Twinkleton kept a school. 
 The leap from that knowledge to the inference 
 that Miss Twinkleton set herself to teach her 
 something was easy. " But you don't do it," 
 soliloquised the Billickin; " /am not your pupil, 
 whatever she," meaning Rosa, " may be, poor 
 thing!" 
 
 ]\Iiss Twinkleton, on the other hand, having 
 changed her dress and recovered her spirits, was 
 animated by a bland desire to improve the occa- 
 sion in all ways, and to be as serene a model as 
 possible. In a happy compromise between her 
 two states of existence, she had already become, 
 with her work-basket before her, the equably 
 vivacious companion with a slight judicious 
 flavouring of information, when the Billickin 
 announced herself. 
 
 " I will not hide from you, ladies," said the 
 B., enveloped in the shawl of state, " for it is 
 not my character to hide neither my motives nor 
 my actions, that I take the liberty to look in 
 upon you to express a 'ope that your dinner was 
 to your liking. Though not Professed but Plain, 
 still her wages should be a sufficient object to 
 her to stimulate to soar above mere roast and 
 biled." 
 
 " We dined very well indeed," said Rosa, 
 " thank you." 
 
 " Accustomed," said INIiss Twinkleton with a 
 gracious air, which to the jealous ears of the 
 Billickin seemed to add " my good woman" — 
 " accustomed to a liberal and nutritious, yet 
 plain and salutary diet, we have found no reason 
 to bemoan our absence from the ancient city, 
 and the methodical household, in which the 
 quiet routine of our lot has been hitherto cast." 
 
 " I did think it well to mention to my cook," 
 observed the Billickin with a gush of candour, 
 " which I 'ope you will agree with. Miss Twinkle- 
 ton, was a right precaution, that the young lady 
 being used to what we should consider here but 
 poor diet, had better be brouglit forward by 
 degrees. For, a rush from scanty feeding to 
 generous feeding, and from what you may call 
 messing to what you may call method, do re- 
 quire a power of constitution which is not often 
 found in youth, particular when undermined by 
 boarding-school ! " 
 
 It will be seen that the Billickin now openly 
 pitted herself against Miss Twinkleton, as one 
 whom she had fully ascertained to be her natural 
 enemy. 
 
 " Your remarks," returned INIiss Twinkleton, 
 from a remote moral eminence, " are well meant, 
 I have no doubt ; but you will permit me to 
 observe that they develop a mistaken view of 
 
BATTLEDORE AND SHUTTLECOCK. 
 
 the subject, which can only be imputed to your 
 extreme want of accurate information." 
 
 " My informiation,'' retorted the BiUickin 
 throwing in an extra syllable for the sake of 
 emphasis at once polite and powerful — " my 
 informiation, Miss Twinklcton, were my own 
 experience, which I believe is usually considered 
 to be good guidance. But whether so or not, I 
 was put in youth to a very genteel boarding- 
 school, the mistress being no less a lady than 
 yourself, of about your own age, or it may be 
 some years younger, and a poorness of blood 
 flowed from the table which has run through my 
 life." 
 
 "Very likely," said Miss Twinkleton, still 
 from her distant eminence ; " and very much to 
 be deplored. — Rosa, my dear, how are you get- 
 ting on with your work ? " 
 
 "Miss Twinkleton," resumed the BiUickin in 
 a courtly manner, " before retiring on the 'int, 
 as a lady should, I wish to ask of yourself, as a 
 lady, whether I am to consider that my words is 
 doubted ? " 
 
 " I am not aware on what ground you cherish 
 such a supposition -" began Miss Twinkle- 
 ton, when the BiUickin neatly stopped her. 
 
 " Do not, if you please, put suppositions be- 
 twixt my lips where none such have been im- 
 parted by myself. Your flow of words is great. 
 Miss Twinkleton, and no doubt is expected from 
 you b)' your pupils, and no doubt is considered 
 worth the money. No doubt, I am sure. But 
 not paying for flows of words, and not asking to 
 be favoured with them here, I wish to repeat my 
 question." 
 
 " If you refer to the poverty of your circula- 
 tion " began Miss Twinkleton, when again 
 
 the BiUickin neatly stopped her. 
 
 " I have used no such expressions." 
 
 " If you refer, then, to the poorness of your 
 blood " 
 
 " Brought upon me," stipulated the BiUickin 
 expressly, " at a boarding-school " 
 
 " — Then," resumed Miss Twinkleton, "all I 
 can say is, that I am bound to believe, on your 
 asseveration, that it is very poor indeed. I can- 
 not forbear adding, that if that unfortunate cir- 
 cumstance influences your conversation, it is 
 much to be lamented, and it is eminently desir- 
 able that your blood were richer. — Rosa, my 
 dear, how are you getting on with your work ? " 
 
 " Hem ! Before retiring, miss," proclaimed 
 the BiUickin to Rosa, loftily cancelHng Miss 
 Twinkleton, " I should wish it to be understood 
 between yourself and me that my transactions in 
 iuture is with you alone. I know no elderly 
 lady here, miss, none older than yourself." 
 
 " A highly desirable arrangement, Rosa, my 
 dear," observed Miss Twinkleton. 
 
 " It is not, miss," said the BiUickin witli a 
 sarcastic smile, " that I possess the Mill I have 
 heard of, in which old single ladies could be 
 ground up young (what a gift it would be to 
 some of us !), but that I limit myself to you 
 totally." 
 
 " When I have any desire to communicate a 
 request to the person of the house, Rosa my 
 dear," observed Miss Twinkleton with majestic 
 cheerfulness, " I will make it known to you, and 
 you will kindly undertake, I am sure, that it is 
 conveyed to the proper quarter." 
 
 "Good evening, miss," said the BiUickin, at 
 once affectionately and distantly. " Being alone 
 in my eyes, I wish you good evening with best 
 wishes, and do not find myself drove, I am truly 
 'appy to say, into expressing my contempt for 
 an indiwidual, unfortunately for yourself, be- 
 longing to you. 
 
 The BiUickin gracefully withdrew with this 
 parting speech, and from that time Rosa occu- 
 pied the restless position of shuttlecock between 
 these two battledores. Nothing could be done 
 without a smart match being played out. Thus, 
 on the daily-arising question of dinner, Miss 
 Twinkleton would say, the three being present 
 together : 
 
 " Perhaps, my love, you will consult with the 
 person of the house whether she can procure us 
 a lamb's fry ; or, failing that, a roast fowl." 
 
 On which the BiUickin would retort (Rosa not 
 having spoken a word), " If you was better ac- 
 customed to butcher's meat, miss, you would 
 not entertain the idea of a lamb's fry. Firstly, 
 because lambs has long been sheep, and 
 secondly, because there is such things as killing 
 days, and there is not. As to roast fowls, miss, 
 why you must be quite surfeited with roast fowls, 
 letting alone your buying, when you market for 
 yourself, the agedest of poultry with the scaliest 
 of legs, quite as if you was accustomed to picking 
 'em out for cheapness. Try a little inwention, 
 miss. Use yourself to 'ousekeeping a bit. Come, 
 now, think of somethink else." 
 
 To this encouragement, offered with the in- 
 dulgent toleration of a wise and liberal expert, 
 Miss Twinkleton would rejoin, reddening : 
 
 " Or, my dear, you might propose to the per- 
 son of the house a duck." 
 
 "Well, miss!" the BiUickin would exclaim 
 (still no word being spoken by Rosa), "you do 
 surprise me when you speak of ducks ! Not to 
 mention that they're getting out of season and 
 very dear, it really strikes to my heart to see you 
 have a duck : for the breast, which is the only 
 
112 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 delicate cuts in a duck, always goes in a direc- 
 tion which I cannot imagine where, and your own 
 plate comes down so miserably skin-and-bony ! 
 Try again, miss. Think more of yourself, and 
 less of others. A dish of sweetbreads, now, or 
 a bit of mutton. Something at which you can 
 get your equal chance." 
 
 Occasionally the game would wax very brisk 
 indeed," and would be kept up with a smartness 
 rendering such an encounter as this quite tame. 
 But the Billickin almost invariably made by far 
 the higher score ; and would come in with side- 
 hits of the most unexpected and extraordinary 
 description, when she seemed without a chance. 
 
 All this did not improve the gritty state of 
 things in London, or the air that London had 
 acquired in Rosa's eyes of waiting for something 
 that never came. Tired of working and convers- 
 ing with IMissTwinkleton, she suggested working 
 and reading : to which Miss Twinkleton readily 
 assented, as an admirable reader, of tried powers. 
 But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss 
 Twinkleton didn't read fairly. She cut out the 
 love scenes, interpolated passages in praise of 
 female celibacy, and was guilty of other glaring 
 pious frauds. As an instance in point, take the 
 glowing passage : " Ever dearest and best 
 adored, — said Edward, clasping the dear head 
 to his breast, and drawing the silken hair through 
 his caressing fingers, from which he suffered it to 
 fall like golden rain, — ever dearest and best 
 adored, let us fly from the unsympathetic world 
 and the sterile coldness of the stony-hearted, to 
 the rich warm Paradise of Trust and Love." 
 Miss Twinkleton's fraudulent version tamely ran 
 thus : " Ever engaged to me with the consent of 
 our parents on both sides, and the approbation 
 of the silver-haired rector of the district, — said 
 Edward, respectfully raising to his lips the taper 
 fingers so skilful in embroidery, tambour, crochet, 
 and other truly feminine arts, — let me call on 
 thy papa ere to-morrow'^ dawn has sunk into the 
 west, and propose a suburban establishment, 
 lowly it may be, but within our means, where he 
 will be always welcome as an evening guest, and 
 where every arrangement shall invest economy, 
 and constant interchange of scholastic acquire- 
 ments, with the attributes of the ministering 
 angel to domestic bliss." 
 
 As the days crept on, and nothing happened, 
 the neighbours began to say that the pretty girl 
 at Billickin's, who looked so wistfully and so 
 much out of the gritty windows of the drawing- 
 room, seemed to be losing her spirits. The 
 pretty girl might have lost them but for the acci- 
 dent of lighting on some books of voyages and 
 sea adventure. As a compensation against their 
 
 romance, Miss Twinkleton, reading aloud, made 
 the most of all the latitudes and longitudes, 
 bearings, winds, currents, offsets, and other sta- 
 tistics (which she felt to be none the less im- 
 proving because they expressed nothing whatever 
 to her) ; while Rosa, listening intently, made the 
 most of what was nearest to her heart. So they 
 both did better than before. 
 
 CHAPTER XXin. 
 
 THE DAWN AGAIN. 
 
 LTHOUGH Mr.Crisparkle and John 
 Jasper met daily under the cathedral 
 roof, nothing at any time passed be- 
 tween them having reference to Ed- 
 win Drood, after the time, more than 
 half a year gone b)-, when Jasper 
 mutely showed the Minor Canon the 
 ^^ conclusion and the resolution entered in 
 his Diary. It is not likely that they ever met, 
 though so often, without the thoughts of each 
 reverting to the subject. It is not likely that they 
 ever met, though so often, without a sensation 
 on the part of each that the other was a per- 
 plexing secret to him. Jasper as the denouncer 
 and pursuer of Neville Landless, and Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle as his consistent advocate and protector, 
 must at least have stood sufficiently in opposi- 
 tion to have speculated with keen interest on 
 the steadiness and next direction of the other's 
 designs. But neither ever broached the theme. 
 False pretence not being in the Minor Canon's 
 nature, he doubtless displayed opeiily that he 
 would at any time have revived the subject, and 
 even desired to discuss it. The determined re- 
 ticence of Jasper, however, was not to be so ap- 
 proached. Impassive, moody, solitary, resolute, 
 so concentrated on one idea, and on its attendant 
 fixed purpose, that he would share it with no 
 fellow-creature, he lived apart from human life. 
 Constantly exercising an art which brought him 
 into mechanical harmony with others, and which 
 could not have been pursued unless he and they 
 had been in the nicest mechanical relations and 
 unison, it is curious to consider that the spirit 
 of the man was in moral accordance or inter- 
 change with nothing around him. This, indeed, 
 he had confided to his lost nephew, before the 
 occasion for his present inflexibility arose. 
 
 That he must know of Rosa's abrupt depar- 
 ture, and that he must divine its cause, was not 
 to be doubted. Did he suppose that he had 
 
AN OLD HA UNT REVISITED. 
 
 "3 
 
 tenified her into silence? or did he suppose 
 that she liad imparted to any one — to Mr. 
 Crisparkle himself, for instance — the particulars 
 of his last interview with her? Mr. Crisparkle 
 could not determine this in his mind. He 
 could not but admit, however, as a just man, 
 that it was not, of itself, a crime to fall in love 
 with Rosa, any more than it was a cringe to offer 
 to set love above revenge. 
 
 The dreadful suspicion of Jasper, which Rosa 
 was so shocked to have received into her imagi- 
 nation, appeared to have no harbour in Mr. Cri- 
 sparkle's. If it ever haunted Helena's thoughts 
 or Neville's, neither gave it one spoken word of 
 utterance. Mr. Grewgious took no i)ains to con- 
 ceal his implacable dislike of Jasper, yet he 
 never referred it, however distantly, to such a 
 source. But he was a reticent as well as an 
 eccentric man ; and he made no mention of a 
 certain evening when he warmed his hands at 
 the gatehouse fire, and looked steadily down 
 upon a certain heap of torn and miry clothes 
 upon the floor. 
 
 Drowsy Cloisterham, whenever it awoke to a 
 passing re-consideration of a story above six 
 months old, and dismissed by the bench of 
 magistrates, was pretty equally divided in opinion 
 whether John Jasper's beloved nephew had been 
 killed by his treacherously passionate rival, or 
 in an open struggle ; or had, for his own pur- 
 poses, spirited himself away. It then lifted up 
 its head, to notice that the bereaved Jasper was 
 still ever devoted to discovery and revenge ; 
 and then dozed off again. This was the condi- 
 tion of matters, all round, at the period to which 
 the present history has now attained. 
 
 The cathedral doors have closed for the night ; 
 and the Choir Master, on a short leave of ab- 
 sence for two or three services, sets his face 
 towards London. He travels thither by the 
 means by which Rosa travelled, and arrives, as 
 Rosa arrived, on a hot, dusty evening. 
 
 His travelling baggage is easily carried in his 
 hand, and he repairs with it on foot to a hybrid 
 hotel in a little square behind Aldersgate Street, 
 near the General Post Office. It is hotel, board- 
 ing-house, or lodging-house, at its visitor's option. 
 It announces itself, in the new Railway Adver- 
 tisers, as a novel enterprise, timidly beginning 
 to spring up. It bashfully, almost apologe- 
 tically, gives the traveller to understand that it 
 does not expect him, on the good old constitu- 
 tional hotel plan, to order a pint of sweet black- 
 ing for his drinking, and throw it away ; but 
 insinuates that he may have his boots blacked 
 instead of his stomach, and maybe also have 
 bed, breakfast, attendance, and a porter up all 
 Edwin Drood, 8. 
 
 night, for a certain fixed charge. From these 
 and similar premises, many true Britons in the 
 lowest spirits deduce that the times are levelling 
 times, except in the article of high-roads, of 
 which there will shortly be not one in England. 
 
 He eats without appetite, and soon goes forth 
 again. Eastward, and still eastward, through 
 the stale streets he takes his way, until he 
 reaches his destination : a miserable court, spe- 
 cially miserable among many such. 
 
 He ascends a broken staircase, opens a door, 
 looks into a dark stifling room, and says : "Are 
 you alone here ? " 
 
 " Alone, deary ; worse luck for me, and better 
 for you," replies a croaking voice. " Come in, 
 come in, whoever you be : I can't see you till I 
 light a match, yet I seem to know the sound 
 of your speaking. I'm acquainted with you, 
 ain't I?" 
 
 " Light your match, and try." 
 
 " So I will, deary, so I will ; but my hand 
 that shakes, as I can't lay it on a match all in a 
 moment. And I cough so, that, put my matches 
 where I may, I never find 'em there. They 
 jump and start, as I cough and cough, like live 
 things. Are you off a voyage, deary ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Not seafaring ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Well, there's land customers, and there's 
 water customers. I'm a mother to both. Dif- 
 ferent from Jack Chinaman t'other side the 
 court. He ain't a father to neither. It ain't in 
 him. And he ain't got the true secret of mixing, 
 though he charges as much as me that has, and 
 more if he can get it. Here's a match, and 
 now where's the candle? If my cough takes 
 me, I shall cough out twenty matches afore I 
 gets a light." 
 
 But she finds the candle, and lights it, before 
 the cough comes on. It seizes her in the 
 moment of success, and she sits down rocking 
 herself to and fro, and gasping at intervals : 
 " Oh, my lungs is awful bad ! my lungs is wore 
 away to cabbage-nets ! " until the fit is over. 
 During its continuance she has had no power of 
 sight, or any other power not -absorbed in the 
 struggle : but, as it leaves her, she begins to 
 strain her eyes, and, as soon as she is able to 
 articulate, she cries, staring : 
 
 " Why, it's you ! " 
 
 " Are you so surprised to see me ? " 
 
 " I thought I never should have seen you 
 again, deary. I thought you was dead, and 
 gone to Heaven." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " I didn't suppose you could have kept away, 
 
114 
 
 TJIE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 alive, so long, from . the poor old soul with the 
 real receipt for mixing it. And you are in 
 mourning too ! Why didn't you come and have 
 a pipe or two of comfort ? Did they leave you 
 money, perhaps, and so you didn't want com- 
 fort ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Who was tney as died, deary? ' 
 
 " A relative." 
 
 "Died of what, lovey?" 
 
 " Probably, Death." 
 
 " We are short to-night ! " cries the woman 
 with a propitiatory laugh, " Short and snappish 
 we are ! But we're out of sorts for want of a 
 smoke. We've got the all-overs, haven't us, 
 deary ? But this is the place to cure 'em in ; 
 this is the place where the all-overs is smoked 
 off." 
 
 "You may make ready, then," replies the 
 visitor, " as soon as you like." 
 
 He divests himself of his shoes, loosens his 
 cravat, and lies across the foot of the squalid 
 bed, with his head resting on his left hand. 
 
 " Now you begin to look like yourself," says 
 the woman approvingly. " Now I begin to 
 know my old customer indeed ! Been trying 
 to mix for yourself this long time, poppet ? " 
 
 " I have been taking it now and then in my 
 own way." 
 
 " Never take it your own v/ay. It ain't good 
 for trade, and it ain't good for you. Where's 
 my ink-bottle, and where's my thimble, and 
 Where's my little spoon ? He's going to take it 
 in a artful form, now, my deary dear ! " 
 
 Entering on her process, and beginning to 
 bubble and blow at the faint spark enclosed in 
 the hollow of her hands, she speaks, from time to 
 time, in a tone of snuffling satisfaction, without 
 leaving off. When he speaks, he does so with- 
 out looking at her, and as if his thoughts were 
 already roaming away by anticipation. 
 
 " I've got a pretty many smokes ready for 
 you, first and last, haven't I, chuckey?" 
 
 " A good many." 
 
 " When you first come you was quite new to 
 it, warn't ye ? " 
 
 " Yes, I was easily disposed of, then." 
 
 " But you got on in the world, and was able 
 by-and-by to take your pipe with the best of 
 'em, warn't ye ? " 
 
 "Ah ! and the worst." 
 
 " It's just ready for you. Wliat a sweet 
 singer you was when you first come ! Used to 
 drop your head, and sing yourself oft" like a 
 bird ! It's ready for you now, deary." 
 
 He takes it from her with great care, and 
 puts the mouthpiece to his lips. She seats her- 
 
 self beside him, ready to refill the pipe. After 
 inhaling a few whiffs in silence, he doubtingly 
 accosts her with : 
 
 " Is it as potent as it used to be?" 
 
 " Wiiat do you speak of, deary?" 
 
 " What should I speak of, but what I have in 
 my mouth ? " 
 
 "It's just the same. Always the identical 
 same." 
 
 " It doesn't taste so. And it's slower." 
 
 " You've got more used to it, you see." 
 
 " That may be the cause, certainly. Look 
 here." He stops, becomes dreamy, and seems 
 to forget that he has invited her attention. 
 She bends over him, and speaks in his ear. 
 
 "I'm attending to you. Says you just now, 
 Look here. Says I now, I'm attending to ye. 
 We was talking just before of your being used 
 to it." 
 
 " I know all that. I was only thinking. 
 Look here. Suppose you had something in 
 your mind ; something you were going to do." 
 
 " Yes, deary ; something I was going to 
 do?" 
 
 " But had not quite determined to do." 
 
 " Yes, deary." 
 
 " Might or might not do, you understand.** 
 
 " Yes." With the point of a needle she stirs 
 the contents of the bowl. 
 
 " Should you do it in your fancy when you 
 were lying here doing this ?" 
 
 She nods her head. " Over and over again." 
 
 " Just like me ! I did it over and over again. 
 I have done it hundreds of thousands of times 
 in this room." 
 
 " It's to be hoped it was pleasant to do, 
 deary." 
 
 " It ivas pleasant to do ! " 
 
 He says this with a savage air, and a spring 
 or start at her. Quite unmoved, she retouches 
 and replenishes the contents of the bowl with 
 her little spatula. Seeing her intent upon the 
 occupation, he sinks into his former attitude. 
 
 " It was a journey, a difficult and dangerous 
 journey. That was the subject in my mind. A 
 hazardous and perilous journey, over abysses 
 where a slip would be destruction. Look 
 down, look down ! You see what lies at the 
 bottom there ? " 
 
 He has darted forward to say it, and to point 
 at the ground, as though at some imaginary ob- 
 ject far beneath. The woman looks at him, as 
 his spasmodic face approaches close to hers, 
 and not at his pointing. She seems to know 
 what the influence of her perfect quietude would 
 be ; if so, she has not miscalculated it, for he 
 subsides again. 
 
A BRIEF VISION. 
 
 "5 
 
 '' Well ; I have told you I did it here hun- 
 dreds of thousands of times. What do I say ? 
 I did it millions and billions of times. I did it 
 so often, and through such vast expanses of 
 time, that when it was really done, it seemed 
 not worth the doing, it was done so soon." 
 
 " That's the journey you have been away 
 upon," she quietly remarks. 
 
 He glares at her as he smokes ; and then, 
 his eyes becoming filmy, answers : " That's the 
 journey." 
 
 Silence ensues. His eyes are sometimes 
 closed and sometimes open. The woman sits 
 beside him, very attentive to the pipe, which is 
 all the while at his lips. 
 
 " I'll warrant," she observes when he has been 
 looking fixedly at her for some consecutive mo- 
 ments, with a singular appearance in his eyes of 
 seeming to see her a long way off, instead of so 
 near him : " I'll warrant you made the journey 
 in a many ways, when you made it so often ? " 
 
 " No, always in one way," 
 
 " Always in the same way ? " 
 
 ''Ay." 
 
 "In the way in which it was really made at 
 last ? " 
 
 " Ay." 
 
 " And always took the same pleasure in harp- 
 ing on it ? " 
 
 " Ay." 
 
 For the time he appears unequal to any other 
 reply than this lazy monosyllabic assent. Pro- 
 bably to assure herself that it is not the assent 
 of a mere automaton, she reverses the form of 
 her next sentence. 
 
 " Did you never get tired of it, deary, and 
 try to call up something else for a change ?" 
 
 He struggles into a sitting posture, and re- 
 torts upon her : " What do you mean ? What 
 did I want ? What did I come for ? " 
 
 She gently lays him back again, and, before 
 returning him the instrument he has dropped, 
 revives the fire in it with her own breath ; then 
 says to him coaxingly : 
 
 " Sure, sure, sure ! Yes, yes, yes ! Now I 
 go along with you. You was too quick for me. 
 I see now. You come o' purpose to take the 
 journey. Why, I might have known it, through 
 its standing by you so." 
 
 He answers first with a laugh, and then with 
 a passionate setting of his teeth : " Yes, I came 
 on purpose. When I could not bear my life, I 
 came to get the relief, and I got it. It was 
 one ! It WAS one ! " This repetition with ex- 
 traordinary vehemence, and the snarl of a 
 wolf. 
 
 She observes him very cautiously, as though 
 
 mentally feeling her way to her next remark. 
 It is : " There was a fellow-traveller, deary." 
 
 " Ha, ha, ha ! " He breaks into a ringing 
 laugh, or rather yell. 
 
 " To think," he cries, " how often fellow- 
 traveller, and yet not know it ! To think how 
 many times he went the journey, and never saw 
 the road ! " 
 
 The woman kneels upon the floor, with her 
 arms crossed on the coverlet of the bed, close 
 by him, and her chin upon them. In this 
 crouching attitude she watches him. The pipe 
 is falling from his mouth. She puts it back, 
 and, laying her hand upon his chest, moves him 
 slightly from side to side. Upon that he speaks, 
 as if she had spoken. 
 
 " Yes ! I always made the journey first, be- 
 fore the changes of colours and the great land- 
 scapes and glittering processions began. They 
 couldn't begin till it was off my mind. I had 
 no room till then for anything else." 
 
 Once more he lapses into silence. Once more 
 she lays her hand upon his chest, and moves 
 him slightly to and fro, as a cat might stimulate 
 a half-slain mouse. Once more he speaks, as if 
 she had spoken. 
 
 " What ? I told you so. When it comes to 
 be real at last, it is so short that it seems unreal 
 for the first time. Hark ! " 
 
 " Yes, deary. I'm listening." 
 
 " Time and place are both at hand." 
 
 He is on his feet, speaking in a whisper, and 
 as if in the dark. 
 
 " Time, place, and fellow-traveller," she sug- 
 gests, adopting his tone, and holding liim softly 
 by the arm. 
 
 " How could the time be at hand unless the 
 fellow-traveller was ? Hush ! The journey's 
 made. It's over." 
 
 " So soon ? " 
 
 " That's Avhat I said to you. So soon. Wait 
 a little. This is a vision. I shall sleep it off. 
 It has been too short and easy. I must have a 
 better vision than this ; this is the poorest of aU. 
 No struggle, no consciousness of peril, no en- 
 treaty — and yet I never saw that before." With 
 a start. 
 
 " Saw what, deary ? " 
 
 "Look at it. Look what a poor, mean, 
 miserable thing it is ! That must be real. It's 
 over." 
 
 He has accompanied this incoherence with 
 some wild unmeaning gestures ; but they trail off 
 into the progressive inaction of stupor, and he 
 Hes a log upon the bed. 
 
 The woman, however, is still inquisitive. 
 With a repetition of her cat-like action, she 
 
ii6 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN BROOD. 
 
 slightly stirs his body again, and listens ; stirs 
 again, and listens ; whispers to it, and listens. 
 Finding it past all rousing for the time, she 
 slowly gets upon her feet with an air of disap- 
 pointment, and nicks the face with the back of 
 her hand in turning from it. ■-• 
 
 But she goes no further away from it than the 
 chair upon the hearth. She sits in it, with an 
 elbow on one of its arms, and her chin upon her 
 hand, intent upon him. " I heard ye say once," 
 she croaks under her breath, " I heard ye say 
 
 once, when I was lying where you're lying, and 
 you were making your speculations upon me, 
 ' Unintelligible ! ' I heard you say so of twc 
 more than me. But don't ye be too sure always ; 
 don't ye be too sure, beauty ! " 
 
 Unwinking, cat-like, and intent, she presently 
 adds: "Not so potent as it once was? Ah! 
 Perhaps not at first. You may be more right 
 there. Practice makes perfect. I may have 
 learned the secret how to make ye talk, deary." 
 
 He talks no more, whether or no. Twitching 
 
 SLEEPING IT OFF. 
 
 in an ugly way from time to time, both as to his 
 face and limbs, he lies heavy and silent. The 
 wretched candle burns down ; the woman takes 
 its expiring end between her fingers, lights 
 another at it, crams the guttering frying morsel 
 deep into the candlestick, and rams it home 
 with the new candle, as if she were loading some 
 ill-savoured and unseemly weapon of witch- 
 craft ; the new candle in its turn burns down ; 
 and still he lies insensible. At length what 
 remains of the last candle is blown out, and day- 
 light looks into the room. 
 
 It has not looked very long when he sits up, 
 chilled and shaking, slowly recovers conscious- 
 ness of where he is, and makes himself ready to 
 depart. The woman receives what he pays her 
 with a grateful, " Bless ye, bless ye, deary ! " and 
 seems, tired out, to begin making herself ready 
 for sleep as he leaves the room. 
 
 But seeming may be false or ttxi<r. It is false 
 in this case; for, the moment the stairs have 
 ceased to creak under his tread, she glides after 
 him, muttering emphatically, " I'll not miss ye 
 twice I " 
 
MR. JASPER'S ESCORT. 
 
 117 
 
 There is no egress from the court but by its 
 entrance. With a weird peep from the doorway, 
 she watches for his looking back. He does not 
 look back before disappearing with a wavering 
 step. She follows him, peeps from the court, 
 sees him still faltering on without looking back, 
 and holds him in view. 
 
 He repairs to the back of Aldersgate Street, 
 where a door immediately opens to his knock- 
 ing. She crouches in another doorway, watching 
 that one, and easily comprehending that he puts 
 up temporarily at that house. Her patience is 
 unexhausted by hours. For sustenance she can, 
 and does, buy bread within a hundred yards, and 
 milk as it is carried past her. 
 
 He comes forth again at noon, having changed 
 his dress, but carrying nothing in his hand, and 
 having nothing carried for him. He is not 
 going back into the country, therefore, just yet. 
 She follows him a little way, hesitates, instan- 
 taneously turns confidently, and goes straight 
 into the house he has quitted. 
 
 " Is the gentleman from Cloisterham in- 
 doors?" 
 
 " Just gone out."' 
 
 " Unlucky. When does the gentleman re- 
 turn to Cloisterham ? " 
 
 " At six this evening."' 
 
 " Bless ye and thank ye ! May the Lord 
 prosper a business where a civil question, even 
 from a poor soul, is so civilly answered ! " 
 
 " I'll not miss ye twice ! " repeats the poor 
 soul in the street, and not so civilly. " I lost 
 ye fast, where that omnibus you got into nigh 
 your journey's end plied betwixt the station and 
 the place. I wasn't so much as certain that you 
 even went right on to the place. Now I know 
 ye did. My gentleman from Cloisterham, I'll 
 be there before ye, and bide your coming. I've 
 sworn my oath that I'll not miss ye twice ! " 
 
 Accordingly, that same evening, the poor soul 
 stands in Cloisterham High Street, looking at the 
 many quaint gables of the Nuns' House, and 
 getting through the time as she best can until 
 nine o'clock ; at which hour she has reason to 
 suppose that the arriving omnibus passengers 
 may have some interest for her. The friendly 
 darkness, at that hour, renders it easy for her to 
 ascertain whether this be so or not ; and it is so, 
 for the passenger not to be missed twice arrives 
 among the rest. 
 
 " Now let me see what becomes of you. Go 
 on!" 
 
 An observation addressed to the air, and yet 
 it might be addressed to the passenger, so com- 
 pliantly does he go on along the High Street 
 until he comes to an arched gateway, at which 
 
 he unexpectedly vanishes. The poor soul 
 quickens her pace ; is swift, and close upon him 
 entering under the gateway; but only sees a 
 postern staircase on one side of it, and on the 
 other side an ancient vaulted room, in which a 
 large-headed, grey-haired gendeman is writing, 
 under the odd circumstances of sitting ojjen to 
 the thoroughfare and eyeing all who pass, as if 
 he were toll-taker of the gateway ; though the 
 way is free. 
 
 " Halloa ! " he cries in a low voice, seeing her 
 brought to a stand-still. " Who are you looking 
 for 1 " 
 
 " There was a gentleman passed in here this 
 minute, sir." 
 
 " Of course there was. What do you want 
 with him ? " 
 
 " Where do he live, deary ? " 
 
 " Live ? Up that staircase." 
 
 " Bless ye ! Whisper. What's his name, 
 deary ? " 
 
 " Surname Jasper, Christian name John. Mr. 
 John Jasper." 
 
 " Has he a calling, good gentleman ?" 
 
 " Calling ? Yes. Sings in the choir." 
 
 " In the spire ?" 
 
 " Choir." 
 
 " AV hat's that ? " 
 
 Mr. Datchery rises from his papers, and comes 
 to his doorstep. " Do you know what a cathe- 
 dral is ?" he asks jocosely. 
 
 The woman nods. 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 She looks puzzled, casting about in her mind 
 to find a definition, when it occurs to her that it 
 is easier to point out the substantial object itself, 
 massive against the dark blue sky and the early 
 stars. 
 
 " That's the answer. Go in there at seven 
 to-morrow morning, and you may see Mr. John 
 Jasper, and hear him too." 
 
 "Thank ye! Thank ye ! " 
 
 The burst of triumph in which she thanks him 
 does not escape the notice of the single buffer of 
 an easy temper living idly on his means. He 
 glances at her ; clasps his hands behind him, as 
 the wont of such buffers is ; and lounges along 
 the echoing Precincts at her side, 
 
 " Or," he suggests with a backward hitch of 
 his head, " you can go up at once to Mr. Jas- 
 per's rooms there." 
 
 The woman eyes him with a cunning smile, 
 and shakes her head. 
 
 " Oh ! you don't want to speak to him ? " 
 
 She repeats her dumb reply, and forms with 
 her lips a soundless '• No." 
 
 " You can admire him at a distance three 
 
n8 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 the entrance to the 
 appropriate rernem- 
 
 times a day whenever you like. It's a long way 
 to come for that, though." 
 
 The woman looks up quickly. If Mr. 
 Datchery thinks she is to be so induced to de- 
 clare where she comes from, he is of a much 
 easier temper than she is. But she acquits him 
 of such an artful thought, as he lounges along, 
 like the chartered bore of the city, with his un- 
 covered grey hair blowing about, and his pur- 
 poseless hands rattling the loose money in the 
 pockets of his trousers. 
 
 The chink of the money has an attraction for 
 her greedy ears. " Wouldn't you help me to 
 pay for my travellers' lodging, dear gentleman, 
 and to pay my way along ? I am a poor soul, 
 I am indeed, and troubled with a grievous 
 cough." 
 
 " You know the travellers' lodging, I per- 
 ceive, and are making directly for it," is Mr. 
 Datchery's bland comment, still rattling his 
 loose money. " Been here often, my good 
 woman ? " 
 
 " Once in all my life." 
 
 "Ay, ay?" 
 
 They have arrived at 
 Monks' Vineyard. An 
 brance, presenting an exemplary model for imi- 
 tation, is revived in the woman's mind by the 
 sight of the place. She stops at the gate, and 
 says energetically : 
 
 " By this token, though you mayn't believe it, 
 That a young gentleman gave me three-and-six- 
 pence as I was coughing my breath away on 
 this very grass. I asked him for three-and-six- 
 pence, and he gave it me." 
 
 " Wasn't it a little cool to name your sum ? " 
 hints Mr. Datchery, still rattling. " Isn't it 
 customary to leave the amount open ? Mightn't 
 it have had the appearance, to the young gentle- 
 man — only the appearance — that he was rather 
 dictated to ? " 
 
 " Lookee here, deary," she replies in a con- 
 fidential and persuasive tone. " I wanted the 
 money to lay it out on a medicine as does me 
 good, and as I deal in. I told the young gentle- 
 man so, and he gave it me, and I laid it out 
 honest to the last brass farden. I want to lay 
 out the same sum in the same way now ; and, 
 if you'll give it me, I'll lay it out honest to the 
 last brass farden again, upon my soul ! " 
 
 " What's the medicine ? " 
 
 " I'll be honest with you beforehand, as well 
 as after. It's opium." 
 
 Mr. Datchery, with a sudden change of coun- 
 tenance, gives her a sudden look. 
 
 " It's opium, deary. Neither more nor less. 
 And it's like a human creetur so far, that you 
 
 always hear what can be said against it, but sel- 
 dom what can be said in its praise." 
 
 Mr. Datchery begins very slowly to count out 
 the sum demanded of him. Greedily watching 
 his hands, she continues to hold forth on the 
 great example set him. 
 
 "It was last Christmas-eve, just arter dark, 
 the once that I was here afore, when the young 
 gentleman gave me the three-and-six." 
 
 Mr. Datchery stops in his counting, finds he 
 has counted wrong, shakes his money together, 
 and begins again. 
 
 " And the young gentleman's name," she adds, 
 " was Edwin." 
 
 Mr. Datchery drops some money, stoops to 
 pick it up, and reddens with the exertion as he 
 asks : 
 
 " How do you know the young gentleman's 
 name ? " 
 
 " I asked him for it, and he told it me. I 
 only asked him the two questions, what was 
 his Chris'en name, and whether he'd a sweet- 
 heart? And he answered, Edwin, and he 
 hadn't." 
 
 Mr. Datchery pauses with the selected coins 
 in his hand, rather as if he were falling into a 
 brown study of their value, and couldn't bear to 
 part with them. The woman looks at him dis- 
 trustfully, and with her anger brewing for the 
 event of his thinking better of the gift ; but he 
 bestows it on her as if he were abstracting his 
 mind from the sacrifice, and with many servile 
 thanks she goes her way. 
 
 John Jasper's lamp is kindled, and his light- 
 house is shining when Mr. Datchery returns 
 alone towards it. As mariners on a dangerous 
 voyage, approaching an iron-bound coast, may 
 look along the beams of the warning light to the 
 haven lying beyond it that may never be reached, 
 so Mr. Datchery's wistful gaze is directed to this 
 beacon, and beyond. 
 
 His object in now revisiting his lodging is 
 merely to put on the hat which seems so super- 
 fluous an article in his wardrobe. It is half-past 
 ten by the cathedral clock when he walks out 
 into the Precincts again ; he lingers and looks 
 about him, as though, the enchanted hour when 
 Mr. Durdles maybe stoned home having struck, 
 he had some expectation of seeing the Imp who 
 is appointed to the mission of stoning him. 
 
 In effect, that Power of Evil is abroad. 
 Having nothing living to stone at the moment, 
 he is discovered by Mr. Datchery in the unholy 
 office of stoning the dead, through the railings 
 of the churchyard. The Imp finds this a relish- 
 ing and piquing pursuit ; firstly, because their 
 resting-place is announced to be sacred ; and 
 
PRINCESS PUFFER. 
 
 119 
 
 secondly, because the tall headstones are suffi- 
 ciently like themselves, on their beat in the dark, 
 to justify the delicious fancy that they are hurt 
 when hit. 
 
 Mr. Datchery hails him with : " Halloa, 
 Winks ! " 
 
 He acknowledges the hail with : " Halloa, 
 Dick ! " Their acquaintance seemingly having 
 been established on a familiar footing. 
 
 " But, I say," he remonstrates, " don't yer go 
 a making my name public. I never means to 
 plead to no name, mind yer. ^Vhen they says 
 to me in the Lockup, a-going to put me down 
 in the book, ' \Vhat's your name ? ' I says to 
 them, ' Find out.' Likeways when they says, 
 '■ What's your religion ? ' I says, ' Find out.' " 
 
 Which, it may be observed in passing, it would 
 be immensely difficult for the State, however 
 statistical, to do. 
 
 "Asides which," adds the boy, "there ain't 
 no family of Winkses." 
 
 " I think there must be." 
 
 *' Yer lie, there ain't. The travellers give me 
 the name on account of my getting no settled 
 sleep and being knocked up all night ; whereby 
 I gets one eye roused open afore I've shut the 
 other. That's what Winks means. Deputy's the 
 nighest name to indict me by : but yer wouldn't 
 catch me pleading to that, neither." 
 
 " Deputy be it always, then. We two are good 
 friends ; eh. Deputy ? " 
 
 "Jolly good." 
 
 " I forgave you the debt you owed me when 
 we first became acquainted, and many of my 
 sixpences have come your way since ; eh, 
 Deputy?" 
 
 " Ah ! And what's more, yer ain't no friend 
 o' Jarsper's. What did he go a h'isting me off 
 my legs for ? " 
 
 " What indeed ? But never mind him now. 
 A shilling of mine is going your way to-night, 
 Deputy. You have just taken in a lodger I 
 have been speaking to ; an infirm woman with a 
 cough." 
 
 " Puffer," assents Deputy with a shrewd leer 
 of recognition, and smoking an imaginary pipe, 
 with his head very much on one side and his 
 eyes very much out of their places. " Hopeum 
 Puffer." 
 
 "What is her name?" 
 
 " 'Er Royal Highness the Princess Puffer." 
 
 " She has some other name than that. Where 
 does she live ? " 
 
 " Up in London. Among the Jacks." 
 
 " The sailors ? " 
 
 " I said so ; Jacks ; and Chayner men ; and 
 hother Knifers." 
 
 " I should like to know, through you, exactly 
 where she lives." 
 
 " All right. Give us 'old." 
 
 A shilling passes ; and, in that spirit of con- 
 fidence which should pervade all business trans- 
 actions between principals of honour, this piece 
 of business is considered done. 
 
 " But here's a lark ! " cries Deputy. " Where 
 did yer think 'Er Royal Highness is a-goin' to 
 to-morrow morning ? Blest if she ain't a-goin' 
 to the KiN-FREE-DER-EL ! " He greatly prolongs 
 the word in his ecstasy, and smites his leg, and 
 doubles himself up in a fit of shrill laughter. 
 
 " How do you know that. Deputy ? " 
 
 " 'Cos she told me so just now. She said 
 she must be hup and hout o' purpose. She ses, 
 ' Deputy, I must 'ave a early wash, and make 
 myself as swell as I can, for I'm a-goin' to take 
 a turn at the Kin-free-der-el ! ' " He sepa- 
 rates the syllables with his former zest, and, not 
 finding his sense of the ludicrous sufficiently 
 relieved by stamping about on the pavement, 
 breaks into a slow and stately dance, perhaps 
 supposed to be performed by the Dean. 
 
 Mr. Datchery receives the communication 
 with a well-satisfied though pondering face, and 
 breaks up the conference. Returning lo his 
 quaint lodging, and sitting long over the supper 
 of bread and cheese and salad and ale which 
 Mrs. Tope has left prepared for him, he still sits 
 when his supper is finished. At length he rises, 
 throws open the door of a corner cupboard, and 
 refers to a few uncouth chalked strokes on its 
 inner side. 
 
 " I like," says Mr. Datchery, " the old tavern 
 way of keeping scores. Illegible except to the 
 scorer. The scorer not committed, the scored 
 debited with what is against him. Hum ! ha I 
 A very small score this ; a very poor score ! " 
 
 He sighs over the contemplation of its 
 poverty, takes a bit of chalk from one of the 
 cupboard shelves, and pauses with it in his hand, 
 uncertain what addition to make to the account. 
 
 " I think a moderate stroke," he concludes, 
 "is all I am justified in scoring up;" so, suits 
 the action to the word, closes the cupboard, and 
 goes to bed. 
 
 A brilliant morning shines on the old city. 
 It's antiquities and ruins are surpassingly beau- 
 tiful, with a lusty ivy gleaming in the sun, and 
 the rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes 
 of glorious light from moving boughs, songs of 
 birds, scents from gardens, woods, and fields — 
 or rather, from the one great garden of the whole 
 cultivated island in its yielding time — penetrate 
 into the cathedral, subdue its earthy o'dour, and 
 preach the Resurrection and the Life. The cold 
 
I20 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. 
 
 stone tombs of centuries ago grow warm ; and 
 flecks of brightness dart into the sternest marble 
 corners of the building, fluttering there like wings. 
 
 Comes Mr. Tope with his large keys, and 
 yawningly unlocks and sets open. Come Mrs. 
 Tope and attendant sweeping sprites. Come, 
 in due time, organist and bellows-boy, peeping 
 down from the red curtains in the loft, fearlessly 
 flapping dust from books up at that remote 
 elevation, and whisking it from stops and pedals. 
 Come sundry rooks, from various quarters of 
 the sky, back to the great tower; who may 
 be presumed to enjoy vibration, and to know 
 that bell and organ are going to give it them. 
 Come a very small and straggling congregation 
 indeed : chiefly from Minor Canon Corner and 
 the Precincts. Come Mr. Crisparkle, fresh and 
 bright ; and his ministering brethren, not quite 
 so fresh and bright. Come the choir in a hurry 
 (always in a hurry, and struggling into their night- 
 gowns at the last moment, like children shirking 
 bed), and comes John Jasper leading their line. 
 Last of all comes Mr. Datchery into a stall, one 
 of a choice empty collection very much at his 
 service, and glancing about him for Her Royal 
 Highness the Princess Puffer. 
 
 The service is pretty well advanced before 
 Mr. Datchery can discern Her Royal Highness. 
 But by that time he has made her out in the 
 shade. She is behind a pillar, carefully with- 
 drawn from the Choir Master's view, but regards 
 him with the closest attention. All unconscious 
 of her presence, he chants and sings. She grins 
 when he is most musically fervid, and — yes, Mr. 
 Datchery sees her do it ! — shakes her fist at him 
 behind the pillar's friendly shelter. 
 
 Mr. Datchery looks again, to convince him- 
 self. Yes, again ! As ugly and withered as one 
 of the fantastic carvings on the under brackets 
 of the stall seats, as malignant as the Evil One, 
 as hard as the big brass eagle holding the sacred 
 books upon his wings (and, according to the 
 sculptor's representation of his ferocious attri- 
 butes, not at all converted by them), she hugs 
 herself in her lean arms, and then shakes both 
 fists at the leader of the choir. 
 
 And at that moment, outside the grated door 
 of the choir, having eluded the vigilance of Mr. 
 Tope by shifty resources in which he is an 
 adept, I)ei)uty peeps, sharp-eyed, through the 
 bars, and stares astounded from the threatener 
 to the threatened. 
 
 The service comes to an end, and the servi- 
 tors disperse to breakfast. Mr. Datchery accosts 
 his last new acquaintance outside, when the 
 choir (as much in a hurry to get their bedgowns 
 off as they were but now to get them on) have 
 scuffled away. 
 
 " Well, mistress ! Good morning. You have 
 seen him ? " 
 
 " /'ve seen him, deary ; /'ve seen him ! " 
 
 " And you know him ?" 
 
 " Know him ! Better far than all the Reve- 
 rend Parsons put together know him." 
 
 Mrs. Tope's care has spread a very neat, 
 clean breakfast ready for her lodger. Before 
 sitting down to it, he opens his corner-cup- 
 board door ; takes his bit of chalk from its 
 shelf; adds one thick line to the score, ex- 
 tending from the top of the cupboard door 
 to the bottom ; and then falls to with an appe- 
 tite. 
 
 THE END OF EDWIN DROO:;. 
 
REPRINTED PIECES 
 
REPRINTED PIECES. 
 
 THE LONG VOYAGE. 
 
 ^^N'-C 
 
 ■ HEN the wind is blowing, and the 
 sleet or rain is driving against the 
 (lark windows, I love to sit by the 
 fire, thinking of what I have read 
 in books of voyage and travel. 
 Such books have had a strong 
 fascination for my mind from my earliest 
 childhood ; and I wonder it should have 
 come to pass that I never have been round 
 the world, never have been shipwrecked, 'ce- 
 environed, tomahawked, or eaten. 
 
 Sitting on my ruddy hearth in the twilight of 
 New Year's Eve, I find incidents of travel rise 
 around me from all the latitudes and longitudes 
 of the globe. They observe no order or se- 
 
 quence, but appear and vanish as they will — 
 "come like shadows, so depart." Columbus, 
 alone upon the sea with his disaffected crew, 
 looks over the waste of waters from his high 
 station on the poop of his ship, and sees the 
 first uncertain glimmer of the light, " rising and 
 falling with the waves, like a torch in the bark 
 of some fisherman," which is the shining star of 
 a new world. Bruce is caged in Abyssinia, sur- 
 rounded by the gory horrors which shall often 
 startle him out of his sleep at home when years 
 have passed away. Franklin, come to the end 
 of his unhappy overland journey — would that it 
 had been his last !— lies perishing of hunger with 
 his brave companions: each emaciated figure 
 stretched upon its miserable bed without the 
 power to rise: all dividing the weary days 
 
124 
 
 THE LONG VOYAGE. 
 
 between their prayers, their remembrances of 
 the dear ones at home, and conversation on the 
 pleasures of eating ; the last-named topic being 
 ever present to them, likewise, in their dreams. 
 All the African travellers, wayworn, solitary, and 
 sad, submit themselves again to drunken, mur- 
 derous, man-selling despots of the lowest order 
 of humanity; and INIungo Park, fainting under a 
 tree and succoured by a woman, gratefully re- 
 members how his Good Samaritan has always 
 come to him in woman's shape, the wide world 
 over, 
 
 A shadow on the wall, in which my mind's 
 eye can discern some traces of a rocky sea- 
 coast, recalls to me a fearful story of travel 
 derived from that unpromising narrator of such 
 stories, a parliamentary blue-book. A convict 
 is its chief figure, and this man escapes with 
 other prisoners from a penal settlement. It is 
 an island, and they seize a boat, and get to the 
 mainland. Their way is by a rugged and pre- 
 cipitous seashore, and they have no earthly hope 
 of ultimate escape, for the party of soldiers dis- 
 patched by an easier course to cut them off, 
 must inevitably arrive at their distant bourne 
 long before them, and retake them if by any 
 hazard they survive the horrors of the way. 
 Famine, as they all must have foreseen, besets 
 them early in their course. Some of the party 
 die and are eaten ; some are murdered by the 
 rest and eaten. This one awful creature eats 
 his fill, and sustains his strength, and lives on to 
 be recaptured and taken back. The unrelatable 
 experiences through which he has passed have 
 been so tremendous, that he is not hanged as 
 he might be, but goes back to his old chained 
 gang-work. A little time, and he tempts one 
 other prisoner away, seizes another boat, and 
 flies once more — necessarily in the old hopeless 
 direction, for he can take no other. He is soon 
 cut off, and met by the pursuing party, face to 
 face, upon the beach. He is alone. In his 
 former journey he acquired an inappeasable 
 relish for his dreadful food. He urged the new 
 man away expressly to kill him and eat him. 
 In the pockets on one side of his coarse con- 
 vict dress are portions of the man's body on 
 which he is regaling ; in the pockets on the 
 other side is an untouched store of salted pork 
 {stolen before he left the island), for which he 
 has no appetite. He is taken back, and he is 
 hanged. But I shall never see that sea-beach 
 on the wall, or in the fire, without him, solitary 
 monster, eating as he prowls along, while the 
 sea rages and rises at him. 
 
 Captain IJligh (a worse man to be intrusted 
 with arbitrary power there could scarcely be) is 
 
 handed over the side of the Bounty, and turned 
 adrift on the wide ocean in an open boat by 
 order of Fletcher Christian, one of his officers, 
 at this very minute. Another flash of my fire, 
 and " Thursday October Christian," five-and- 
 twenty years of age, son of the dead-and-gone 
 Fletcher by a savage mother, leaps aboard his 
 Majesty's ship Briton, hove to off Pitcairn's 
 Island ; says his simple grace, before eating, in 
 good English; and knows that a pretty little 
 animal on board is called a dog, because in his 
 childhood he had heard of such strange crea- 
 tures from his father and the other mutineers, 
 grown grey under the shade of the bread-fruit 
 trees, speaking of their lost country far away. 
 
 See the Halsewell, East Indiaman outward 
 bound, driving madly on a January night 
 towards the rocks near Seacombe, on the island 
 of Purbeck ! The captain's two dear daughters 
 are aboard, and live other ladies. The ship has 
 been driving many hours, has seven feet water 
 in her hold, and her mainmast has been cut 
 away. The description of her loss, familiar to 
 me from my early boyhood, seems to be read 
 aloud as she rushes to her destiny. 
 
 "About two in the morning of Friday, the 
 sixth of January, the ship still driving, and 
 approaching very fast to the shore, Mr. Henry 
 Meriton, the second mate, went again into the 
 cuddy, where the captain then was. Another 
 conversation taking place. Captain Pierce ex- 
 pressed extreme anxiety for the preservation of 
 his beloved daughters, and earnestly asked the 
 officer if he could devise any method of saving 
 them. On his answering, with great concern, 
 that he feared it would be impossible, but that 
 their only chance would be to wait for morning, 
 the captain lifted up his hands in silent and 
 distressful ejaculation. 
 
 "At this dreadful moment the ship struck, 
 with such violence as to dash the heads of those 
 standing in the cuddy against the deck above 
 them, and the shock was accompanied by a 
 shriek of horror that burst at one instant from 
 every quarter of the ship. 
 
 " Many of the seamen, who had been re- 
 markably inattentive and remiss in their duty 
 during great part of the storm, now poured 
 upon deck, where no exertions of the officers 
 could keep them while their assistance might 
 have been useful. They had actually skulked 
 in their hammocks, leaving the working of the 
 pumps and other necessary labours to the 
 officers of the ship, and the soldiers, who had 
 made uncommon exertions. Roused by a sense 
 of their danger, the same seamen, at this mo- 
 
THE LOST INDIA MAN. 
 
 125 
 
 ment, in frantic exclamations, demanded of 
 Heaven and their fellow-sufterers that succour 
 which their own etibrts, timely made, might 
 possibly have procured. 
 
 "The ship continued to beat on the rocks; 
 and soon bilging, fell with her broadside towards 
 the shore. When she struck, a number of the 
 men climbed up the ensign-staff, under an 
 apprehension of her immediately going to 
 pieces. 
 
 " Mr. Meriton, at this crisis, offered to these 
 unhappy beings the best advice which could be 
 given ; he recommended that all should come 
 to the side of the ship lying lowest on the rocks, 
 and singly to take the opportunities which might 
 then offer of escaping to the shore. 
 
 " Having thus provided, to the utmost of his 
 power, for the safety of the desponding crew, 
 he returned to the round-house, where, by this 
 time, all the passengers and most of the officers 
 had assembled. The latter were employed in 
 offering consolation to the unfortunate ladies ; 
 and, with unparalleled magnanimity, suffering 
 their compassion for the fair and amiable com- 
 panions of their misfortunes to prevail over the 
 sense of their own danger. 
 
 " In this charitable work of comfort Mr. Meri- 
 ton now joined, by assurances of his opinion 
 that the ship would hold together till the morn- 
 ing, when all would be safe. Captain Pierce, 
 observing one of the young gentlemen loud in 
 his exclamations of terror, and frequently cry 
 that the ship was parting, cheerfully bid him be 
 quiet, remarking that though the ship should go 
 to pieces, he would not, but would be safe 
 enough. 
 
 " It is difficult to convey a correct idea of the 
 scene of this deplorable catastrophe, without 
 describing the place where it happened. The 
 Halsewell struck on the rocks at a part of the 
 shore where the cliff is of vast height, and rises 
 almost perpendicular from its base. But, at this 
 particular spot, the foot of the cliff is excavated 
 into a cavern of ten or twelve yards in depth, 
 and of breadth equal to the length of a large 
 ship. The sides of the cavern are so nearly 
 upright as to be of extremely difficult access; 
 and the bottom is strewed with sharp and un- 
 even rocks, which seem, by some convulsion of 
 the earth, to have been detached from its roof. 
 
 " The ship lay with her broadside opposite to 
 the mouth of this cavern, with her whole length 
 stretched almost from side to side of it. But when 
 she struck, it was too dark for the unfortunate 
 persons on board to discover the real magnitude 
 of their danger, and the extreme horror of such a 
 situation. 
 
 "In addition to the company already in the 
 
 round-house, they had admitted three black 
 women and two soldiers' wives ; who, with the 
 husband of one of them, had been allowed to 
 come in, though the seamen, who had tumul- 
 tuously demanded entrance to get the lights, had 
 been opposed and kept out by Mr. Rogers and 
 Mr. Brimer, the third and fifth mates. The 
 numbers there were, therefore, now increased to 
 near fifty. Captain Pierce sat on a chair, a cot, 
 or some other movable, with a daughter on each 
 side, whom he alternately pressed to his affec- 
 tionate breast. The rest of the melancholy 
 assembly were seated on the deck, which was 
 strewed with musical instruments, and the wreck 
 of furniture and other articles. 
 
 " Here also Mr. Meriton, after having cut 
 several wax candles in pieces, and stuck them 
 up in various parts of the round-house, and 
 lighted up all the glass lanterns he could find, 
 took his seat, intending to wait the approach of 
 dawn ; and then assist the partners of his dangers 
 to escape. But observing that the poor ladies 
 appeared parched and exhausted, he brought a 
 basket of oranges, and prevailed on some of 
 them to refresh themselves by sucking a little of 
 the juice. At this time they were all tolerably 
 composed, except Miss IVIansel, who was in 
 hysteric fits on the floor of the deck of the 
 round-house. 
 
 '* But on Mr. Meriton's return to the company, 
 he perceived a considerable alteration in the ap- 
 pearance of the ship ; the sides were visibly 
 giving way ; the deck seemed to be lifting, and 
 he discovered other strong indications that she 
 could not hold much longer together. On this 
 account, he attempted to go forward to look 
 out, but immediately saw that the ship had sepa- 
 rated in the middle, and that the fore-part, hav- 
 ing changed its position, lay rather further out 
 towards the sea. In such an emergency, when 
 the next moment might plunge him into eternity, 
 he determined to seize the present opportunity, 
 and follow the example of the crew and the sol- 
 diers, who were now quitting the ship in num- 
 bers, and making their way to the shore, though 
 quite ignorant of its nature and description. 
 
 " Among other expedients, the ensign-staff 
 had been unshipped, and attempted to be laid 
 between the ship's side and some of the rocks, 
 but without success, for it snapped asunder be- 
 fore it reached them. However, by the light of 
 a lantern, which a seaman handed through the 
 sky-light of the round-house to the deck, Mr. 
 Meriton discovered a spar which appeared to be 
 laid from the ship's side to the rocks, and on 
 this spar he resolved to attempt his escape. 
 
126 
 
 THE LONG VOYAGE. 
 
 " Accordingly, lying down upon it, he thrust 
 himself forward ; however, he soon found that it 
 had no communication with the rock ; he reached 
 the end of it, and then slipped off, receiving a 
 very violent bruise in his fall, and before he 
 could recover his legs, he was washed off by the 
 surge. He now supported himself by swim- 
 ming, until a returning wave dashed him against 
 the back part of the cavern. Here he laid hold 
 of a small projection in the rock, but was so 
 much benumbed that he was on the point of 
 quitting it, when a seaman, who had already 
 gained a footing, extended his hand, and assisted 
 him until he could secure himself a little on the 
 rock ; from which he clambered on a shelf still 
 higher, and out of the reach of the surf. 
 
 " Mr. Rogers, the third mate, remained with 
 the captain and the unfortunate ladies and their 
 companions nearly twenty minutes after Mr. 
 ]\Ieriton had quitted the ship. Soon after the 
 latter left the round-house, the captain asked 
 what was become of him, to which Mr. Rogers 
 replied, that he was gone on deck to see what 
 could be done. After this, a heavy sea breaking 
 over the ship, the ladies exclaimed, ' Oh, poor 
 Meriton ! he is drowned ! had he stayed with us 
 he would have been safe ! ' and they all, parti- 
 cularly Miss j\Iary Pierce, expressed great con- 
 cern at the apprehension of his loss. 
 
 " The sea was now breaking in at the fore- 
 part of the ship, and reached as far as the main- 
 mast. Captain Pierce gave j\Ir. Rogers a nod, 
 and they took a lamp and Avent together into the 
 stern-gallery, where, after viewing the rocks for 
 some time, Captain Pierce asked Mr, Rogers if 
 he thought there was any possibility of saving 
 the girls ; to which he replied, he feared there 
 was none ; for they could only discover the black 
 face of the perpendicular rock, and not the 
 cavern which afforded shelter to those who 
 escaped. They then returned to the round- 
 house, where INIr. Rogers hung up the lamp, and 
 Captain Pierce sat down between his two 
 daughters. 
 
 " The sea continuing to break in very fast, 
 Mr. Macmanus, a midshipman, and Mr. Schutz, 
 a passenger, asked j\Ir. Rogers what they could 
 do to escape. ' Follow me,' he replied, and 
 they all went into the stern-gallery, and from 
 thence to the upper-quarter-gallery on the poop. 
 While there, a very heavy sea fell on board, and 
 the round-house gave w-ay ; Mr. Rogers heard 
 the ladies shriek at intervals, as if the water 
 reached them ; the noise of the sea at other 
 times drowning their voices. 
 
 " Mr. Brimer had followed him to the poop, 
 where they remained together about five minutes, 
 
 when, on the breaking of this heavy sea, they 
 jointly seized a hen-coop. The same wave 
 which proved fatal to some of those below, car- 
 ried him and his companion to the rock, on 
 which they were violently dashed and miserably 
 bruised. 
 
 " Here on the rock were twenty-seven men ; 
 but it now being low water, and as they were 
 convinced that on the flowing of the tide all 
 must be washed off, many attempted to get to 
 the back or the sides of the cavern, beyond the 
 reach of the returning sea. Scarcely more 
 than six, besides Mr. Rogers and Mr. Brimer, 
 succeeded. 
 
 " Mr, Rogers, on gaining this station, was so 
 nearly exhausted, that had his exertions been 
 protracted only a few minutes longer, he must 
 have sunk under them. He was now prevented 
 from joining I\Ir. Meriton by at least twenty 
 men between them, none of whom could move 
 without the imminent peril of his life. 
 
 " They found that a very considerable number 
 of the crew, seamen and soldiers, and some petty 
 officers, were in the same situation as themselves, 
 though many who had reached the rocks below 
 perished in attempting to ascend. They could 
 yet discern some part of the ship, and in their 
 dreary station solaced themselves with the hopes 
 of its remaining entire until daybreak ; for, in 
 the midst of their own distress, the sufterings of 
 the females on board affected them with the 
 most poignant anguish ; and every sea that broke 
 inspired them with terror for their safety. 
 
 " But, alas, their apprehensions were too soon 
 realised ! Within a very few minutes of the 
 time that Mr. Rogers gained the rock, an uni- 
 versal shriek, which long vibrated in their ears, 
 in which the voice of female distress was lament- 
 ably distinguished, announced the dreadful ca- 
 tastrophe. In a few moments all was hushed, 
 except the roaring of the winds and the dashing 
 of the waves ; the wreck was buried in the deep, 
 and not an atom of it was ever afterwards seen." 
 
 The most beautiful and affecting incident I 
 know, associated with a shipwreck, succeeds 
 this dismal story for a winter night. The 
 Grosvenor, East Indiaman homeward bound, 
 goes ashore on the coast of Caftraria. It is re- 
 solved that the officers, passengers, and crew^, 
 ' in number one hundred and thirty-five souls, 
 shall endeavour to penetrate on foot, across 
 trackless deserts, infested by wild beasts and 
 cruel savages, to the Dutch settlements at the 
 Cape of Good Hope, ^^'ith this forlorn object 
 before them, they finally separate into two 
 parties — never more to meet on earth. 
 
A SACRED CHARGE. 
 
 127 
 
 There is a solitary child among the passen- 
 gers—a little boy of se\^ii years old who has no 
 relation there ; and when the first party is mov- 
 ing away he cries after some member of it who 
 has been kind to him. The crying of a child 
 might be supposed to be a little thing to men in 
 such great extremity ; but it touches them, and 
 he is immediately taken into that detachment. 
 
 From which time forth, this child is sublimely 
 made a sacred charge. He is pushed, on a little 
 raft, across broad rivers, by the swimming 
 sailors ; they carry him by turns through the 
 deep sand and long grass (he patiently walking 
 at all other times) ; they share with him such 
 putrid fish as they find to eat ; they lie down 
 and wait for him when the rough carpenter, 
 who becomes his especial friend, lags behind. 
 Beset by lions and tigers, by savages, by thirst, 
 by hunger, by death in a crowd of ghastly 
 shapes, they never — O Father of all mankind, 
 thy name be blessed for it ! — forget this child. 
 The captain stops exhausted, and his faithful 
 coxswain goes back, and is seen to sit down by 
 his side, and neither of the two shall be any 
 more beheld until the great last day ; but, as 
 the rest go on for their lives, they take the child 
 with them. The carpenter dies of poisonous 
 berries eaten in starvation ; and the steward, 
 succeeding to the command of the party, suc- 
 ceeds to the sacred guardianship of the child. 
 
 God knows all he does for the poor baby ; 
 how he cheerfully carries him in his arms when 
 he himself is weak and ill ; how he feeds him 
 when he himself is griped with want ; how he 
 folds his ragged jacket round him, lays his little 
 worn face with a woman's tenderness upon his 
 sunburnt breast, soothes him in his sufferings, 
 sings to him as he limps along, unmindful of 
 his o\xx\ parched and bleeding feet. Divided 
 for a few days from the rest, they dig a grave in 
 the sand, and bury their good friend the cooper 
 — these two companions alone in the wilderness 
 — and then the time comes when they both are 
 ill, and beg their wretched partners in despair, 
 reduced and few in number now, to wait by 
 them one day. They wait by them one day, 
 they wait by them two days. On the morning 
 of the third, they move very softly about, in 
 making their preparations for the resumption of 
 their journey; for, the child is sleeping by the 
 fire, and it is agreed with one consent that he 
 shall not be disturbed until the last moment. 
 The moment comes, the fire is dying — and the 
 child is dead. 
 
 His faithful friend, the steward, lingers but a 
 little while behind him. His grief is great, he 
 staggers on for a few days, lies down in the 
 
 desert, and dies. But he shall be reunited in 
 his immortal spirit — who can doubt it ? — with 
 the chikl, where he and the poor carpenter shall 
 be raised up with the words, " Inasmuch as ye 
 have done it unto the least of these, ye have 
 done it unto Me." ^ 
 
 As I recall the dispersal and disappearance 
 of nearly all the participators in this once 
 famous shij)wreck (a mere handful being re- 
 covered at last), and the legends that were long 
 afterwards revived from time to time among the 
 English officers at the Cape, of a white woman 
 with an infant, said to have been seen weeping 
 outside a savage hut far in the interior, who was 
 whisperingly associated with the remembrance 
 of the missing ladies saved from the wrecked 
 vessel, and who was often sought, but never 
 found, thoughts of another kind of travel come 
 into my mind. 
 
 Thoughts of a voyager unexpectedly sum- 
 moned from home, who travelled a vast dis- 
 tance, and could never return. Thoughts of 
 this unhappy wayfarer in the depths of his 
 sorrow, in the bitterness of his anguish, in the 
 helplessness of his self-reproach, in the despera- 
 tion of his desire to set right what he had left 
 wrong, and do what he had left undone. 
 
 For, there were many many things he had 
 neglected. Little matters while he was at home 
 and surrounded by them, but things of mighty 
 moment when he was at an immeasurable dis- 
 tance. There were many many blessings that 
 he had inadequately felt, there were many tri- 
 vial injuries that he had not forgiven, there was 
 love that he had but poorly returned, there was 
 friendship that he had too lightly prized ; there 
 were a million kind words that he might have 
 spoken, a million kind looks that he might have 
 given, uncountable slight easy deeds in which 
 he might have been most truly great and good. 
 
 for a day (he would exclaim), for but one day 
 to make amends ! But the sun never shone 
 upon that happy day, and out of his remote 
 captivity he never came. 
 
 Why does this traveller's fate obscure, on 
 New Year's Eve, the other histories of travellers 
 with which ray mind was filled but now, and 
 cast a solemn shadow over me ? Must I one 
 day make his journey? Even so. Who shall 
 say that I may not then be tortured by such 
 late regrets : that I may not then look from my 
 exile on my empty place and undone work ? 
 
 1 stand upon a seashore, where the waves are 
 years. They break and fall, and I may little 
 heed them : but, with every wave the sea is 
 rising, and I know that it will float me on this 
 traveller's voyage at last. 
 
128 
 
 THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER. 
 
 THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER. 
 
 HE amount of money he annually 
 diverts from wholesome and useful 
 purposes in the United Kingdom 
 would be a set-off against the Win- 
 dow Tax. He is one of the most 
 shameless frauds and impositions of this 
 time. In his idleness, his mendacity, and 
 i^^ the immeasurable harm he does to the 
 deserving, — dirtying the stream of true benevo- 
 lence, and muddling the brains of foolish justices, 
 with inability to distinguish between the base 
 coin of distress and the true currency we have 
 always among us, — he is more worthy of Norfolk 
 Island than three-fourths of the worst characters 
 who are sent there. Under any rational system, 
 he would have been sent there long ago. 
 
 I, the writer of this paper, have been, for 
 some time, a chosen receiver of Begging Letters. 
 For fourteen years my house has been made as 
 regular a Receiving House for such communica- 
 tions as any one of the great branch Post Offices 
 is for general correspondence. I ought to know 
 something of the Begging-Letter Writer. He 
 has besieged my door at all hours of the day 
 and night ; he has fought my servant ; he has 
 lain in ambush for me, going out and coming 
 in ; he has followed me out of town into the 
 country ; he has appeared at provincial hotels, 
 where I have been staying for onl}- a few hours \ 
 he has written to me from immense distances, 
 when I have been out of England. He has fallen 
 sick ; he has died, and been buried ; he has 
 come to life again, and again departed from this 
 transitory scene ; he has been his own son, his 
 own mother, his own baby, his idiot brother, his 
 uncle, his aunt, his aged grandfather. He 
 has wanted a great-coat to go to India in ; a 
 pound, to set him up in life for ever ; a pair of 
 boots, to take him to the coast of China ; a hat, 
 to get him into a permanent situation under 
 Government. He has frequently been exactly 
 seven-and-sixpence short of independence. He 
 has had such openings at Liverpool — posts of 
 great trust and confidence in merchants' houses, 
 which nothing but seven-and-sixpence was want- 
 ing to him to secure — that I wonder he is not 
 Mayor of that flourishing town at the present 
 moment. 
 
 The natural phenomena of which he has been 
 the victim are of a most astounding nature. He 
 has had two children who have never grown 
 up ; who have never had anything to cover them 
 at night ; who have been continually driving 
 him mad, by asking in vain for food 3 who have 
 
 never come out of fevers and measles (which, I 
 suppose, has accounted for his fuming his letters 
 with tobacco smoke, as a disinfectant) ; who 
 have never changed in the least degree through 
 fourteen long revolving years. As to his wife, 
 what that suffering woman has undergone, no- 
 body knows. She has always been in an in- 
 teresting situation through the same long period, 
 and has never been confined yet. His devotion 
 to her has been unceasing. He has never cared 
 for himself ; he could have perished — he would 
 rather, in short — but w^as it not his Christian 
 duty as a man, a husband, and a father, to write 
 begging letters Avhen he looked at her ? (He 
 has usually remarked that he would call in the 
 evening for an answer to this question.) 
 
 He has been the sport of the strangest mis- 
 fortunes. What his brother has done to him 
 would have broken anybody else's heart. His 
 brother went into business with him, and ran 
 away with the money ; his brother got him to be 
 secur-ity for an immense sum, and left him to 
 pay it ; his brother would have given him em- 
 ployment to the tune of hundreds a year, if he 
 would have consented to write letters on a Sun- 
 day ; his brother enunciated principles incom- 
 patible with his religious views, and he could 
 not (in consequence) permit his brother to pro- 
 vide for him. His landlord has never shown a 
 spark of human feeling. When he put in that 
 execution, I don't know, but he has never taken 
 it out. The broker's man has grown grey in pos- 
 session. They will have to bury him some da}'. 
 
 He has been attached to every conceivable 
 pursuit. He has been in the army, in the navy, 
 in the church, in the law ; connected with the 
 press, the fine arts, public institutions, every 
 description and grade of business. He has been 
 brought up as a gentleman : he has been at 
 every college in Oxford and Cambridge ; he can 
 quote Latin in his letters (but generally mis- 
 spells some minor English word) ; he can tell 
 you what Shakespeare says about begging, better 
 than you know it. It is to be observed, that in 
 the midst of his afflictions he always reads the 
 newspapers ; and rounds off his appeals with 
 some allusion, that may be supposed to be in 
 my way, to the popular subject of the hour. 
 
 His life presents a series of inconsistencies. 
 Sometimes he has never written such a letter 
 before. He blushes with shame. That is the 
 first time ; that shall be the last. Don't answer 
 it, and let it be understood that, then, he will 
 kill himself quietly. Sometimes (and more fre- 
 quently) he has written a few such letters. Then 
 he encloses the answers, with an intimation that 
 they are of inestimable value to him, and a re- 
 
HE ENCHANTS A AIAGISTRATE. 
 
 129 
 
 quest that they may be carefully returned. He 
 is fond of enclosing something — verses, letters, 
 pawnbrokers' duplicates, anything to necessitate 
 an answer. He is very severe upon " the pam- 
 ]:)ered minion ot fortune," who refused him the 
 lialf- sovereign referred to in the enclosure num- 
 ber two — but he knows me better. 
 
 He writes in a variety of styles ; sometimes 
 in low spirits ; sometimes quite jocosely. When 
 he is in low spirits, he writes downhill, and re- 
 peats words — these little indications being ex- 
 pressive of the perturbation of his mind. When 
 he is more vivacious, he is frank with me ; he is 
 quite the agreeable rattle. I know what human 
 nature is, — who better ? Well ! He had a little 
 money once, and he ran through it — as many 
 men have done before him. He finds his old 
 friends turn away from him now — many men 
 have done that before him, too ! Shall he tell 
 me why he writes to me ? Because he has no 
 kind of claim upon me. He puts it on that 
 ground, plainly ; and begs to ask for the loan 
 (as I know human nature) of two sovereigns, to 
 be repaid next Tuesday six weeks, before twelve 
 at noon. 
 
 Sometimes, when he is sure that I have found 
 him out^ and that there is no chance of money, 
 he writes to inform me that I have got rid of 
 him at last. He has enlisted into the Com- 
 pany's service, and is off directly — but he wants 
 a cheese. He is informed by the sergeant that 
 it is essential to his prospects in the regiment 
 that he should take out a single -Gloucester 
 cheese, weighing from twelve to fifteen pounds. 
 Eight or nine shillings would buy it. He does 
 not ask for money, after what has passed ; but 
 if he calls at nine to-morrow morning, may he 
 hope to find a cheese ? And is there anything 
 he can do to show his gratitude in Bengal? 
 
 Once he wrote me rather a special letter pro- 
 posing relief in kind. He had got into a little 
 trouble by leaving parcels of mud done up in 
 brown paper at people's houses, on pretence of 
 being a Railway Porter, in which character he 
 received carriage money. This sportive fancy 
 he expiated in the House of Correction. Not 
 long after his release, and on a Sunday morning, 
 he called with a letter (having first dusted him- 
 self all over), in which he gave me to understand 
 that, being resolved to earn an honest livelihood, 
 he had been travelling about the country with a 
 cart of crockery. That he had been doing pretty 
 well until the day before, when his horse had 
 dropped down dead near Chatham, in Kent. 
 That this had reduced him to the unpleasant 
 necessity of getting into the shafts himself, and 
 drawing the cart of crockery to London — a 
 Edwin Drood, Etc, 9. 
 
 somewhat e.xhausting pull of thirty miles. That 
 he did not venture to ask again for money ; but 
 that if I would have the goodness to leave him 
 out a donkey, he would call for the animal before 
 breakfast ! 
 
 At another time my friend (I am describing 
 actual experiences) introduced himself as a 
 literary gentleman in the last extremity of dis- 
 tress. He had had a play accepted at a certain 
 Theatre — which was really open ; its repre- 
 sentation was delayed by the indisposition of a 
 leading actor — who was really ill ; and he and 
 his were in a state of absolute starvation. If he 
 made his necessities known to the Manager of 
 the Theatre, he put it to me to say what kind 
 of treatment he might expect ? Well ! we got 
 over that difficulty to our mutual satisfaction. 
 A little while afterwards he was in some other 
 strait — I think Mrs. Southcote, his wife, was in 
 extremity — and we adjusted that point too. A 
 little while afterwards he had taken a new house, 
 and was going headlong to ruin for want of a 
 water-butt. I had my misgivings about the 
 water-butt, and did not reply to that epistle. 
 But, a little while afterwards, I had reason to 
 feel penitent for my neglect. He wrote me a 
 few broken-hearted lines, informing me that the 
 dear partner of his sorrows died in his arms last 
 night at nine o'clock ! 
 
 I dispatched a trusty messenger to comfort 
 the bereaved mourner and his poor children : 
 but the messenger went so soon, that the play 
 was not ready to be played out ; my friend was 
 not at home, and his wife was in a most delight- 
 ful state of health. He was taken up by the 
 Mendicity Society (informally it afterwards ap- 
 peared), and I presented myself at a London 
 Police Office with my testimony against him. 
 The Magistrate was wonderfully struck by his 
 educational acquirements, deeply impressed by 
 the excellence of his letters, exceedingly sorry to 
 see a man of his attainments there, complimented 
 him highly on his powers of composition, and 
 was quite charmed to have the agreeable duty 
 of discharging him. A collection was made for 
 the " poor fellow," as he was called in the re- 
 ports, and I left the court with the comfortable 
 sense of being universally regarded as a sort of 
 monster. Next day, comes to me a friend of 
 mine, the governor of a large prison. " Why 
 did you ever go to the Police Office agamst that 
 man," says he, " without coming to me first ? I 
 know all about him and his frauds. He lodged 
 in the house of one of my warders, at the very 
 time when he first wrote to you ; and then he 
 was eating spring lamb at eighteenpence a pound, 
 and early asparagus at I don't know^ how much 
 
I30 
 
 THE BEGGING-LETTER WRITER. 
 
 a bundle ! " On that very same day, and in 
 diat very same hour, my injured gentleman wrote 
 a solemn address to me, demantling to know 
 what compensation I proposed to make him for 
 his having passed the night in a " loathsome 
 dungeon." And next morning, an Irish gentle- 
 man, a member of the same fraternity, who had 
 read the case, and was very well persuaded I 
 should be chary of going to that Police Office 
 again, positively refused to leave my door for 
 less than a sovereign, and, resolved to besiege 
 me into compliance, literally " sat down " before 
 it for ten mortal hours. The garrison being 
 well provisioned, I remained within the walls ; 
 and he raised the siege at midnight, with a pro- 
 digious alarum on the bell. 
 
 The Begging-Letter Writer often has an ex- 
 tensive circle of acquaintance. Whole pages of 
 the Court Guide are ready to be references for 
 him. Noblemen and gentlemen write to say 
 there never was such a man for probity and 
 virtue. They have known him time out of mind, 
 and there is nothing they wouldn't do for him. 
 Somehow, they don't give him that one pound 
 ten he stands in need of ; but perhaps it is not 
 enough — they want to do more, and his modesty 
 will not allow it. It is to be remarked of his 
 trade that it is a very fascinating one. He never 
 leaves it ; and those who are near to him be- 
 come smitten with a love of it too, and sooner 
 or later set up for themselves. He employs a 
 messenger — man, woman, or child. That mes- 
 senger is certain ultimately to become an inde- 
 pendent Begging-Letter Writer. His sons and 
 daughters succeed to his calHng, and write 
 begging letters when he is no more. He throws 
 oft the infection of begging-letter writing, like 
 the contagion of disease.- What Sydney Smith 
 so happily called " the dangerous luxury of dis- 
 honesty " is more tempting, and more catching, it 
 would seem, in this instance than in any other. 
 
 He always belongs to a Corresponding Society 
 of Begging-Letter ^Vriters. Any one who will 
 may ascertain this fact. Give money to-day, in 
 recognition of a begging letter, — no matter how 
 unlike a common begging letter, — and for the 
 next fortnight you will have a rush of such 
 communications. Steadily refuse to give ; and 
 the begging letters become Angels' visits, until 
 the Society is from some cause or other in a dull 
 way of business, and may as well try you as any- 
 body else. It is of little use inquiring into the 
 Begging-Letter Writer's circumstances. He may 
 be sometimes accidentally found out, as in the 
 case already mentioned (though that was not the 
 first inquiry made) ; but apparent misery is 
 always a part of his trade, and real misery very 
 
 often is, in the intervals of spring lamb and early 
 asparagus. It is naturally an incident of his 
 dissipated and dishonest life. 
 
 That the calling is a successful one, and that 
 large sums of money are gained by it, must be 
 evident to anybody who reads the Police Re- 
 ports of such cases. But, prosecutions are of 
 rare occurrence, relatively to the extent to which 
 the trade is carried on. The cause of this is 
 to be found (as no one knows better than the 
 Begging-Letter Writer, for it is a part of his 
 speculation) in the aversion people feel to ex- 
 hibit themselves as having been imposed upon, 
 or as having weakly gratified their consciences 
 with a lazy, flimsy substitute for the noblest of 
 all virtues. There is a man at large, at the 
 moment when this paper is preparing for the 
 press (on the 29th of April, 1850), and never 
 once taken up yet, who, within these twelve 
 months, has been probably the most audacious 
 and the most successful swindler that even this 
 trade has ever known. There has been some- 
 thing singularly base in this fellow's proceed- 
 ings : it has been his business to write to all 
 sorts and conditions of people, in the names of 
 persons of high reputation and unblemished 
 honour, professing to be in distress — the general 
 admiration and respect for whom has insured a 
 ready and generous reply. 
 
 Now, in the hope that the results of the real 
 experience of a real person may do something 
 more to induce reflection on this subject than 
 any abstract treatise — and with a personal know- 
 ledge of the extent to which the Begging-Letter 
 Trade has been carried on for some time, and 
 has been for some time constantly increasing — 
 the writer of this paper entreats the attention of 
 his readers to a few concluding words. His 
 experience is a type of the experience of many ; 
 some on a smaller, some on an infinitely larger 
 scale. All may judge of the soundness or un- 
 soundness of his conclusions from it. 
 
 Long doubtful of the efficacy of such assist- 
 ance in any case whatever, and able to recall 
 but one, within his own individual knowledge, 
 in which he had the least after-reason to suppose 
 that any good was done by it, he was led, last 
 autumn, into some serious considerations. The 
 begging letters ffying about by every post made 
 it perfectly manifest, That a set of lazy vaga- 
 bonds were interposed between the general 
 desire to do something to relieve the sickness 
 and misery under which the poor were suffering, 
 and the suffering poor themselves. That many 
 who sought to do some little to repair the socir. 1 
 wrongs inflicted in the way of preventible sick 
 ness and death upon the poor, were strength- 
 
HE IS A MERE ROBBER. 
 
 I3t 
 
 ening those wrongs, however innocently, by- 
 wasting money on pestilent knaves cumbering 
 society. That imagination, — soberly following 
 one of these knaves into his life of punishment 
 in gaol, and comparing it with the life of one of 
 these poor in a cholera-stricken alley, or one of 
 the children of one of these poor, soothed in its 
 dying hour by the late lamented I\Ir. Drouet, — 
 contemplated a grim farce, impossible to be 
 presented very much longer before God or man. 
 That the crowning miracle of all the miracles 
 summed up in the New Testament, after the 
 miracle of the blind seeing, and the lame walk- 
 ing, and the restoration of the dead to life, was 
 the miracle that the poor had the Gospel 
 preached to them. That while the poor were 
 unnaturally and unnecessarily cut off by the 
 thousand, in the prematurity of their age, or in 
 the rottenness of their youth — for of flower or 
 blossom such youth has none — the Gospel was 
 NOT preached to them, saving in hollow and 
 unmeaning voices. That, of all wrongs, this 
 was the first mighty wrong the Pestilence 
 warned us to set right. And that no Post- 
 Office Order to any amount, given to a Begging- 
 Letter Writer for the quieting of an uneasy 
 breast, would be presentable on the Last Great 
 Day as anything towards it. 
 
 The poor never write these letters. Nothing 
 could be more unlike their habits.- The writers 
 are public robbers ; and we who support them 
 are parties to their depredations. They trade 
 upon every circumstance within their knowledge 
 that affects us, public or private, joyful or sor- 
 rowful ; they pervert the lessons of our lives ; 
 they change what ought to be our strength and 
 virtue into weakness, and encouragement of 
 vice. There is a plain remedy, and it is in our 
 own hands. We must resolve, at any sacrifice 
 of feeling, to be deaf to such appeals, and crush 
 the trade. 
 
 There are degrees in murder. Life must be 
 held sacred among us in more ways than one — 
 sacred, not merely from the murderous weapon, 
 or the subtle poison, or the cruel blow, but 
 sacred from preventible diseases, distortions, 
 and pains. That is the first great end we have 
 to set against this miserable imposition. Phy- 
 sical life respected, moral life comes next. 
 What will not content a Begging-Letter Writer 
 for a week would educate a score of children 
 for a year. Let us give all we can ; let us give 
 more than ever. Let us do all we can ; let us 
 do more than ever. But let us give, and do, with 
 a high purpose ; not to endow the scum of the 
 earth, to its own greater corruption, with the 
 ofifals of our duty. 
 
 A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR. 
 
 HERE was once a child, and he 
 strolled about a good deal, and 
 thought of a number of things. He 
 had a sister, who was a child too, 
 and his constant companion. These 
 two used to wonder all day long. They 
 wondered at the beauty of the flowers ; 
 they wondered at the height and blueness 
 of the sky ; they wondered at the depth of the 
 bright water ; they wondered at the goodness 
 and the power of God who made the lovely 
 world. 
 
 They used to say to one another, sometimes, 
 Supposing all the children upon earth were to 
 die, would the flowers, and the water, and the 
 sky, be sorry ? They believed they would be 
 sorry. For, said they, the buds are the children 
 of the flowers, and the litUe playful streams 
 that gambol down the hill-sides are the children 
 of the water ; and the smallest bright specks 
 playing at hide-and-seek in the sky all night 
 must surely be the chfldren of the stars ; and 
 they would all be grieved to see their playmates, 
 the children of men, no more. 
 
 There was one clear shining star that used to 
 come out in the sky before the rest, near the 
 church spire, above the graves. It was larger 
 and more beautiful, they thought, than all the 
 others, and every night they watched for it, 
 standing hand in hand at a window. Whoever 
 saw it first, cried out, " I see the star ! '"' And 
 often they cried out both together, knowing so 
 well when it would rise, and where. So they 
 grew to be such friends with it, that, before 
 lying down in their beds, they always looked 
 out once again, to bid it good night ; and when 
 they were turning round to sleep, they used to 
 say, " God bless the star ! " 
 
 But while she was still very young — oh, very 
 very young ! — the sister drooped, and came to be 
 so weak that she could no longer stand in the 
 window at night ; and then the child looked 
 sadly out by himself, and when he saw the star, 
 turned round and said to the patient pale face 
 on the bed, " I see the star ! '' and then a smile 
 would come upon the face, and a little weak 
 voice used to say, " God bless my brother and 
 the star ! " 
 
 And so the time came all too bOon ! when 
 the child looked out alone, and wl.en there was 
 no face on the bed, and when there was a little 
 grave among the graves, not there before ; and 
 when the star made long rays down towards 
 him, as he saw it through his tears. 
 
u^ 
 
 OUR ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE. 
 
 Now, these rays were so bright, and they 
 seemed to make such a shining way from earth 
 to Heaven, that when the child went to his 
 soHtary bed, he dreamed about the star ; and 
 dreamed that, lying where he was, he saw a 
 train of people taken up that sparkling road by 
 angels. And the star, opening, showed him a 
 great world of light, where many more such 
 angels waited to receive them. 
 
 All these angels, who were waiting, turned 
 their beaming eyes upon the people who were 
 carried up into the star ; and some came out 
 from the long rows in which they stood, and 
 fell upon the people's necks, and kissed them 
 tenderly, and went away with them down 
 avenues of light, and were so happy in their 
 com pan}-, that lying in his bed he wept for 
 joy. 
 
 But, there were many angels who did not go 
 with them, and among them one he knew. The 
 patient face that once had lain upon the bed 
 was glorified and radiant, but his heart found 
 out his sister among all the host. 
 
 His sister's angel lingered near the entrance 
 of the star, and said to the leader among those 
 who had brought the people thither : 
 
 " Is my brother come ? " 
 
 And he said " No." 
 
 She was turning hopefully away, when the 
 child stretched out his arms and cried, " Oh, 
 sister, I am here ! Take me ! " and then she 
 turned her beaming eyes upon him, and it was 
 night ; and the star was shining into the room, 
 making long rays down towards him as he saw 
 It through his tears. 
 
 From that hour forth, the child looked out 
 upon the star as on the home he was to go to, 
 when his time should come ; and he thought 
 that he did not belong to the earth alone, but to 
 the star too, because of his sister's angel gone 
 before. 
 
 There was a baby born to be a brother to the 
 child : and while he was so little that he never 
 yet had spoken word, he stretched his tiny form 
 out on his bed, and died. 
 
 Again the child dreamed of the opened star, 
 and of the company of angels, and the train of 
 people, and the rows of angels with their beam- 
 ing eyes all turned upon those people's faces. 
 
 Said his sister's angel to the leader : 
 
 " Is my brother come ? " 
 
 And he said, " Not that one, but another." 
 
 As the child beheld his brother's angel in her 
 arms, he cried, " Oh, sister, I am here ! Take 
 me ! " And she turned and smiled upon him, 
 and the star was shining. 
 
 He grew to be a young man, and was busy at 
 
 his books when an old servant came to him 
 and said : 
 
 " Thy mother is no more. I bring her bless- 
 ing on her darling son ! " 
 
 Again at night he saw the star, and all that 
 former company. Said his sister's angel to tlie 
 leader : 
 
 " Is my brother come ? " 
 
 And he said, " Thy mother ! " 
 
 A mighty cryof joy went forth through all the 
 star, because the mother was reunited to her 
 two children. And he stretched out his arms 
 and cried, " Oh, mother, sister, and brother, I 
 am here ! Take me ! " And they answered 
 him, " Not yet," and the star was shining. 
 
 He grew to be a man, whose hair was turning 
 grey, and he was sitting in his chair by the fire- 
 side, heavy with grief, and with his face bedewed 
 with tears, when the star opened once again. 
 
 Said his sister's angel to the leader, "Is my 
 brother come ? "' 
 
 And he said, " Nay, but his maiden daughter." 
 
 And the man who had been the child saw his 
 daughter, newly lost to him, a celestial creature 
 among those three, and he said, '' My daughter's 
 head is on my sister's bosom, and her arm is 
 round my mother's neck, and at her feet there is 
 the baby of old time, and I can bear the parting 
 from her, God be praised ! " 
 
 And the star was shining. 
 
 Thus the child came to be an old man, and 
 his once smooth face was wrinkled, and his steps 
 were slow and feeble, and his back was bent. 
 And one night as he lay upon his bed, his 
 children standing round, he cried, as he had 
 cried so long ago : 
 
 '* I see the star ! " 
 
 They whispered one another, " He is dying." 
 
 And he said, " 1 am. My age is falling from 
 me like a garment, and I move towards the star 
 as a child. And oh, my Father, now I thank 
 thee that it has so often opened to receive those 
 dear ones who await me ! " 
 
 And the star was shining ; and it shines upon 
 his grave. 
 
 OUR ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE. 
 
 IN the Autumn-time of the year, when the great 
 metropolis is so much hotter, so much noisier, 
 so much more dusty or so much more water- 
 carted, so much more crowded, so much more 
 disturbing and distracting in all respects, than it 
 usually is, a quiet sea-beach becomes indeed a 
 blessed spot. Half awake and half asleep, this 
 
ITS ASSEMBLY ROOMS. 
 
 ^i^ 
 
 idle morniny in our sunny window on the edge 
 of a chalk, chtt in the old-fashioned watering- 
 place to which we are a faithful resorter, we 
 feel a lazy inclination to sketch its picture. 
 
 The place seems to respond. Sky, sea, 
 beach, and village lie as still before us as if 
 they were sitting for the picture. It is dead low 
 water. A ripple plays among the ripening 
 corn upon the cliff, as if it were faintly trying 
 from recollection to imitate the sea ; and the 
 world of butterflies hovering over the crop of 
 radish seed are as restless in their littlevway as 
 the gulls are in their larger manner when the 
 wind blows. But the ocean lies winking in the 
 sun-light like a drowsy lion — its glassy waters 
 scarcely curve upon the shore — the fishing-boats 
 in the tiny harbour are all stranded in the mud — 
 our two colliers (our watering-place has a mari- 
 time trade employing that amount of shipping) 
 have not an inch of water wi-thin a quarter of a 
 mile of them, and turn, exhausted, on their sides, 
 like faint fish of an antediluvian species. Rusty 
 cables and chains, ropes and rings, undermost 
 parts of posts and piles, and confused timber 
 defences against the waves, lie strewn about in a 
 brown litter of tangled seaweed and fallen clift", 
 which looks as if a family of giants had been 
 making tea here for ages, and had observed an 
 untidy custom of throwing their tea-leaves on 
 the shore. 
 
 In trutli, our watering-place itself has been 
 left somewhat high and dry by the tide of years. 
 Concerned as we are for its honour, we must 
 reluctantly admit that the time when this pretty 
 little semicircular sweep of houses, tapering off 
 at the end of the wooden pier into a point in the 
 sea, was a gay place, and when the lighthouse 
 overlooking it shone at daybreak on company 
 dispersing from public balls, is but dimly tra- 
 ditional now. There is a bleak chamber in our 
 ivatering-place which is yet called the Assembly 
 " Rooms," and understood to be available on 
 hire for balls or concerts ; and, some itw seasons 
 since, an ancient little gentleman came down 
 and stayed at the hotel, who said he had danced 
 there, in bygone ages, with the Honourable Miss 
 Peepy, well known to have been the Beauty of 
 her day and the cruel occasion of innumerable 
 duels. But he was so old and shrivelled, and so 
 very rheumatic in the legs, that it demanded 
 more imagination than our watering-place can 
 usually muster to believe him ; therefore, except 
 the jNlaster of the " Rooms" (who to this hour 
 wears knee breeches, and who confirmed the 
 statement with tears in his eyes), nobody did 
 believe in the little lame old gentleman, or even 
 in the Honourable jNIiss Peepy, long deceased. 
 
 As to subscription balls in the Assembly 
 Rooms of our watering-place now, red-hot can- 
 non balls are less improbable. Sometimes, a 
 misguided wanderer of a Ventriloquist, or an 
 Infant Phenomenon, or a Juggler, or somebody 
 with an Orrery that is several stars behind the 
 time, takes the ])lace for a night, and issues bills 
 with the name of his last town lined out, and the 
 name of ours ignominiously written in, but you 
 may be sure this never happens twice to the 
 same unfortunate person. On such occasions 
 the discoloured old Billiard Table that is seldom 
 played at (unless the ghost of the Honourable 
 Miss Peepy plays at pool with other ghosts) is 
 pushed into a corner, and benches are solemnly 
 constituted into front seats, back seats, and re- 
 served seats — which are much the same after 
 you have paid — and a few dull candles are 
 lighted — wind permitting — and the performer 
 and the scanty audience play out a short match 
 which shall make the other most lovv--spirited — 
 which is usually a drawn game. After that, the 
 performer instantly departs with male'Uctory 
 expressions, and is never heard of more. 
 
 But the most wonderful feature of our As- 
 sembly Rooms is, that an annual sale of " Fancy 
 and other China " is announced here with mys- 
 terious constancy and perseverance. Where the 
 china comes from, where it goes to, why it is 
 annually put up to auction when nobody ever 
 thinks of bidding for it, how it comes to pass 
 that it is always the same china, whether it 
 would not have been cheaper, with the sea at 
 hand, to have thrown it away, say in eighteen 
 hundred and thirty, are standing enigmas. 
 Every year the bills come out, every year the 
 Master of the Rooms gets into a little pulpit on 
 a table, and offers it for sale, every year nobody 
 buys it, every year it is put away somewhere 
 until next year, when it appears again as if the 
 whole thing were a new idea. We have a faint 
 remembrance of an unearthly collection of 
 clocks, purporting to be the work of Parisian 
 and Genevese artists — chiefly bilious-faced 
 clocks, supported on sickly white crutches, with 
 their pendulums dangling like lame legs — to 
 which a similar course of events occurred for 
 several years, until they seemed to lapse away 
 of mere imbecilit)'. 
 
 Attached to our Assembly Rooms is a library. 
 There is a wheel of fortune in it, but it is rusty 
 and dusty, and never turns. A large doll, with 
 movable eyes, was put up to be raffled for, by 
 five-and-twenty members at two shiUings, seven 
 years ago this autumn, and the list is not full 
 yet. We are rather sanguine, now, that the 
 raffle will come off next year. We think so. 
 
134 
 
 OUR ENGLISH WATERING-PLACE. 
 
 because we only want nine members, and should 
 only want eight, but for number two having 
 grown up since her name was entered, and with- 
 drawn it when she was married. Down the 
 street there is a toy-ship of considerable burden, 
 in the same condition. Two of the boys who 
 were entered for that raffle have gone to India 
 in real ships since ; and one was shot, and died 
 in the arms of his sister's lover, by whom he 
 sent his last words home. 
 
 This is the library for the Minerva Press. If 
 you want that kind of reading, come to our 
 watering-place. The leaves of the romances, 
 reduced to a condition very like curl-paper, are 
 thickly studded with notes in pencil : sometimes 
 complimentary, sometimes jocose. Some of 
 these commentators, like commentators in a 
 more extensive way, quarrel with one another. 
 One young gentleman who sarcastically writes 
 " Oh ! ! ! " atter every sentimental passage, is 
 pursued through his literary career by another, 
 who writes " Insulting Beast ! " j>.Iiss Juha 
 MiMs has read the whole collection of these 
 books. She has left marginal notes on the 
 pages, as, " Is not this truly touching ? J. M." 
 " How thrilling ! J. M." " Entranced here by 
 the Magician's potent spell. J.M." She has also 
 italicised her favourite traits in the description 
 of the hero, as, " His hair, which was dark and 
 wavy, clustered in rich profusion around a marble 
 broiu, whose lofty paleness bespoke the intellect 
 within." It reminds her of another hero. She 
 adds, " How like B. L. ! Can this be mere 
 coincidence? J. M." 
 
 You would hardly guess w^iich is the main 
 street of our watering-place, but you may know 
 it by its being always stopped up with donkey- 
 chaises. Whenever you come here, and see 
 harnessed donkeys eating clover out of barrows 
 drawn completely across a narrow thoroughfare, 
 you may be quite sure you are in our High 
 Street. Our Police you may know by his uniform, 
 likewise by his never on any account interfering 
 with anybody — especially the tramps and vaga- 
 bonds. In our fancy shops we have a capital 
 collection of damaged goods, among which the 
 flies of countless summers " have been roaming." 
 We are great in obsolete seals, and in faded pin- 
 cushions, and in rickety camp-stools, and in 
 exploded cutler}% and in miniature vessels, and 
 in stunted little telescopes, and in objects made 
 of shells that pretend not to be shells. Diminu- 
 tive spades, barrows, and baskets are our prin- 
 cipal articles of commerce ; but even they don't 
 look quite new somehow. They always seem 
 to have been offered and refused somewhere else, 
 before they came down to our watering-place. 
 
 Yet, it must not be supposed that our watering- 
 place is an empty place, deserted by all visitors 
 except a few staunch persons of approved fidelity. 
 On the contrary, the chances are that if you came 
 down here in August or September, you wouldn't 
 find a house to lay your head in. As to finding 
 either house or lodging of which you could reduce 
 the terms, you could scarcely engage in a more 
 hopeless pursuit. For all this, you are to observe 
 that every season is the worst season ever known, 
 and that the householding population of our 
 \vatering-place are ruined regularly every autumn. 
 They are like the farmers, in regard that it is 
 surprising how much ruin they will bear. We 
 have an excellent hotel — capital baths, warm, 
 cold, and shower — first-rate bathing machines 
 — and as good butchers, bakers, and grocers as 
 heart could desire. They all do business, it is to 
 be presumed, from motives of philanthropy — but 
 it is quite certain that they are all being ruined. 
 Their interest in strangers, and their politeness 
 under ruin, bespeak their amiable nature. You 
 would say so, if you only saw the baker helping 
 a new-comer to find suitable apartments. 
 
 So far from being at a discount as to com- 
 pany, we are, in fact, what would be popularly 
 called rather a nobby place. Some tiptop 
 " Nobs " come doAvn occasionally — even Dukes 
 and Duchesses. We have known such car- 
 riages to blaze among the donkey-chaises as 
 made beholders wink. Attendant on these 
 equipages come resplendent creatures in plush 
 and powder, who are sure to be stricken dis- 
 gusted with the indifterent accommodation of 
 our watering-place, and who, of an evening 
 (particularly when it rains), may be seen very 
 much out of drawing, in rooms far too small for 
 their fine figures, looking discontentedly out of 
 little back-windows into by-streets. The lords 
 and ladies get on well enough and quite good- 
 humouredly : but if you want to see the gorgeous 
 phenomena who wait upon them at a perfect 
 nonplus, you should come and look at the 
 resplendent creatures with little back-parlours 
 for servants' halls, and turn-up bedsteads to 
 sleep in, at our watering-place. You have no 
 idea how they take it to heart. 
 
 We have a pier — a queer old wooden pier, 
 fortunately Avithout the slightest pretensions to 
 architecture, and very picturesque in conse- 
 quence. Boats are hauled up upon it, ropes 
 are coiled all over it ; lobster-pots, nets, masts, 
 oars, spars, sails, ballast, and rickety capstans 
 make a perfect lal^yrinth of it. For ever hover- 
 ing about this pier, with their hands in their 
 pockets, or leaning over the rough bulwark it 
 opposes to the sea, gazing through telescopes 
 
ITS BOATMEN. 
 
 135 
 
 which they carry about in tlie same profound 
 receptacles, are the Boatmen of our watering- 
 place. Looking at them, you would say that 
 surely these must be the laziest boatmen in the 
 world. They lounge about, in obstinate and 
 inflexible pantaloons that are apparently made 
 of wood, the whole season through. Whether 
 talking together about the shipping in the Chan- 
 nel, or gruffly unbending over mugs of beer at 
 the public-house, you would consider them the 
 slowest of men. The chances are a thousand to 
 one that you might stay here for ten seasons, 
 and never see a boatman in a hurry. A certain 
 expression about his loose hands, when they are 
 not in his pockets, as if he were carrying a con- 
 siderable lump of iron in each, without any in- 
 convenience, suggests strength, but he never 
 seems to use it. He has the appearance of 
 perpetually strolling — running is too inappro- 
 priate a word to be thought of — to seed. The 
 only subject on which he seems to feel any 
 approach to enthusiasm is pitch. He pitches 
 everything he can lay hold of, — the pier, the 
 palings, his boat, his house, — when there is 
 nothing else left he turns to, and even pitches 
 his hat, or his rough-weather clothing. Do not 
 judge him by deceitful appearances. These are 
 among the bravest and most skilful mariners 
 that exist. Let a gale arise and swell into a 
 storm, let a sea run that might appal the stoutest 
 heart that ever beat, let the Light-boat on these 
 dangerous sands throw up a rocket in the night, 
 or let them hear through the angry roar the 
 signal-guns of a ship in distress, and these men 
 spring up into activity so dauntless, so valiant, 
 and heroic, that the world cannot surpass it. 
 Cavillers may object that they chiefly live upon 
 the salvage of valuable cargoes. So they do, 
 and God knows it is no great living that they 
 get out of the deadly risks they run. But put 
 that hope of gain aside. Let these rough fellows 
 be asked, in any storm, who volunteers for the 
 life-boat to save some perishing souls, as poor 
 and empty-handed as themselves, whose lives 
 the perfection of human reason does not rate at 
 the value of a farthing each ; and that boat will 
 be manned, as surely and as cheerfully as if a 
 thousand pounds were told down on the weather- 
 beaten pier. For this, and for the recollection 
 of their comrades whom we have known, whom 
 the raging sea has engulfed before their children's 
 eyes in such brave efforts, whom the secret sand 
 has buried, we hold the boatmen of our watering- 
 place in our love and honour, and are tender of 
 the fame they well deserve. 
 
 So many children are brought down to our 
 watering-place that, when they are not out of 
 
 doors, as they usually are in fine weather, it is 
 wonderful where they are put : the whole village 
 seeming much too small to hold them under 
 cover. In the afternoons, you see no end of 
 salt and sandy little boots drying on upper 
 window-sills. At bathing-time in the morning, 
 the little bay re-echoes with every shrill variety 
 of shriek and sj^lash — after which, if the weather 
 be at all fresh, the sands teem with small blue 
 mottled legs. The sands are the children's 
 great resort. They cluster there like ants : so 
 busy burying their particular friends, and making 
 castles with infinite labour which the next tide 
 overthrows, that it is curious to consider how 
 their play, to the music of the sea, foreshadows 
 the realities of their after lives. 
 
 It is curious, too, to observe a natural ease of 
 approach that there seems to be between the 
 childnen and the boatmen. They mutually make 
 acquaintance, and take individual likings, with- 
 out any help. You will come upon one of those 
 slow heavy fellows sitting down patiently mend- 
 ing a little ship for a mite of a boy, whom he 
 could crush to death by throwing his lightest 
 pair of trousers on him. You will be sensible of 
 the oddest contrast between the smooth little 
 creature, and the rough man who seems to be 
 carved out of hard-grained wood — between the 
 delicate hand expectantly held out, and the 
 immense thumb and finger that can hardly feel 
 the rigging of thread they mend — between the 
 small voice and the gruff growl — and yet there 
 is a natural propriety in the companionship : 
 always to be noted in confidence between a 
 child and a person who has any merit of reality 
 and genuineness : which is admirably pleasant. 
 
 We have a preventive station at our watering- 
 place, and much the same thing may be observed 
 — in a lesser degree, because of their official 
 character — of the coast blockade; a steady, 
 trusty, well-conditioned, well-conducted set of 
 men, with no misgiving about looking you full 
 in the face, and with a quiet, thorough-going 
 way of passing along to their duty at night, 
 c::irrying huge sou-wester clothing in reserve, 
 that is fraught with all good prepossession. 
 They are handy fellows — neat about their houses 
 — industrious at gardening — would get on with 
 their wives, one thinks, in a desert island — and 
 people it, too, soon. 
 
 As to the naval officer of the station, with his 
 hearty fresh face, and his blue eye that has 
 pierced all kinds of weather, it warms our hearts 
 when he comes into church on a Sunday, with 
 that bright mixture of blue coat, buff waistcoat, 
 black neckerchief, and gold epaulette, that is 
 associated in the minds of all Englishmen with 
 
136 
 
 OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 
 
 brave, unpretending, cordial national service. 
 We like to look at him in his Sunday state ; and 
 if we were First Lord (really possessing the in- 
 dispensable qualification for the office of know- 
 ing nothing whatever about the sea), we would 
 give him a ship to-morrow. 
 
 We have a church, by-the-b}'e, of course — a 
 hideous temple of Hint, like a great petrified 
 haystack. Our chief clerical dignitary, who, to 
 his honour, has done much for education both 
 in time and money, and has established excel- 
 lent schools, is a sound, shrewd, healthy gentle- 
 man, who has got into little occasional difficulties 
 with the neighbouring farmers, but has had a 
 pestilent trick of being right. Under a new 
 regulation, he has yielded the church of our 
 watering-place to another clergyman. Upon 
 the 'whole, we get on in church well. We are 
 a little bilious sometimes about these days of 
 fraternisation, and about nations arriving at a new 
 and more unprejudiced knowledge of each other 
 (which our Christianity don't quite approve), but 
 it soon goes off, and then we get on very well. 
 
 There are two Dissenting chapels, besides, in 
 our small watering-place ; being in about the pro- 
 portion of a hundred and twenty guns to a yacht. 
 But the dissension that has torn us lately has not 
 been a religious one. It has arisen on the novel 
 question of Gas. Our watering-place has been 
 convulsed by the agitation. Gas or No Gas. It 
 was ncA'er reasoned why No Gas, but there 
 •was a great No Gas party. Broadsides were 
 printed and stuck about — a startling circum- 
 stance in our watering-place. The No Gas 
 party rested content with chalking " No Gas !" 
 and "Down with Gas!" and other such angry 
 war-whoops, on the few back-gates and scraps 
 of wall which the limits of our watering-place 
 afford; but the Gas party printed and posted 
 .bills, wherein they took the high ground of pro- 
 claiming against the No Gas party, that it was 
 said. Let there be light, and there was light ; 
 -and that not to have light (that is, gas-light) in 
 our watering-place, was to contravene the great 
 decree. Whether by these thunderbolts or not, 
 the No Gas party were defeated ; and in this 
 present season we have had our handful of shops 
 illuminated for the first time. Such of the No 
 Gas party, however, as have got shops, remain 
 in opposition and burn tallow — exhibiting in 
 their windows the very picture of the sulkiness 
 that punishes itself, and a new illustration of the 
 old adage about cutting off your nose to be 
 revenged on your face, in cutting off their gas to 
 be revenged on their business. 
 
 Other population than we have indicated our 
 watering-place has none. There are a few old 
 
 used-up boatmen who creep about the sun-light 
 with the help of sticks, and there is a pooi 
 imbecile shoemaker who wanders his lonely life 
 away among the rocks, as if he were looking for 
 his reason — which he will never find. Sojourners 
 in neighbouring watering-places come occa- 
 sionally in flies to stare at us, and drive away 
 again as if they thought us very dull; Italian 
 boys come. Punch comes, the Fantoccini come, 
 the Tumblers come, the Ethiopians come ; Glee- 
 singers come at night, and hum and vibrate (not 
 always melodiously) under our windows. But 
 they all go soon, and leave us to ourselves again. 
 We once had a travelling Circus and Womb- 
 well's Menagerie at the same time. They both 
 know better than ever to try it again ; and the 
 Menagerie had nearly razed us from the face of 
 the earth in getting the elephant away — his 
 caravan was so large, and the watering-place so 
 small. We have a fine sea, wholesome for all 
 people ; profitable for the body, profitable for 
 the mind. The poet's words are sometimes on 
 its awful lips : 
 
 And the stately ships go on 
 
 To their haven under the hill ; 
 But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand. 
 
 And the sound of a voice that is still ! 
 
 Break, break, break, 
 
 At the foot of thy crags, O sea ! 
 But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
 
 Will never come back to me. 
 
 Yet it is not always so, for the speech of the 
 sea is various, and wants not abundant resource 
 of cheerfulness, hope, and lusty encouragement. 
 And since I have been idling at the window 
 here, the tide has risen. The boats are dancing 
 on the l)ubbling water ; the colliers are afloat 
 again ; the white-bordered waves rush in ; the 
 children 
 
 Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
 Wher he comes back ; 
 
 the radiant sails are gliding past the shore, and 
 shining on the far horizon ; all the sea is spark- 
 ling, heaving, swelling \\\^ with life and beauty, 
 this bright morning. 
 
 OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 
 
 HAVING earned, by many years of fidelity, 
 the right to be sometimes inconstant to 
 our English watering-place, we have dallied for 
 two or three seasons with a French watering- 
 place : once solely known to us as a town with 
 a very long street, beginning with an abattoir 
 
CROSSING THE CHANNEL. 
 
 137 
 
 and ending with a steamboat, which it seemed 
 our fate to behold only at daybreak on win- 
 ter mornings, when' (in the days before conti- 
 nental railroads), just sufficiently awake to 
 know that we were most uncomfortably asleep, 
 it was our destiny always to clatter through 
 it, in the coupe of the diligence from Paris, 
 with a sea of mud behind us, and a sea of 
 tumbling waves before. In relation to which 
 latter monster, our mind's eye now recalls a 
 worthy Frenchman in a seal-skin cap with 
 a braided hood over it, once our travelling 
 companion in the coupe aforesaid, who, waking 
 up with a pale and crumpled visage, and looking 
 ruefully out at the grim row of breakers enjoying 
 themselves fanatically on an instrument of tor- 
 ture called *• the Ear," inquired of us whether we 
 were ever sick at sea? Both to prepare his 
 mind for the abject creature we were presently 
 to become, and also to afford him consolation, 
 we replied, " Sir, your servant is always sick 
 when it is possible to be so." He returned, 
 altogether uncheered by the bright example, 
 " Ah, Heaven, but I am always sick, even when 
 it is ////possible to be so." 
 
 The means of communication between the 
 French capital and our French watering-place 
 are wholly changed since those days ; but the 
 Channel remains unbridged as yet, and the old 
 floundering and knocking about go on there. It 
 must be confessed that saving in reasonable (and 
 therefore rare) sea-weather, the act of arrival at 
 our French watering-place from England is diffi- 
 cult to be achieved with dignity. Several little 
 circumstances combine to render the visitor an 
 object of humiliation. In the first place, the 
 steamer no sooner touches the port than all the 
 passengers fall into captivity : being boarded by 
 an overpowering force of Custom-house officers, 
 and marched into a gloomy dungeon. In the 
 second place, the road to this dungeon is fenced 
 oft" with ropes breast-high, and outside those 
 ropss all the English in the place who have 
 lately been sea-sick, and are now well, assemble 
 in their best clothes to enjoy the degradation of 
 their dilapidated fellow- creatures. "Oh, my 
 gracious ! how ill this one has been ! " " Here's 
 a damp one coming next ! " " Her^s a pale 
 one !" " Oh ! Ain't he green in the face, this 
 next one ! " Even we ourself (not deficient in 
 natural dignity) have a lively remembrance of 
 staggering up this detested lane one September 
 day m a gale of wind, when we were received like 
 an irresistible comic actor, with a burst of laugh- 
 ter and applause, occasioned by the extreme 
 imbecility of our legs. 
 
 We were coming to the third place. In the 
 
 third place, the captives, being shut up in the 
 gloomy dungeon, are strained, two or three at a 
 time, into an inner cell, to be examined as to 
 passports ; and across the doorway of communi- 
 cation stands a military creature making a bar 
 of his arm. Two ideas are generally present to 
 the British mind during these ceremonies ; first, 
 that it is necessary to make for the cell with 
 violent struggles, as if it were a life-boat, and 
 the dungeon a ship going down ; secondly, that 
 the military creature's arm is a national aftront, 
 which the government at home ought mstantly 
 to " take up." The British mind and body 
 becoming heated by these fantasies, delirious 
 answers are made to inquiries, and extravagant 
 actions performed. Thus, Johnson persists in 
 giving Johnson as his baptismal name, and sub- 
 stituting for his ancestral designation the national 
 " Dam ! " Neither can he by any means be 
 brought to recognise the distinction between a 
 portmanteau-key and a passport, but will obsti- 
 nately persevere in tendering the one when asked 
 for the other. This brings him to the fourth 
 place, in a state of mere idiotcy ; and when he 
 is, in the fourth place, cast out at a little door 
 into a howling wilderness of touters, he becomes 
 a lunatic with wild eyes and floating hair until 
 rescued and soothed. If friendless and unres- 
 cued, he is generally put into a railway omnibus 
 and taken to Paris. 
 
 But, our French watermg-place, when it is 
 once got into, is a very enjoyable place. It has 
 a varied and beautiful country around it, and 
 many characteristic and agreeable things within 
 it. To be sure, it might have fewer bad smells 
 and less decaying refuse, and it might be better 
 drained, and much cleaner in many parts, and 
 therefore infinitely more healthy. Still, it is a 
 bright, airy, pleasant, cheerful town ; and if you 
 were to walk down either of its three well-paved 
 main streets, towards five o'clock in the afternoon, 
 when delicate odours of cookery fill the air, and 
 its hotel windows (it is full of hotels) give 
 glimpses of long tables set out for dinner, and 
 made to look sumptuous by the aid of napkins 
 folded fan-wise, you would rightly judge it to be 
 an uncommonly good town to eat and drink in. 
 
 We have an old walled town, rich in cool 
 public wells of water, on the top of a hill within 
 and above the present business town ; and if it 
 were some hundreds of miles further from Eng- 
 land, instead of being, on a clear day, within 
 sight of the grass growing in the crevices of the 
 chalk clifts of Dover, you would long ago have 
 been bored to death about that town. It is more 
 picturesque and quaint than half the innocent 
 places which tourists, following their leader like 
 
138 
 
 OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 
 
 sheep, have made impostors of. To say nothing 
 of its houses with grave courtyards, its queer by- 
 corners, and its many-windowed streets white 
 and quiet in the sun-Hglit, there is an ancient 
 belfry in it that would have been in all the 
 Annuals and Albums, going and gone, these 
 hundred years, if it had but been more expen- 
 sive to get at. Happily it has escaped so well, 
 being only in our French watering-place, that 
 you may like it of your own accord in a natural 
 manner, without being required to go into con- 
 vulsions about it. We regard it as one of the 
 later blessings of our life, that Bilkins, the only 
 authority on Taste, never took any notice, that 
 we can find out, of our French watering-place. 
 Ijilkins never wrote about it, never pointed out 
 anything to be seen in it, never measured any- 
 thing in it, always left it alone. For which re- 
 lief, Heaven bless the town, and the memory of 
 the immortal Bilkins likewise ! 
 
 There is a charming walk, arched and shaded 
 by trees, on the old walls that form the four 
 sides of this High Town, whence you get 
 glimpses of the streets below, and changing 
 views of the other town and of the river, and of 
 the hills and of the sea. It is made more agree- 
 able and peculiar by some of the solemn houses 
 that are rooted in the deep streets below, burst- 
 ing into a fresher existence atop, and having 
 doors and windows, and even gardens, on these 
 ramparts. A child going in at the courtyard 
 gate of one of these houses, climbing up the 
 many stairs, and coming out at the fourth-floor 
 window, might conceive himself another Jack, 
 alighting on enchanted ground from another 
 bean-stalk. It is a place wonderfully populous 
 in children ; English children, with governesses 
 reading novels as they walk down the shady 
 lanes of trees, or nursemaids interchanging 
 gossip on the seats ; French children, with their 
 smiling bonnes in snow-white caps, and them- 
 selves — if little boys — in straw head-gear like 
 bee-hives, work-baskets, and church hassocks. 
 Three years ago, there were three weazen old men, 
 one bearing a frayed red ribbon in his thread- 
 bare button-hole, always to be found walking 
 together among these children, before dinner- 
 time. If they walked for an appetite, they 
 doubtless lived en pension — were contracted 
 fo! — otherwise their poverty would have made 
 it a rash action. They were stooping, blear- 
 eyed, dull old men, slipshod and shabby, in 
 long- skirted short -waisted coats and meagre 
 trousers, and yet with a ghost of gentility hover- 
 ing in their company. They spoke little to 
 each other, and looked as if they might have 
 been politically discontented if they had had 
 
 vitality enough. Once, we overheard red-ribbon 
 feebly complain to the other two that somebody, 
 or something, was " a Robber ; " and then they 
 all three set their mouths so that they would 
 have ground their teeth if they had had any. 
 The ensuing winter gathered red-ribbon unto 
 the great company of faded ribbons, and next 
 year the remaining two were there — getting 
 themselves entangled with hoops and dolls — 
 familiar mysteries to the children — probably, in 
 the eyes of most of them, harmless creatures 
 who had never been like children, and whom 
 children could never be like. Another winter 
 came, and another old man went, and so, this 
 present year, the last of the triumvirate left off 
 walking — it was no good now — and sat by him- 
 self on a little solitary bench, with the hoops 
 and the dolls as lively as ever all about him. 
 
 In the Place d'Armes of this town a little 
 decayed market is held, which seems to slip 
 through the old gateway like water, and go 
 rippling down the hill, to mingle with the mur- 
 muring market in the lower town, and get lost 
 in its movement and bustle. It is very agree- 
 able, on an idle summer morning, to pursue this 
 market -stream from the hill-top. It begins 
 dozingly and dully, with a few sacks of corn ; 
 starts into a surprising collection of boots and 
 shoes ; goes brawling down the hill in a diver- 
 sified channel of old cordage, old iron, old 
 crockery, old clothes civil and military, old rags, 
 new cotton goods, flaming prints of saints, little 
 looking-glasses, and incalculable lengths of tape ; 
 dives into a backway, keeping out of sight for a 
 little while, as streams will, or only sparkling 
 for a moment in the shape of a market drinking- 
 shop ; and suddenly reappears behind the great 
 church, shooting itself into a bright confusion 
 of white-capped women and blue-bloused men, 
 poultry, vegetables, fruits, flowers, pots, pans, 
 praying-chairs, soldiers, country butter, umbrellas 
 and other sun-shades, girl-porters waiting to be 
 hired with baskets at their backs, and one 
 weazen little old man in a cocked-hat, wearing 
 a cuirass of drinking-glasses, and carrying on his 
 shoulder a crimson temple fluttering with Hags, 
 like a glorified pavior's rammer without the 
 handle, who rings a little bell in all ixarts of the 
 scene, and cries his coohng drink, Hola, Hola, 
 Ho-o-o ! in a shrill cracked voice that somehow 
 makes itself heard above all the chaffering and 
 vending hum. Early in the afternoon, the whole 
 course of the stream is dry. The praying-chairs 
 are put back in the church, the umbrellas are 
 folded up, the unsold goods are carried away, 
 the stalls and stands disappear, the square is 
 swept, the hackney coaches lounge there to be 
 
JTS FISHING PEOPLE. 
 
 139 
 
 hired, and on all the country roads (if you walk 
 about as much as we do) you will see the peasant 
 women, always neatly and comfortably dressed, 
 riding home, witli the pleasantest saddle furni- 
 ture of clean milk-]\ails, bright butter kegs, and 
 the like, on the joUiest little donkeys in the 
 world. 
 
 We have another market in our French water- 
 ing-place — that is to say, a few wooden hutches 
 in the open street, down by the Port — devoted 
 to fish. Our fishing-boats are famous every- 
 where ; and our liihing people, though they love 
 lively colours and taste is neutral (see Bilkins), 
 are among the most picturesque people we ever 
 encountered. They have not only a Quarter of 
 their own in the town itself, but they occupy 
 whole villages of their own on the neighbouring 
 cliffs. Their churches and chapels are their 
 own ; they consort with one another, they inter- 
 marry among themselves, their customs are their 
 own, and their costume is their own, and never 
 changes. As soon as one of their boys can 
 walk, he is provided with a long bright red 
 nightcap; and one of their men would as soon 
 think of going afloat without his head, as without 
 that indispensable appendage to it. Then, they 
 wear the noblest boots, with the hugest tops — 
 ilapping and bulging over anyhow; above which, 
 they encase themselves in such wonderful over- 
 alls and petticoat trousers, made to all appear- 
 ance of tarry old sails, so additionally stiffened 
 with pitch and salt that the wearers have a walk 
 of their own, and go straddling and swinging 
 about among the boats and barrels and nets 
 and rigging, a sight to see. Then, their younger 
 women, by dint of going down to the sea bare- 
 foot, to fling their baskets into the boats as they 
 come in Avith the tide, an^.l bespeak the first- 
 fruits of the haul with propitiatory promises to 
 love and marry that dear fisherman who shall 
 fill that basket like an Angel, have the finest 
 legs ever carved by Nature in the brightest 
 mahogany, and they walk like Juno. Their eyes. 
 1 50, are so lustrous that their long gold ear-rings 
 turn dull beside those brilliant neighbours ; and 
 when they are dressed, what with these beauties, 
 and their fine fresh faces, and their many petti- 
 coats — striped petticoats, red petticoats, blue 
 petticoats, always clean and smart, and never 
 too long — and their home-made stockings, mul- 
 l^erry-coloured, blue, brown, purple, lilac — which 
 the older women, taking care of the Dutch- 
 looking children, sit in all sorts of places knitting, 
 knitting, knitting, from morning to night — and 
 what with their little saucy bright blue jackets, 
 knitted too, and fitting close to their handsome 
 figures; and what with the natural grace with 
 
 which they wear the commonest cap, or fold the 
 commonest handkerchief round their luxuriant 
 hair — we say, in a wonl and out of breath, that 
 taking all these premises into our consideration, 
 it has never been a matter of the least surprise 
 to us that we have never once met, in the corn- 
 fields, on the dusty roads, by the breezy Avind- 
 mills, on the plots of short sweet grass overhang- 
 ing the sea — anywhere — a young fisherman and 
 fisherwoman of our French watering-place to- 
 gether, but the arm of that fisherman has invari- 
 ably been, as a matter of course and without 
 any absurd attempt to disguise so plain a neces- 
 sity, round the neck or waist of that fisher- 
 woman. And we have had no doubt v/hatever, 
 standing looking at their uphill streets, house 
 rising above house, and terrace above terrace, 
 and bright garments here and there lying sun- 
 ning on rough stone parapets, that the pleasant 
 mist on all such objects, caused by their being 
 seen through the brown nets hung across on 
 poles to dr}'-, is, in the eyes of every true young 
 fisherman, a mist of love and beauty, setting off 
 the goddess of his heart. 
 
 ^Moreover, it is to be observed that these are 
 an industrious people, and a domestic people, 
 and an honest people. And though we are 
 aware that at the bidding of Bilkins it is our 
 duty to fall down and worship the Neapolitans, 
 we make bold very much to prefer the fishing 
 people of our French watering-place — especially 
 since our last visit to Naples within these twelve- 
 months, when we found only four conditions of 
 men remaining in the whole city : to wit, lazza- 
 roni, priests, spies, and soldiers, and all of 
 them beggars ; the paternal government having 
 banished all its subjects except the rascals. 
 
 But we can never henceforth separate our 
 French watering-place from our own landlord of 
 two summers, M. Loyal Devasseur, citizen and 
 town councillor. Permit us to have the pleasure 
 of presenting M. Loyal Devasseur. 
 
 P'is own family name is simply Loyal ; but, 
 as he is married, and as in that part of France 
 a husband ahvays adds to his own name the 
 family name of his v/ife, he writes himself Loyal 
 Devasseur. He owns a compact little estate of 
 some twenty or thirty acres on a lofty hill-side, 
 and on it he has built two country houses which 
 he lets furnished. They are by many degrees 
 the best houses that are so let near our PYench 
 watering-place ; we have had the honour of 
 living in both, and can testify. The entrance- 
 hall of the first we inhabited was ornamented 
 with a plan of the estate, representing it as 
 about twice the size of Ireland ; insomuch that 
 when we were yet new to the Property (M. 
 
140 
 
 OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 
 
 Loyal always speaks of it as "la propriety") 
 we went three miles straight on end, in search 
 of the bridge of Austerlitz — which we afterwards 
 found to be immediately outside the window. 
 The Chateau of the Old Guard, in another part 
 of the grounds, and, according to the plan, about 
 two leagues from the little dining-room, we souglit 
 in vain for a week, until, happening one evening 
 to sit upon a bench in the forest (forest in the 
 plan), a few yards from the house-door, we 
 observed at our feet, in the ignominious circum- 
 stances of being upside down and greenly rotten, 
 the Old Guard himself : that is to say, the painted 
 effigy of a member of that distinguished corps, 
 seven feet high, and in the act of carrying arms, 
 who had had the misfortune to be blown down 
 in the previous winter. It will be perceived that 
 M. Loyal is a staunch admirer of the great 
 Napoleon. He is an old soldier himself — cap- 
 tain of the National Guard, with a handsome 
 gold vase on his chimney-piece, presented to 
 him by his company — and his respect for the 
 memory of the illustrious general is enthusiastic. 
 Medallions orhini, portraits of him, busts of 
 him, pictures of him, are thickly sprinkled all 
 over the Property. During the first month of 
 our occupation, it was our affliction to be con- 
 stantly knocking down Napoleon : if we touched 
 a shelf in a dark corner, he toppled over with a 
 crash ; and every door we opened shook him to 
 the soul. Yet I\L Loyal is not a man of mere 
 castles in the air, or, as he would say, in Spain. 
 He has a specially practical, contriving, clever, 
 skilful eye and hand. His houses are delightful. 
 He unites French elegance and English comfort 
 in a happy manner quite his own. He has an 
 extraordinary genius for making tasteful little 
 bedrooms in angles of his roofs, which an Eng- 
 lishman would as soon think of turning to any 
 account as he would think of cultivating the 
 Desert. We have ourself reposed deliciously in 
 an elegant chamber of j\L Loyal's construction, 
 with our head as nearly in the kitchen cliimney- 
 pot as we can conceive it likely for the head of 
 any gentleman, not by profession a Sweep, to be. 
 And, into whatsoever strange nook M. Loyal's 
 genius penetrates, it, in that nook, infallibly 
 ■constructs a cupboard and a row of pegs. In 
 either of our houses we could have put away 
 the knapsacks and hung up the hats of the 
 whole regiment of Guides. 
 
 Aforetime, ]\L Loyal was a tradesman in the 
 town. You can transact business with no pre- 
 sent tradesman in the town, and give your card 
 ■" chez M. Loyal," but a brighter face shines 
 upon you directly. We doubt if there is, ever 
 Avas, or ever will be, a man so universally plea- 
 
 sant in the minds of people as M. Loyal is in 
 the minds of the citizens of our French watering- 
 place. They rub their hands and laugh when 
 they speak of him. Ah, but he is such a good 
 child, such a brave boy, such a generous spirit, 
 that Monsieur Loyal ! It is the honest truth. 
 M. Loyal's nature is the nature of a gentleman. 
 He cultivates his ground with his own hands 
 (assisted by one little labourer, who falls into a 
 fit now and then) ; and he digs and delves from 
 morn to eve in prodigious perspirations — "works 
 always," as he says— but, cover him with dust, 
 mud, weeds, water, any stains you will, you never 
 can cover the gentleman in ]\I. Loyal. A portly, 
 upright, broad-shouldered, brown-faced man, 
 whose soldierly bearing gives him the appear- 
 ance of being taller than he is, look into the 
 bright eye of M. Loyal, standing before you in 
 his working blouse and cap, not particularly well 
 shaved, and, it may be, very earthy, and you 
 shall discern in M. Loyal a gentleman whose 
 true politeness is in grain, and confirmation of 
 whose word by his bond you would blush to 
 think of. Not without reason is M. Loyal when 
 he tells that story, in his own vivacious way, of 
 his travelling to Fulham, near London, to buy all 
 these hundreds and hundreds of trees you now 
 see upon the Property, then a bare, bleak hill; and 
 of his sojourning in Fulham three months ; and 
 of his jovial evenings with the m.arket-gardeners ; 
 and of the crowning banquet before his depar- 
 ture, when the market-gardeners rose as one 
 man, clinked their glasses all together (as the 
 custom at Fulham is), and cried, " Vive Loyal ! " 
 j\I, Loyal has an agreeable wife, but no 
 family ; and he loves to drill the children of his 
 tenants, or run races with them, or do anything 
 with them, or for them, that is good-natured. 
 He is of a highly convivial temperament, and 
 his hospitality is unbounded. Billet a soldier 
 on him, and he is delighted. Five-and-thirty 
 soldiers had INI. Loyal billeted on him this pre- 
 sent summer, and they all got fat and red-faced 
 in two days. It became a legend among the 
 troops that whosoever got billeted on M. Loyal 
 rolled in clover ; and so it fell out that the for- 
 tunate man who drew the billet " M. Loyal 
 Devasseur " always leaped into the air, though 
 in heavy marching order. j\I. Loyal cannot 
 bear to admit anything that might seem by any 
 implication to disparage the military profession. 
 We hinted to him once, that we were conscious 
 of a remote doubt arising in our mind, whether 
 a sou a day for pocket-money, tobacco, stock- 
 ings, drink, washing, and social pleasures in 
 general, left a very large margin for a soldier's 
 enjoyment. Pardon ! said Monsieur Loyal, 
 
M. LOYAL DEVASSEUR. 
 
 141 
 
 rather wincing. It was not a fortune, but — \ 
 la bonne heure — it was better than it used to 
 be ! What, we asked him on another occasion, 
 were all those neighbouring peasants, each liv- 
 ing with his fxmily in one room, and each having 
 a soldier (perhaps two) billeted on him every 
 other night, required to provide for those 
 soldiers? "Faith!" said M. Loyal reluc- 
 tantly ; " a bed, monsieur, and fire to cook 
 with, and a candle. And ihey share their 
 supper with those soldiers. It is not possible 
 that they could eat alone." — "And what allow- 
 ance do they get for this? " said we. Monsieur 
 Loyal drew himself up taller, took a step back, 
 laid his hand upon his breast, and said, with 
 majesty, as speaking for himself and all France, 
 " Monsieur, it is a contribution to the State ! " 
 
 It is never going to rain, according to M. 
 Loyal. When it is impossible to deny that it is 
 now raining in torrents, he says it will be fine — 
 charming — magnificent — to-morrow. It is never 
 hot on the Property, he contends. Likewise it 
 is never cold. The flowers, he says, come out, 
 delighting to grow there ; it is like Paradise this 
 morning ; it is like the Garden of Eden. He is 
 a little fanciful in his language : smilingly ob- 
 serving of Madame Loyal, when she is absent 
 at vespers, that she is " gone to her salvation " 
 — allee a son salut. He has a great enjoyment 
 of tobacco, but nothing would induce him to 
 continue smoking face to face with a lady. His 
 short black pipe immediately goes into his 
 breast pocket, scorches his blouse, and nearly 
 sets him on fire. In the Town Council, and on 
 occasions of ceremony, he appears in a full suit 
 of black, with a waistcoat of magnificent breadth 
 across the chest, and a shirt collar of fabulous 
 proportions. Good M. Loyal ! Under blouse 
 or waistcoat, he carries one of the gentlest 
 hearts that beat in a nation teeming with gentle 
 people. He has had losses, and has been at 
 his best under them. Not only the loss of his 
 way by night in the Fulham times — when a bad 
 subject of an Englishman, under pretence cf 
 seeing him home, took him into all the night 
 public-houses, drank '"'arfanarf " in every one at 
 his expense, and finally fled, leaving him ship- 
 wrecked at Cleefeeway, which we apprehend to 
 be Ratcliff Highway — but heavier losses than 
 that. Long ago, a family of children and a 
 mother were left in one of his houses, without 
 money, a whole year. M. Loyal — anything but 
 as rich as we wish he had been — had not the 
 heart to say, " You must go ; " so they stayed 
 on and stayed on, and paying-tenants who 
 would have come in couldn't come in, and at 
 last they managed to get helped home across 
 
 the water, and M. Loyal kissed the whole 
 
 group, and said " Adieu, my poor infants ! " 
 and sat down in their deserted salon and 
 smoked his pipe of peace. — "The rent, M. 
 Loyal ? " " Eh ! well ! The rent ! " M. Loyal 
 shakes his head. " Le bon Dieu," says M. 
 Loyal presently, " will recompense me," and he 
 laughs and smokes his pipe of peace. May he 
 smoke it on the Property, and not be recom- 
 pensed, these fifty years ! 
 
 There are public amusements in our French 
 watering-place, or it would not be French. 
 They are very popular, and very cheap. The 
 sea-bathing — which may rank as the most 
 favoured daylight entertainment, inasmuch as 
 the French visitors bathe all day long, and 
 seldom appear to think of remaining less than 
 an hour at a time in the water — is astoundingly 
 cheap. Omnibuses convey you, if you please, 
 from a convenient part of the town to the beach 
 and back again ; you have a clean and com.fort- 
 able bathing machine, dress, linen, and all ap- 
 pliances ; and the charge for the whole is half-a- 
 franc, or fivepence. On the pier there is usually 
 a guitar, which seems presumptuously enough to 
 set its tinkling against the deep hoarseness of 
 the sea, and there is always some boy or woman 
 who sings, without any voice, little songs without 
 any tune : the strain we have most frequently 
 heard being an appeal to " the sportsman " not 
 to bag that choicest of game, the swallow. For 
 bathing purposes, we have also a subscription 
 establishment with an esplanade, where people 
 lounge about with telescopes, and seem to get 
 a good deal of weariness for their money ; and 
 we have also an association of individual ma- 
 chine proprietors combined against this for- 
 midable rival. M. Fcroce, our own particular 
 friend in the badiing line, is one of these. How 
 he ever came by his name, we cannot imagine. 
 He is as gentle and polite a man as M. Loyal 
 Devasseur himself; immensely stout withal, and 
 of a beaming aspect. M. Feroce has saved so 
 many people from drowning, and has been 
 decorated with so many medals in consequence,, 
 that his stoutness seems a special dispensation 
 of Providence to enable him to wear them ; if 
 his girth were the girth of an ordinary man, he 
 could never hang them on all at once. It is 
 only on very great occasions that M. Feroce 
 displays his shining honours. At other times, 
 they lie by, with rolls of manuscript testifying to 
 the causes of their presentation, in a huge glass 
 case in the red-sofa'd salon of his private resi- 
 dence on the beach, where !M. Fe'roce also 
 keeps his family pictures, his portraits of him- 
 self as he appears both in bathing life and in 
 
1.;.' 
 
 OUR FRENCH WATERING-PLACE. 
 
 private life, his little boats that rock by clock- 
 Avork, and his other ornamental possessions. 
 
 Tlien, Ave have a commotlious and gay 
 Theatre — or had, for it is burned down now — 
 where the opera was always preceded by a 
 vaudeville, in which (as usual) everybody, down 
 to the little old man with the large hat and the 
 little cane and tassel, who always played either 
 my Uncle or my Papa, suddenly broke out of 
 the dialogue into the mildest vocal snatches, to 
 the great perplexity of unaccustomed strangers 
 from Great Britain, who never could make out 
 when they were singing and when they were 
 talking — and indeed it Avas pretty much the 
 same. But, the caterers in the way of enter- 
 tainment to whom we are most beholden are 
 the Society of Well-doing, who are active all 
 the summer, and give the proceeds of their good 
 works to the poor. Some of the most agree- 
 able fetes they contrive are announced as 
 *' Dedicated to the Children ; " and the taste 
 with which they turn a small ]uiblic enclosure 
 into an elegant garden beautifully illuminated ; 
 and the thorough-going heartiness and energy 
 with which they personally direct the childish 
 pleasures ; are supremely delightful. For five- 
 pence a head we have, on these occasions, 
 donkey races with English '•' Jokeis," and other 
 rustic sports ; lotteries for toys ; roundabouts, 
 dancing on the grass to the music of an admi- 
 rable band, fire balloons, and fireworks. Fur- 
 ther, almost every week all through the summer 
 — never mind, now, on what day of the week — 
 there is a fete in some adjoining village (called 
 in that part of the country a Ducasse), where 
 the people — really the people — dance on the 
 green turf in the open air, round a little or- 
 chestra, that seems itself to dance, there is such 
 an airy motion of flags and streamers all about 
 it. And we do not suppose that between the 
 Torrid Zone and the North Pole there are to be 
 found male dancers with such astonishingly 
 loose legs, furnished with so many joints in 
 Avrong places, utterly unknown to Professor 
 Owen, as those who here disport themselves. 
 Sometimes the fete appertains to a particular 
 trade ; you will see among the cheerful young 
 "women, at the joint Ducasse of the milliners 
 and tailors, a wholesome knowledge of the art 
 of making common and cheap things uncommon 
 and pretty, by good sense and good taste, that 
 is a practical lesson to any rank of society in a 
 whole island we could mention. The oddest 
 feature of these agreeable scenes is the everlast- 
 ing Roundabout (we preserve an English word 
 wherever we can, as we are writing the English 
 language), on the wooden horses of which 
 
 machine grown-up people of all ages are wound 
 round and round with the utmost solemnity, 
 while the proprietor's wife grinds an organ, 
 capable of only one tune, in the centre. 
 
 As to the boarding-houses of our French 
 watering-place, they are Legion, and would 
 require a distinct treatise. It is not without a 
 sentiment of national pride that we believe them 
 to contain more bores from the shores of Albion 
 than all the clubs in London. As you walk 
 timidly in their neighbourhood, the very neck- 
 cloths and hats of your elderly compatriots cry 
 to you from the stones of the streets, " We are 
 Bores — avoid us ! " We have never overheard 
 at street corners such lunatic scraps of political 
 and social discussion as among these dear 
 countrymen of ours. They believe everything 
 that is impossible and nothing that is true. 
 They carry rumours, and ask questions, and 
 make corrections and improvements on one 
 another, staggering to the human intellect. 
 And they are for ever rushing into the English 
 library, propounding such incomprehensible 
 paradoxes to the fair mistress of that establish- 
 ment, that we beg to recommend her to her 
 Majesty's gracious consideration as a fit object 
 for a pension. 
 
 The English form a considerable part of the 
 population of our French watering-place, and 
 are deservedly addressed and respected in many 
 ways. Some of the surface-addresses to them 
 are odd enough, as when a laundress puts a 
 placard outside her house announcing her pos- 
 session of that curious British instrument, a 
 "Mingle;" or when a tavern-keeper provides 
 acconunodation for the celebrated English game 
 of " Nokemdon." But, to us, it is not the least 
 pleasant feature of our French watering-place 
 that a long and constant fusionof thetwo great na- 
 tions there has taught each to like the other, and 
 to learn from the other, and to rise superior to 
 the absurd prejudices that have lingered among 
 the weak and ignorant in both countries equally. 
 
 Drumming and trumpeting of course go on 
 for ever in our French watering-place. Flag- 
 flying is at a premium, too ; but, we cheerfully 
 avow that we consider a flag a very pretty 
 object, and that we take such outward signs 
 of innocent liveliness to our heart of hearts. 
 The people, in the town and in the country, are 
 a busy people who work hard ; they are sober, 
 temperate, good-humoured, light-hearted, and 
 generally remarkable for their engaging man- 
 ners. Few just men, not immoderately bilious, 
 could see them in their recreations without very 
 much respecting the character that is so easily, 
 so harmlessly, and so simply pleased. 
 
MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF BILL-STICKING. 
 
 143 
 
 BILL-STICKING. 
 
 ^^W~ -"^ I had an enemy whom I hated— 
 'i^-nit^'/ whicli Heaven forbid !— and if I 
 knew of something that sat heavy 
 on his conscience, I think I would 
 introduce that something into a 
 Posting-Bill, and place a large im- 
 pression in the hands of an active sticker. 
 I can scarcely imagine a more terrible 
 revenge. I should haunt him, by this means, 
 night and day. I do not mean to say that I 
 would publish his secret, in red letters two feet 
 high, for all the town to read : I would darkly 
 refer to it. It should be between him, and me, 
 and the Posting-Bill. Say, for example, that, at 
 a certain period of his life, my enemy had 
 surreptitiously possessed himself of a key. I 
 would then embark my capital in the lock busi- 
 ness, and conduct that business on the advertis- 
 ing principle. In all my placards and advertise- 
 ments I would throw up the line Secret Keys. 
 Thus, if my enemy passed an uninhabited house, 
 he would see his conscience glaring down on 
 him from the parapets, and peeping up at him 
 from the cellars. If he took a dead wall in his 
 walk, it would be alive with reproaches. If he 
 sought refuge in an omnibus, the panels thereof 
 would become Belshazzar's palace to him. If 
 he took a boat, in a wild endeavour to escape, 
 he would see the fatal words lurking under the 
 arches of the bridges over the Thames. If he 
 walked the streets with downcast eyes, he would 
 recoil from the very stones of the pavement, 
 made eloquent by lamp-black lithograph. If he 
 drove or rode, his way would be blocked up by 
 enormous vans, each proclaiming the same 
 words over and over again from its whole extent 
 of surface. Until, having gradually grown 
 thinner and paler, and having at last totally 
 rejected food, he would miserably perish, and I 
 should be revenged. This conclusion I should, 
 no doubt, celebrate by laughing a hoarse laugh 
 in three syllables, and folding my arms tight 
 upon my chest, agreeably to most of the exam- 
 ples of glutted animosity that I have had an 
 opportunity of observing in connection with the 
 Drama — which, by-the-bye, as involving a good 
 deal of noise, appears to me to be occasionally 
 confounded with the Drummer. 
 
 The foregoing reflections presented themselves 
 to my mind, the oQier day, as I contemplated 
 (being newly come to London from the East 
 Riding of Yorkshire, on a house-hunting expe- 
 dition for next May), an old warehouse which 
 rotting paste and rotting paper had brought 
 
 down to the condition of an old cheese. It 
 would have been impossible to say, on the most 
 conscientious survey, how much of its front was 
 brick and mortar, and how much decaying and 
 decayed plaster. It was so thickly incrusted 
 with fragments of bills, that no ship's keel after 
 a long voyage could be half so foul. All traces 
 of the broken windows were billed out, the doors 
 were billed across, the water-spout was billed 
 over. The building was shored up to prevent its 
 tumbling into the street ; and the very beams 
 erected against it were less wood than paste 
 and paper, they had been so continually posted 
 and reposted. The forlorn dregs of old posters 
 so encumbered this wreck, that there was no 
 hold for new posters, and the stickers had aban- 
 doned the place in despair, except one enter- 
 prising man who had hoisted the last masquerade 
 to a clear spot near the level of the stack of 
 chimneys, where it waved and drooped like a 
 shattered flag. Below the rusty cellar-grating, 
 crumpled remnants of old bills torn down rotted 
 away in wasting heaps of fallen leaves. Here 
 and there, some of the thick rind of tlie house 
 had peeled off" in strips, and fluttered heavily 
 down, Uttering the street ; but still, below these 
 rents and gashes, layers of decomposing posters 
 showed themselves, as if they were interminable. 
 I thought the building could never even be 
 pulled down, but in one adhesive heap of rot- 
 tenness and poster. As to getting in — I don't 
 believe that if the Sleeping Beauty and her 
 Court had been so billed up, the young Prince 
 could have done it. 
 
 Knowing all the posters that were yet legible, 
 intimately, and pondering on their ubiquitous 
 nature, I was led into the reflections with which 
 I began this paper, by considering what an 
 awful thing it would be ever to have wronged — 
 say M. JuLLiEN for example — and to have his 
 avenging name in characters of fire incessantly 
 before my eyes. Or to have injured Madame 
 TussAUD, and undergo a similar retribution. 
 Has any man a self-reproachful thought asso- 
 ciated with pills or ointment? What an 
 avenging spirit to that man is Professor Hol- 
 low ay ! Have I sinned in oil ? Cabburn 
 pursues me. Have I a dark remembrance 
 associated with any gentlemanly garments, be- 
 spoke or ready made ? Moses and Son are on 
 my track. Did I ever aim a blow at a defence- 
 less fellow-creature's head ? That head eternally 
 being measured for a wig, or that worse head 
 which was bald before it used the balsam, and 
 hirsute afterwards, — enforcing the benevolent 
 moral, " Better to be bald as a Dutch cheese 
 than come to this," — undoes me. Have I no 
 
144 
 
 BILL-STICKING. 
 
 sore places in my mind which Mechi touches — 
 which NicoLL probes — which no registered 
 article whatever lacerates ? Does no discordant 
 note within me thrill responsive to mysterious 
 watchwords, as " Revalenta Arabica," or " Num- 
 ber One, St. Paul's Churchyard?" Then may I 
 enjoy life, and be happy. 
 
 Lifting up my eyes, as I was musing to this 
 effect, I beheld advancing towards me (I was 
 then on Cornhill, near to the Royal Exchange), 
 a solemn procession of three advertising vans, 
 of first-class dimensions, each drawn by a very 
 little horse. As the cavalcade approached, I 
 was at a loss to reconcile the careless deport- 
 ment of the drivers of these vehicles with the 
 terrific announcements they conducted through 
 the City, which, being a summary of the con- 
 tents of a Sunday newspaper, were of the most 
 thrilling kind. Robbery, fire, murder, and the 
 ruin of the United Kingdom — each discharged 
 in a line by itself, like a separate broadside of 
 red-hot shot — were among the least of the 
 warnings addressed to an unthinking people. 
 Yet the Ministers of Fate who drove the awful 
 cars leaned forward, with their arms upon their 
 knees, in a State of extreme lassitude, for vv^ant 
 of any subject of interest. The first man, whose 
 hair I might naturally have expected to see 
 standing on end, scratched his head — one of the 
 smoothest I ever beheld — with profound indif- 
 ference. The second whistled. The third 
 yawned. 
 
 Pausing to dwell upon this apathy, it appeared 
 to me, as the fatal cars came by me, that I 
 descried in the second car, through the portal 
 in which the charioteer was seated, a figure 
 stretched upon the floor. At the same time, I 
 thought I smelt tobacco. The latter impression 
 passed quickly from me ; the former remained. 
 Curious to know whether this prostrate figure 
 was the one impressible man of the whole capital 
 who had been stricken insensible by the terrors 
 revealed to him, and whose form had been 
 placed in the car by the charioteer from motives 
 of humanity, I followed the procession. It 
 turned into Leadenhall Market, and halted at a 
 public-house. Each driver dismounted. I then 
 distinctly heard, proceeding from the second 
 car, where I had dimly seen the prostrate form, 
 the words : 
 
 " And a pipe ! " 
 
 The driver entering the public-house with his 
 fellows, apparently for the purposes of refresh- 
 ment, I could not refrain from mounting on the 
 shaft of the second vehicle, and looking in at the 
 portal. I then beheld, reclining on his back upon 
 the floor, on a kind of mattress or divan, a httle 
 
 man in a shooting-coat. The exclamation, 
 " Dear me ! " which irresistibly escaped my lips, 
 caused him to sit upright, and survey me. I 
 found him to be a good-looking little man of 
 about fifty, with a shining face, a tight head, a 
 bright eye, a moist wink, a quick speech, and a 
 ready air. He had something of a sporting way 
 with him. 
 
 H looked at me, and I looked at him, until 
 the driver displaced me by handing in a pint of 
 beer, a pipe, and what I understand is called 
 "a screw" of tobacco — an object which has 
 the appearance of a curl-paper taken off the 
 barmaid's head, with the curl in it. 
 
 ■' I beg your pardon," said I, when the re- 
 moved person of the driver again admitted of 
 my presenting my face at the portal. " But — 
 excuse my curiosity, which I inherit from my 
 mother — do you live here ? " 
 
 " That's good, too ! " returned the little man, 
 composedly laying aside a pipe he had smoked 
 out, and filling the pipe just brought to him. 
 
 " Oh, you don't live here, then ? " said I. 
 
 He shook his head, as he calmly lighted his 
 pipe by means of a German tinder-box, and 
 replied, " This is my carriage. When things are 
 flat, I take a ride sometimes, and enjoy myself. 
 I am the inventor of these wans." 
 
 His pipe was now alight. He drank his beer 
 all at once, and he smoked and he smiled at 
 me. 
 
 " It was a great idea ! " said I. 
 
 " Not so bad," returned the little man, with 
 the modesty of merit. 
 
 " Might I be permitted to inscribe your name 
 upon the tablets of my memory ? " I asked. 
 
 " There's not much odds in the name," re- 
 turned the little man ; " no name particular — I 
 am the King of the Bill-Stickers." 
 
 *' Good gracious ! " said I, 
 
 The monarch informed me, with a smile, that 
 he had never been crowned or installed with 
 any public ceremonies, but that he was peace- 
 ably acknowledged as King of the Bill-Stickers 
 in right of being the oldest and most respected 
 member of " the old school of bill-sticking." 
 He likewise gave me »to understand that there 
 was a Lord Mayor of the Bill-Stickers, whose 
 genius was chiefly exercised within the limits of 
 the City. He made some allusion, also, to an 
 inferior potentate, called " Turkey-legs ; " but I 
 did not understand that this gentleman was in- 
 vested with much power, I rather inferred 
 that he derived his title from some peculiarity 
 of gait, and that it was of an honorary cha- 
 racter. 
 
 " My father," pursued the King of the Bill- 
 
7IIE KING OF THE BILL-STICKERS. 
 
 t45 
 
 Stickers, " was Engineer, Beadle, and Bill- 
 Sticker to the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, 
 in the year one thousand seven hundred and 
 eighty. My fother stuck bills at the time of the 
 riots of London." 
 
 "You must be acquainted with the whole 
 subject of bill-sticking, from that time to the 
 present," said I. 
 
 " Pretty well so," was the answer. 
 
 " Excuse me," said I ; " but I am a sort of 
 collector " 
 
 " Not Income-tax ? "' cried his Mjjesty, hastily 
 removing his pipe horn his lips. 
 
 "No, no," said I. 
 
 "Water-rate?" said his Majesty. 
 
 " No, no," I returned. 
 
 " Gas ? Assessed ? Sewers ? " said his ]\Ia- 
 jesty. 
 
 " You misunderstand me," I replied sooth- 
 ingly. " Not that sort of collector at all : a 
 collector of facts." 
 
 " Oh ! if it's only facts," cried the King of the 
 Bill-Stickers, recovering his good-humour, and 
 banishing the great mistrust that had suddenly 
 fallen upon him, " come in and welcome ! If it 
 had been income, or winders, I think I should 
 have pitched you out of the wan, upon my 
 soul ! " 
 
 Readily complying with the invitation, I 
 squeezed myself in at the small aperture. His 
 iSIajesty, graciously handing me a little three- 
 legged stool on which I took my seat in a 
 corner, inquired if I smoked. 
 
 " I do ; — that is, I can," I answered. 
 
 " Pipe and a screw ! " said his Majesty to the 
 attendant charioteer. " Do you prefer a dry 
 smoke, or do you moisten it?" 
 
 As unmitigated tobacco produces most dis- 
 turbing eftects upon my system (indeed, if I had 
 perfect moral courage, I doubt if I should smoke 
 at all, under any circumstances), I advocated 
 moisture, and begged the Sovereign of the Bill- 
 Stickers to name his usual liquor, and to con- 
 cede to me the privilege of paying for it. After 
 some delicate reluctance on his part, we were 
 provided, through the instrumentaHty of the 
 attendant charioteer, with a can of cold rum- 
 and-water, flavoured with sugar and lemon. We 
 were also furnished with a tumbler, and I was 
 provided with a pipe. His Majesty, then, ob- 
 serving that we might combine business with 
 conversation, gave the word for the car to pro- 
 ceed ; and, to my great delight, we jogged away 
 at a foot-pace. 
 
 I say to my great delight, because I am very 
 fond of novelty, and it was a new sensation to 
 be jolting through the tumult of the City in that 
 Edwin Drood, Etc, io. 
 
 secluded Temple, partly open to the sky, sur- 
 rounded by the roar without, and seeing nothing 
 but the clouds. Occasionally, blows from whips 
 fell heavily on the Temple's walls, when, by 
 stopping up the road longer than usual, we irri- 
 tated carters and coachmen to madness ; but, 
 they fell harmless upon us within, and disturbed 
 not the serenity of our peaceful retreat. As I 
 looked upward, I felt, I should imagine, like the 
 Astronomer Royal. I was enchanted by the 
 contrast between the freezing nature of our ex- 
 ternal mission on the blood of the populace, and 
 the perfect composure reigning within those 
 sacred precincts ; where his Majesty, reclining 
 easily on his left arm, smoked his pipe and 
 drank his rum-and-water from his own side of 
 the tumbler, which stood impartially between 
 us. As I looked down from the clouds and 
 caught his royal eye, he understood my reflec- 
 tions. " I have an idea," he observed, with an 
 upward glance, " of training scarlet runners 
 across in the season, — making a arbour of it, — 
 and sometimes taking tea in the same, according 
 to the song." 
 
 I nodded approval. 
 
 " And here you repose and think?" said I. 
 
 " And think," said he, " of posters — walls — 
 and hoardings." 
 
 We were both silent, contemplating the vast- 
 ness of the subject. I remembered a surprising 
 fancy of dear Thomas Hood's, and wondered 
 whether this monarch ever sighed to repair to 
 the great wall of China, and stick bills all 
 over it. 
 
 " And so," said he, rousing himself, " it's facts 
 as you collect ? " 
 
 " Facts," said I. 
 
 " The facts of bill-sticking," pursued his Ma- 
 jesty, in a benignant manner, "as known to 
 myself, air as following. When my father was- 
 Engineer, Beadle, and Bill-Sticker to the parish 
 of St. Andrew's, Holborn, he employed women 
 to post bills for him. He employed women to 
 post bills at the time of the riots of London. 
 He died at the age of seventy-five year, and was 
 buried by the murdered Eliza Grimwood, over 
 in the Waterloo Road." 
 
 As this was somewhat in the nature of a royal 
 speech, I listened with deference and silently. 
 His Majesty, taking a scroll from his pocket, 
 proceeded, with great distinctness, to pour out 
 the following flood of information : — 
 
 " ' The bills being at that period mostly pro- 
 clamations and declarations, and which were 
 only a demy size, the manner of posting the bills 
 (as they did not use brushes) was by means of 
 a piece of wood which they called a " dabber." 
 
146 
 
 BILL-STICKING. 
 
 Thus things continued till such time as the State 
 Lottery was passed, and then the printers began 
 to print larger bills, and men were employed 
 instead of women, as the State Lottery Commis- 
 sioners then began to send men all over England 
 to post bills, and would keep them out for six 
 or eight months at a time, and they were called 
 by the London bill-stickers trampers, their wages 
 at the time being ten shillings per day, besides 
 expenses. They used sometimes to be stationed in 
 large towns for five or six months together, distri- 
 buting the schemes to all the houses in the town. 
 And then there were more caricature wood-block 
 engravings for posting-bills than there are at the 
 present time, the principal printers, at that time, 
 of posting-bills being INIessrs. Evans and Rufty, 
 of Budge Row ; Thoroughgood and Whiting, of 
 the present day; and Messrs. Gye and Balne, 
 Gracechurch Street, City. The largest bills 
 printed at that period were a two-sheet double- 
 crown ; and when they commenced printing 
 four-sheet bills, two bill-stickers would work to- 
 gether. They had no settled wages per week, 
 but had a fixed price for their work, and the 
 London bill-stickers, during a lottery week, have 
 been known to earn each eight or nine pounds 
 per week, till the day of drawing ; likewise the 
 men who carried boards in the street used to have 
 one pound per week, and the bill-stickers at that 
 time would not allow any one to willuUy cover 
 or destroy their bills, as they had a society 
 amongst themselves, and very frequently dined 
 together at some public-house, where they used 
 to go of an evening to have their work delivered 
 out untoe 'em.' " 
 
 All this his Majesty delivered in a gallant 
 manner ; posting it, as it were, before me, in a 
 great proclamation. I took advantage of the 
 pause he now made, to inquire what a " two- 
 sheet double-crown " might express ? 
 
 "A two -sheet double -crown," replied the 
 King, " is a bill thirty-nine inches wide by thirty 
 inches high." 
 
 " Is it possible," said I, my mind reverting to 
 the gigantic admonitions we were then display- 
 ing to the multitude — which were as infants to 
 some of the posting-bills on the rotten old ware- 
 house — " that some few years ago the largest 
 bill was no larger than that ? " 
 
 " The fact," returned the King, " is undoubt- 
 edly so." Here he instantly rushed again into 
 the scroll. 
 
 " ' Since the abohshing of the State Lottery 
 all that good feeling has gone, and nothing but 
 jealousy exists, through the rivalry of each other. 
 Several bill-sticking companies have started, but 
 have failed. The first party that started a com- 
 
 pany was twelve year ago ; but what was left of 
 die old school and their dependants joined to- 
 gether and opposed them. And for some time 
 we were quiet again, till a printer of Hatton 
 Garden formed a company by hiring the sides 
 of houses ; but he was not supported by the 
 public, and he left his wooden frames fixed up 
 for rent. The last company that started took 
 advantage of the New Police Act, and hired of 
 Messrs. Grisell and Peto the hoarding of Tra- 
 falgar Square, and established a bill-sticking 
 office in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, and 
 engaged some of the new bill-stickers to do their 
 work, and for a time got the half of all our work, 
 and \\-ith such spirit did they carry on their 
 opposition towards us, that they used to give us 
 in charge before the magistrate, and get us 
 fined ; but they found it so expensive, that they 
 could not keep it up, for they were always em- 
 ploying a lot of ruffians from the Seven Dials to 
 come and fight us ; and on one occasion the old 
 bill-stickers went to Trafalgar Square to attempt 
 to post bills, when they were given in custody 
 by the watchman in their employ, and fined at 
 Queen Scjuare five pounds, as they would not 
 allow any of us to speak in the office ; but when 
 they were gone, we had an interview with the 
 magistrate, who mitigated the fine to fifteen 
 shillings. During the time the men were wait- 
 ing for the fine, this company started off to a 
 public-house that Ave were in the habit of using, 
 and waited for us coming back, where a fight- 
 ing scene took place that beggars description. 
 Shortly after this, the principal one day came 
 and shook hands with us, and acknowledged 
 that he had broken up the company, and that 
 he himself had lost five hundred pound in trying 
 to overthrow us. We then took possession 01 
 the hoarding in Trafalgar Square ; but Messrs. 
 Grisell and Peto would not allow us to post our 
 bills on the said hoarding without paying them 
 — and from first to last we paid upwards of two 
 hundred ]jounds for that hoarding, and likewise 
 the hoarding of the Reform Club-house, Pall 
 Mall.' " 
 
 His Majesty, being now completely out of 
 breath, laid down his scroll (which he appeared 
 to have finished), pufled at his pipe, and took 
 some rum-and-water. I embraced the oppor- 
 tunity of asking how many divisions the art and 
 mystery of bill-sticking comprised ? He replied, 
 three— auctioneers' bill-sticking, theatrical bill- 
 sticking, general bill-sticking. 
 
 " The auctioneers' porters," said the King, 
 " who do their bill-sticking, are mostly respect- 
 able and intelligent, and generally well paid for 
 their work, whether in town or country. The 
 
REGAL INGENUITY. 
 
 147 
 
 price paid by tlie principal auctioneers lor coun- 
 try work is nine shillings per day ; that is, seven 
 shillings for day's work, one shilling for lodging, 
 and one for ])aste. Town work is five shillings 
 a day, including paste." 
 
 " Town work must be rather hot work," said 
 I, " if there be many of those fighting scenes 
 that beggar description among the bill-stickers?" 
 
 " Well," replied the King, " I ain't a stranger, 
 I assure you, to black eyes ; a bill-sticker ought 
 to know how to handle his fists a bit. As to 
 that row I have mentioned, that grew out of 
 competition, conducted in an uncompromising 
 spirit. Besides a man in a horse-and-shay con- 
 tinually following us about, the company had a 
 watchman on duty, night and day, to prevent 
 us sticking bills upon the hoarding in Trafalgar 
 Square. We went there, early one morning, to 
 stick bills and to black-wash their bills if we 
 were interfered with. We wo-e interfered with, 
 and I gave the word for laying on the wash. It 
 li'as laid on — pretty brisk — and we were all 
 taken to Queen Square : but they couldn't fine 
 me. /knew that," — with a bright smile, — " I'd 
 only given directions — I was only the General." 
 
 Charmed with this monarch's aftability, I 
 inquired if he had ever hired a hoarding him- 
 self. 
 
 " Hired a large one," he replied, " opposite 
 the Lyceum Theatre when the buildings was 
 there. Paid thirty pound for it ; let out places 
 on it, and called it ' The External Paper Hang- 
 ing Station.' But it didn't answer. Ah ! " said 
 his Majesty thoughtfully, as he filled the glass, 
 *' bill-stickers have a deal to contend with. The 
 bill-sticking clause was got into the Police Act 
 by a member of parliament that employed me 
 at his election. The clause is pretty stiff re- 
 specting where bills go ; but he didn't mind 
 where his bills went. It was all right enough, 
 so long as they was his bills ! " 
 
 Fearful that I observed a shadow of misan- 
 thropy on the King's cheerful face, I asked 
 whose ingenious invention that was, which I 
 greatly admired, of sticking bills under the 
 arches of the bridges. 
 
 " Mine ! " said his Majesty. " I was the first 
 that ever stuck a bill un.der a bridge ! Imi- 
 tators soon rose up, of course. When don't 
 they ? But they stuck 'em at low water, and 
 the tide came and swept the bills clean away, 
 /knew that ! " The King laughed. 
 
 " What may be the name of that instrument, 
 like an immense fishing-rod," I inquired, " with 
 which bills are posted on high places ? " 
 
 " The joints," returned his Majesty. "Now, 
 we use the joints Avhere formerly we used ladders 
 
 — as they do still in country places. Once, 
 when Madame" (Vestris, understood) "was 
 playing in Liverpool, another bill-sticker and 
 me were at it together on the wall outside the 
 Clarence Dock — me with the joints — him on a 
 ladder. Lord ! I had my bill up, right over 
 his head, yards above him, ladder and all, while 
 he was crawling to his work. The people going 
 in and out of the docks stood and laughed. — 
 It's about thirty years since the joints come in." 
 
 "Are there any bill-stickers who can't read?" 
 I took the liberty of inquiring. 
 
 " Some," said the King. " But they know 
 which is the right side up'ards of their work. 
 They keep it as it's given out to 'em. I have 
 seen a bill or so stuck wrong side up'ards. But 
 it's very rare." 
 
 Our discourse sustained some interruption at 
 this point, by the procession of cars occasioning 
 a stoppage of about three-quarters of a mile in 
 length, as nearly as I could judge. His Ma- 
 jesty, however, entreating me not to be discom- 
 posed by the contingent uproar, smoked with 
 great placidity, and surveyed the firmament. 
 
 When we were again in motion, I begged to 
 be informed what was the largest poster his 
 Majesty had ever seen. The King replied, 
 "A thirty-six sheet poster." I gathered, also, 
 that there were about a hundred and fifty bill- 
 stickers in London, and that his Majesty con- 
 sidered an average hand equal to the posting of 
 one hundred bills (single sheets) in a day. The 
 King was of opinion that, although posters had 
 much increased in size, they had not increased 
 in number; as the abolition of the State Lot- 
 teries had occasioned a great falling oft", espe- 
 cially in the country. Over and above which 
 change, I bethought myself that the custom of 
 advertising in newspapers had greatly increased. 
 The completion of many London improvements, 
 as Trafalgar Square (I particularly observed 
 the singularity of his Majesty's calling that an 
 improvement), the Royal Exchange, (Sec, had 
 of late years reduced the number of advan- 
 tageous posting-places. Bill-stickers at present 
 rather confine themselves to districts than to 
 particular descriptions of Avork. One man 
 would strike over Whitechapel, another would 
 take round Houndsditch, Shoreditch, and the 
 City Road ; one (the King said) would stick to 
 the Surrey side ; another would make a beat of 
 the West-end. 
 
 His Majesty remarked, with some approach 
 to severity, on the neglect of delicacy and taste 
 gradually introduced into the trade by the new 
 school : a profligate and inferior race of im- 
 postors who took jobs at almost any price, to 
 
143 
 
 BIRTHS. MRS. MEEK, OF A SON:' 
 
 the detriment of the old school, and the con- 
 fusion of their own misguided employers. He 
 considered thai the trade was overdone with 
 competition, and observed, speaking of his sub- 
 jects, " There are too many of 'em." He be- 
 lieved, still, that things were a little better than 
 they had been ; adducing, as a proof, the fact, 
 that particular posting-places were now reserved, 
 by common consent, for particular posters ; 
 those places, however, must be regularly occu- 
 pied by those posters, or they lapsed and fell 
 into other hands. It was of no use giving a 
 man a Drury-Lane bill this week, and not next. 
 Where was it to go? He was of opinion that 
 going to the expense of putting up your own 
 board, on which your sticker could display your 
 own bills, was the only complete way of posting 
 yourself at the present time ; but, even to effect 
 this, on payment of a shilling a week to the 
 keepers of steamboat piers and other such 
 places, you must be able, besides, to give 
 orders for theatres and public exhibitions, or 
 you v/ould be sure to be cut out by somebody. 
 His Majesty regarded the passion for orders as 
 one of the most inappeasable appetites of human 
 nature. If there v^•ere a building, or if there 
 were repairs, going on anywhere, you could 
 generally stand something and make it right 
 with the foreman of the works ; but, orders 
 would be expected from you, and the man who 
 could give the most orders was the man who 
 would come off best. There was this other 
 objectionable ])oint in orders, that workmen 
 sold them for drink, and often sold them to 
 persons who were likewise troubled with the 
 weakness of thirst: which led (his Majesty 
 said) to the presentation of your orders at 
 theatre doors by individuals who were "too 
 shakery" to derive intellectual profit from the 
 entertainments, and who brought a scandal on 
 you. Finally, his Majesty said that you could 
 hardly put loo little in a poster; what you 
 wanted was, two or three good catch-lines for 
 the eye to rest on — then, leave it alone — and 
 there you were ! 
 
 These are the minutes of my conversation 
 with his Majesty, as I noted them down shortly 
 afterwards. I am not aware that I have been 
 betrayed into any alteration or suppression. 
 The manner of the King was frank in the ex- 
 treme ; and he seemed to me to avoid at once 
 that slight tendency to repetition which may 
 have been observed in the conversation of his 
 Majesty King George the Third, and that slight 
 undercurrent of egotism which the curious ob- 
 server may perhaps detect in the conversation of 
 Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 
 I must do the King the justice to say that it: 
 was I, and not he, who closed the dialogue. At 
 this juncture, I became the subject of a remark- 
 able optical delusion ; the legs of my stool ap- 
 peared to me to double up; the car to spin 
 round and round with great violence; and a 
 mist to arise between myself and his Majesty. 
 In addition to these sensations, I felt extremely 
 unwell. I refer these unpleasant effects either 
 to the paste with which the posters were affixed 
 to the van : which may have contained some 
 small portion of arsenic ; or to the printer's ink, 
 which may have contained some equally delete- 
 rious ingredient. Of this I cannot be sure. I 
 am only sure that I was not affected either by 
 the smoke or the rum-and-water. I was assisted 
 out of the vehicle, in a state of mind which I 
 have only experienced in two other places — I 
 allude to the Pier at Dover, and to the corre- 
 sponding portion of the town of Calais — and sat 
 upon a door-stei3 until I recovered. The pro- 
 cession had then disappeared. I have since 
 looked anxiously for the King in several other 
 cars, but I have not yet had the happiness of 
 seemg his Majesty. 
 
 '' BIRTHS. MRS. MEEK, OF A SON." 
 
 ^( IM{ ^ "^^"is is Meek. I am, m fact, Mr. 
 Meek. That son is mine and Mrs. 
 Meek's. When I saw the announce- 
 
 ment in the Times, I dropped the 
 
 jr^'i? paper. I had put it in myself, and 
 '"i/^'i paid for it, but it looked so noble that it 
 2^;:^ overpowered me. 
 
 ^S'L As soon as I could compose my feelings,. 
 I took the paper up to Mrs. Meek's bedside. 
 " Maria Jane," said I (I allude to Mrs. :\Ieek), 
 " you are now a public character." '\\'e read 
 the review of our child several times, with feel- 
 ings of the strongest emotion ; and I sent the 
 boy who cleans the boots and shoes to the office 
 for fifteen copies. No reduction was made on 
 taking that quantity. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary for me to say, that 
 our child had been expected. In fact, it had 
 been expected, with comparative confidence^ 
 for some months. Mrs. Meek's mother, who 
 resides with us — of the name of Bigby — had 
 made every preparation for its admission to our 
 circle. 
 
 I hope and believe I am a quiet man. I will 
 go farther. I know I am a quiet man. My 
 constitution is tremulous, my voice was never 
 
MRS. PRODGIT AND MARIA JANE'S MAMMA. 
 
 149 
 
 loud, and, in point of stature, I have been, from 
 infancy, small. I have the greatest respect for 
 Maria Jane's mamma. She is a most remark- 
 able woman. I honour Maria Jane's mamma. 
 In my opinion she would storm a town, single- 
 handed, with a hearth-broom, and carry it. I 
 have never known her to yield any point what- 
 ever to mortal man. She is calculated to terrify 
 the stoutest heart. 
 
 Still Eut I will not anticipate. 
 
 The first intimation I had of any preparations 
 being in progress, on the part of Maria Jane's 
 mamma, was one afternoon, several months ago. 
 I came home earlier than usual from the oflice, 
 and, proceeding into the dining-room, found an 
 obstruction behind the door, which prevented it 
 from opening freely. It was an obstruction of 
 a soft nature. On looking in, I found it to be a 
 female. 
 
 The female in question stood in the corner 
 
 " OH, GJT ALONG WITH YOU, SIR, ]F YOU PLEASE; JIE AND MRS. BIGBY DON'T WANT NO MALE 
 
 PARTIES HERE ! " 
 
 behind the door, consuming Sherry Wine. From 
 the nutty smell of that beverage pervading the 
 apartment, I have no doubt she was consuming 
 a second glassful. She wore a black bonnet of 
 large dimensions, and was copious in figure. 
 The expression of her countenance was severe 
 and discontented. The words to which she gave 
 utterance, on seeing me, were these, " Oh, git 
 along with you, sir, if you please ; me and Mrs. 
 Bigby don't want no male parties here ! " 
 That female was Mrs. Prodgit. 
 
 I immediately withdrew, of course. I ^^as 
 rather hurt, but I made no remark. Whether it 
 was that I showed a lowness of spirits after 
 dinner, in consequence of feeling that I seemed 
 to intrude, I cannot say. But Maria Jane's 
 mamma said to me, on her retiring for the night, 
 in a low distinct voice, and with a look of re- 
 proach that completely subdued me : " George 
 Meek, Mrs. Prodgit is your wife's nurse!" 
 
 I bear no ill-will towards Mrs. Prodgit. Is it 
 likely that I, writing this with tears in my eyes, 
 
I50 
 
 BIRTHS. MRS. MEEK, OF A SON.'' 
 
 should be capable of deliberate animosity to- 
 wards a female so essential to the welfare of 
 Maria Jane ? I am willing to admit that Fate 
 may have been to blame, and not Mrs. Prodgit ; 
 but, it is undeniably true, that the latter female 
 brought desolation and devastation into my 
 lowly dwelling. 
 
 We were happy after her first appearance : we 
 were sometimes exceedingly so. But, whenever 
 the parlour door was opened, and " Mrs. 
 Prodgit ! " announced (and she was very often 
 announced), misery ensued. I could not bear 
 Mrs. Prodgit's look. I felt that I was far from 
 wanted, and had no business to exist in Mrs. 
 Prodgit's presence. Between Maria Jane's 
 mamma and Mrs. Prodgit there was a dreadful, 
 secret understanding — a dark mystery and con- 
 spiracy, pointing me out as a being to be 
 shunned. I appeared to have done something 
 that was evil. Whenever Mrs. Prodgit called, 
 after dinner I retired to my dressing-room — 
 where the temperature is very low indeed in 
 the wintry time of the year — and sat looking at 
 my frosty breath as it rose before me, and at my 
 rack of boots : a serviceable article of furniture, 
 but never, in my opinion, an exhilarating ob- 
 ject. The length ot the councils that were held 
 wilh ISIrs. Prodgit, under these circumstances, 
 I will not attempt to describe. I will merely 
 remark, that Mrs. Prodgit always consumed 
 Sherry Wine while the deliberations were in 
 progress; that they always ended in Maria 
 Jane's being in wretched spirits on the sofa; 
 and that INIaria Jane's mamma always received 
 me, v.hen I was recalled, with a look of desolate 
 triumph that too plainly said, '^Ncnc, George 
 Meek ! You see my child, Maria Jane, a ruin, 
 and I hope you are satisfied ! " 
 
 I pass, generally, over the period that inter- 
 vened between the day when Mrs. Prodgit 
 entered her protest against male parties, and the 
 ever-memorable midnight when I brought her to 
 my unobtrusive home in a cab, with an ex- 
 tremely large box on the roof, and a bundle, a 
 bandbox, and a basket between the driver's legs. 
 I have no objection to Mrs. Prodgit (aided and 
 abetted by Mrs. Bigby, who I never can forget 
 is the parent of Maria Jane) taking entire pos- 
 session of my unassuming establishment. In 
 the recesses of my own breast, the thought may 
 linger that a man in possession cannot be so 
 dreadful as a woman, and that woman Mrs. 
 Prodgit; but, I ought to bear a good deal, and 
 I hope I can, and do. Hufiing and snubbing 
 prey upon my feelings ; but, I can bear them 
 without complaint. They may tell in the long- 
 run ; I may be hustled about, from post to 
 
 pillar, beyond my strength ; nevertheless, I wish 
 to avoid giving rise to v/ords in the family. 
 
 The voice of Nature, however, cries aloud in 
 behalf of Augustus George, my infant son. It 
 is for him that I wish to utter a few plaintive 
 household words. I am not at all angry ; I am 
 mild — but miserable. 
 
 I wish to know why, when my child, Augustus 
 George, was expected in our circle, a provision 
 of pins was made, as if the little stranger were a 
 criminal who was to be put to the torture imme- 
 diately on his arrival, instead of a holy babe ? 
 I wish to know why haste was made to stick 
 those pins all over his innocent form, in every 
 direction ? I wish to be informed why light 
 and air are excluded from Augustus George, like 
 poisons ? Wh}', I ask, is my unoffending infant 
 so hedged into a basket-bedstead with dimity 
 and calico, with miniature sheets and blankets, 
 that I can only hear him snuffie (and no wonder I) 
 deep down under the pink hood of a little 
 bathing machine, and can never peruse even so 
 much of his lineaments as his nose ? 
 
 Was I expected to be the father of a French 
 Roll, that the brushes of All Nations were laid 
 in to rasp Augustus George ? Am I to be told 
 that his sensitive skin was ever intended by 
 Nature to have rashes brought out upon it, by 
 the premature and incessant use of those for- 
 midable little instruments ? 
 
 Is my son a Nutmeg, that he is to be grated 
 on the stiff" edges of sharp frills? Am I the 
 parent of a Muslin boy, that his yielding surface 
 is to be crimped and small-plaited ? Or is my 
 child composed of Paper or of Linen, that im- 
 pressions of the finer getting-up art, practised 
 by the laundress, are to be printed off, all over 
 his soft arms and legs, as I constantly observe 
 them ? The starch enters his soul : who can 
 wonder that he cries? 
 
 Was Augustus George intended to have limbs, 
 or to be born a Torso ? I presume that limbs 
 were the intention, as they are the usual prac- 
 tice. Then, why are my poor child's limbs 
 fettered and tied up ? Am I to be told that 
 there is any analogy between Augustus George 
 Meek and Jack Sheppard ? 
 
 Analyse Castor Oil at any Institution of 
 Chemistry that may be agreed upon, and inform 
 me what resemblance, in taste, it bears to that 
 natural provision which it is at once the pride 
 and duty of Maria Jane to administer to Augustus 
 George! Yet, I charge Mrs. Prodgit (aided 
 and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) with systematically 
 forcing Castor Oil on my innocent son, from the 
 first hour of his birth. When that medicine, in 
 its efficient action, causes internr.l disturbance 
 
INHUMAN TREATMENT OF AUGUSTUS GEORGE. 
 
 151 
 
 to Augustus George, I charge Mrs. Prodgit 
 (aided and abetted "by Mrs. Bigby) with insanely 
 and inconsistently administering opium to allay 
 the storm she has raised ! What is the meaning 
 of this ? 
 
 If the days of Egyptian Mummies are past, 
 how dare Mrs. Prodgit require, for the use of 
 my son, an amount of flannel and linen that 
 would carpet my humble roof? Do I wonder 
 that she requires it ? No ! This morning, 
 within an hour, I beheld this agonising sight. 
 I beheld my son — Augustus George— in Mrs. 
 Prodgit's hands, and on Mrs. Prodgit's knee, 
 being dressed. He was at the moment, com- 
 paratively speaking, in a state of nature ; having 
 nothing on but an extremely short shirt, remark- 
 ably disproportionate to the length of his usual 
 outer garments. Trailing from Mrs. Prodgit's 
 kip, on the floor, was a long narrow roller or 
 bandage — I should say of several yards in ex- 
 tent. In this I SAW Mrs. Prodgit tightly roll 
 the body of my unoffending infant, turning him 
 over and over, now presenting his unconscious 
 face upwards, now the back of his bald head, 
 until the unnatural feat was accomplished, and 
 the bandage secured by a pin, which I have 
 every reason to believe entered the body of my 
 only child. In this tourniquet he passes the 
 present phase of his existence. Can I know it 
 and smile? 
 
 I fear I have been betrayed into expressing 
 myself warmly, but I feel deeply. Not for 
 myself ; for Augustus George. I dare not inter- 
 fere. Will any one? Will any publication? 
 Any doctor ? Any parent ? Any body ? I do 
 not complain that Mrs. Prodgit (aided and 
 abetted by Mrs. Bigby) entirely alienates Maria 
 Jane's affections from me, and interposes an 
 impassable barrier between us. I do not com- 
 plain of being made of no account. I do not 
 want to be of any account. But, Augustus 
 George is a production of Nature (I cannot 
 think otherwise), and I claim that he should be 
 treated with some remote reference to Nature. 
 In my opinion, Mrs. Prodgit is, from first to 
 last, a convention and a superstition. Are all 
 the faculty afraid of Mrs. Prodgit ? If not, why 
 don't they take her in hand and improve her ? 
 
 P.S. Maria Jane's mamma boasts of her own 
 knowledge of the subject, and says she brought 
 up seven children besides j\Iaria Jane. But 
 liow do / know that she might not have 
 brought them up much better? Maria Jane 
 herself is far from strong, and is subject to head- 
 aches and nervous indigestion. Besides which, 
 I learn from the statistical tables that one child 
 in five dies within the first year of its life ; and 
 
 one child in three within the fifth. That don't 
 look as if we could never improve in these par- 
 ticulars, I think ! 
 
 P. P.S. Augustus George is in convulsions. 
 
 LYING AWAKE. 
 
 Y uncle lay with his eyes half closed, 
 and his nightcap dra\»n almost down 
 to his nose. Plis fancy was already 
 wandering, and began to mingle up 
 the present scene with the crater of 
 Vesuvius, the French Opera, the 
 Coliseum at Rome, Dolly's Chop-house 
 in London, and all the farrago of noted 
 places with which the brain of a traveller is 
 crammed; in a word, he was just falling 
 asleep." 
 
 Thus that delightful writer, Washington 
 Irving, in his Tales of a Traveller. But, it 
 happened to me the other night to be lying: 
 not with my eyes half closed, but with my eyes 
 wide open ; not with my nightcap drawn almost 
 down to my nose, for on sanitary principles I 
 never wear a nightcap : but with my hair pitch- 
 forked and tousled all over the pillow ; not just 
 falling asleep by any means, but glaringly, per- 
 sistently, and obstinately broad awake. Per- 
 haps, with no scientific intention or invention, 
 I was illustrating the theory of the Duality of 
 the Brain : perhaps one part of my brain, being 
 wakeful, sat up to watch the other part which 
 was sleepy. Be that as it may, something in 
 me was as desirous to go to sleep as it possibly 
 could be, but something else in me would not 
 go to sleep, and was as obstinate as George the 
 Third. 
 
 Thinking of George the Third — for I devote 
 this paper to my train of thoughts as I lay awake . 
 most people lying awake sometimes, and having 
 some interest in the subject — put me in mind of 
 Benjamin Franklin, and so Benjamin Frank- 
 lin's paper on the art of procuring pleasant 
 dreams, which would seem necessarily to include 
 the art of going to sleep, came into my head. 
 Now, as I often used to read that paper when I 
 was a very small boy, and as I recollect every- 
 thing I read then as perfectly as I forget every- 
 thing I read now, I quoted " Get out of bed, 
 beat up and turn your pillow, shake the bed- 
 clothes well with at least twenty shakes, then 
 throw the bed open, and leave it to cool ; in 
 the meanwhile, continuing undressed, walk about 
 your chamber. When you begin to feel the cold 
 
15^ 
 
 LYING AWAKE. 
 
 air unpleasant, then return to your bed, and 
 you will soon fall asleep, and your sleep will be 
 sweet and pleasant." Not a bit of it ! I per- 
 formed the whole ceremony, and if it were pos- 
 sible for me to be more saucer-eyed than I was 
 before, that was the only result that came of it. 
 
 Except Niagara. The two f]uotations from 
 Washington Irving and Benjamin Franklin may 
 have put it in my head by an American associa- 
 tion of ideas ; but there I was, and the Horse- 
 shoe Fall was thundering and tumbling in my 
 eyes and ears, and the very rainbows that I left 
 upon the spray, when I really did last look upon 
 it, were beautiful to see. The night-light being 
 •quite as plain, however, and sleep seeming to 
 be many thousand miles further off than Niagara, 
 I made up my mind to think a little about 
 Sleep ; which I no sooner did than I whirled 
 off in spite of myself to Drury-Lane Theatre, 
 and there saw a great actor and dear friend of 
 mine (whom I had been thinking of in the day) 
 playing INIacbeth, and heard him apostrophising 
 " the death of each day's life," as I have heard 
 him many a time in the days that are gone. 
 
 But Sleep. I will think about Sleep. I am 
 determined to think (this is the way I went on) 
 about Sleep. I must hold the word Sleep tight 
 and fast, or I shall be off at a tangent, in half a 
 second. I feel myself unaccountably straying, 
 already, into Clare Market. Sleep. It would be 
 curious, as illustrating the equality of sleep, to in- 
 quire how many of its phenomena are common to 
 all classes, to all degrees of wealth and poverty, to 
 every grade of education and ignorance. Here, 
 for example, is her INIajesty Queen Victoria in 
 her palace, this present blessed night, and here 
 is Winking Charley, a sturdy vagrant, in one of 
 her Majesty's gaols. Her Majesty has fallen, 
 many thousands of times, from that same Tower 
 which / claim a right to tumble off now and 
 then. So has Winking Charley. Her Majesty 
 in her sleep has opened or prorogued Parlia- 
 ment, or has held a Drawing Room, attired in 
 ■some very scanty dress, the deficiencies and 
 improprieties of which have caused her great 
 uneasiness. I, in my degree, have suffered 
 unspeakable agitation of mind from taking the 
 chair at a public dinner at the London Tavern 
 in my night-clothes, which not all the courtesy 
 of my kind friend and host Mr. Bathe could 
 persuade me were quite adapted to the occasion. 
 VVinking Charley has been repeatedly tried in a 
 worse condition. Her Majesty is no stranger 
 to a vault or firmament, of a sort of floor-cloth, 
 with an indistinct pattern distantly resembling 
 eyes, which occasionally obtrudes itself on her 
 jepose. Neither am I. Neither is Winking 
 
 Charley. It is quite common to all three of us 
 to skim along with airy strides a little above the 
 ground ; also to hold, with the deepest interest, 
 dialogues with various people, all represented 
 by ourselves ; and to be at our wit's end to knov,- 
 what they are going to tell us ; and to be inde- 
 scribably astonished by the secrets they disclose. 
 It is probable that we have all three committed 
 murders and hidden bodies. It is pretty certain 
 that we have all desperately wanted to cry out, 
 and have had no voice ; that we have all gone 
 to the play, and not been able to get in ; that 
 we have all dreamed much more of our youth 
 
 than of our later lives; that I have lost 
 
 it ! The thread's broken. 
 
 And up I go. I, lying here with the night- 
 light before me, up I go, lor no reason on eartli 
 that I can find out, and drawn by no links that 
 are visible to me, uj) the Great St. Bernard ! I 
 have lived in Switzerland, and rambled among 
 the mountains ; but, why I should go there now, 
 and why up the Great St. Bernard in preference 
 to any other mountain, I have no idea. As I 
 lie here broad awake, and with every sense so 
 sharpened that I can distinctly hear distant 
 noises inaudible to me at another time, I make 
 that journey, as I really did, on the same sum- 
 mer day, with the same happy party — ah ! two 
 since dead, I grieve to think — and there is the 
 same track, with the same black wooden arms 
 to point the way, and there are the same storm- 
 refuges here and there ; and there is the same 
 snow falling at the top, and there are the same 
 frosty mists, and there is the same intensely cold 
 convent with its me'nagerie smell, and the same 
 breed of dogs fast dying out, and the same breed 
 of jolly young monks whom I mourn to know as 
 humbugs, and the same convent parlour with its 
 piano and the sitting round the fire, and the 
 same supper, and the same lone night in a cell, 
 and the same bright fresh morning when going 
 out into the highly rarefied air was like a plunge 
 into an icy bath. Now, see here what conies 
 along ; and why does this thing stalk into my 
 mind on the top of a Swiss mountain ? 
 
 It is a figure that I once saw, just after dark, 
 chalked upon a door in a little back-lane near a 
 country church — my first church. How young 
 a child I may have been at the time I don't 
 know, but it horrified me so intensely — in con- 
 nection with the churchyard, I suppose, for it 
 smokes a pipe, and has a big hat, with each of 
 its ears sticking out in a horizontal, line under 
 the brim, and is not in itself more oppressive 
 than a mouth from ear to ear, a pair of goggle 
 eyes, and hands like two bunches of carrots, five 
 in each, can make it — that it is still vaguely 
 
RAMBLING NIGHT THOUGHTS. 
 
 153 
 
 alarming to me to recall (as I have often done 
 before lying awake) the running home, the look- 
 ing behind, the horror of its following me ; 
 though whetlier disconnected from the door, or 
 <loor and all, I can't say, and perhaps never could. 
 It lays a disagreeable train. I must resolve to 
 think of something on the voluntary principle. 
 
 The balloon ascents of this last season. They 
 will do to think about, while I lie awake, as well 
 as anything else. I must hold them tight though, 
 for I feel them sliding away, and in their stead 
 are tlie Mannings, husband and wife, hanging 
 on the top of Horsemonger-Lane Gaol. In con- 
 nection with which dismal spectacle, I recall this 
 curious fantasy of the mind. That, having be- 
 held that execution, and having left those two 
 forms dangling on the top of the entrance gate- 
 way — the man's, a limp, loose suit of clothes, as 
 if the man had gone out of them ; the woman's, 
 a fine shape, so elaborately corseted and artfully 
 dressed, that it was quite unchanged in its trim 
 appearance as it slowly sv/ung from side to side 
 — I never could, by my utmost efforts, for some 
 weeks, present the outside of that prison to my- 
 self (which tlie terrible impression I had received 
 continually obliged me to do) without presenting 
 it with the two figures still hanging in the morn- 
 ing air. Until, strolling past the gloomy place 
 one night, when the street was deserted and 
 quiet, and actually seeing that the bodies were 
 not there, my fancy was persuaded, as it were, 
 to take them down and bury them within the 
 precincts of the gaol, where they have lain ever 
 since. 
 _ The balloon ascents of last season. I,et me 
 reckon them up. There were the horse, the 
 bull, the parachute, and the tumbler hanging on 
 — chiefly by his toes, I believe — below the car. 
 Very wrong indeed, and decidedly to be stopped. 
 But, in connection with these and similar dan- 
 gerous exhibitions, it strikes me that that portion 
 of the public whom they entertain is unjustly 
 reproached. Their pleasure is in the difficulty 
 overcome. I'hey are a public of great faith, 
 and are quite confident that the gentleman will 
 not fall off the horse, or the lady off the bull or 
 out of the parachute, and that the tumbler has 
 a firm hold with his toes. They do not go to 
 see the adventurer vanquished, but triumphant. 
 There is no parallel in public combats between 
 men and beasts, because nobody can answer for 
 the particular beast — unless it were always the 
 same beast, in which case it would be a mere stage 
 show, which the same public would go in the 
 same state of mind to see, entirely believing in 
 the brute being beforehand safely subdued by 
 the man. That they are not accustomed to 
 
 calculate hazards and dangers with any nicety, 
 we may know from their rash exjjosure of them- 
 selves in overcrowded steamboats, and unsafe 
 conveyances and places of all kinds. And I 
 cannot help thinking that instead of railing, and 
 attributing savage motives to a people naturally 
 well disposed and humane, it is better to teach 
 them, and lead them argumentatively and rea- 
 sonably — for they are very reasonable, if you 
 will discuss a matter with them — to more con- 
 siderate and wise conclusions. 
 
 This is a disagreeable intrusion. Here is a 
 man with his throat cut, dashing towards me as 
 I lie awake ! A recollection of an old story of 
 a kinsman of mine, who, going home one foggy 
 winter night to Hampstead, when London was 
 much smaller and the road lonesome, suddenly 
 encountered such a figure rushing past him, and 
 presently two keepers from a mad-house in pur- 
 suit. A very unpleasant creature indeed to 
 come into my mind unbidden as I lie awake. 
 
 — The balloon ascents of last season. I nuist 
 return to the balloons. Why did the bleeding 
 man start out of them ? Never mind ; if I in- 
 quire, he will be back again. The balloons. 
 This particular public have inherently a great 
 pleasure in the contemplation of physical diffi- 
 culties overcome ; mainly, as I take it, because 
 the lives of a large majority of them are exceed- 
 ingly monotonous and real, and further, are a 
 struggle against continual difiiculties, and fur- 
 ther still, because anything in the form of acci- 
 dental injury, or any kind of illness or disability, 
 is so very serious in their own sphere. I will 
 explain this seeming paradox of mine. Take 
 the case of a Christmas Pantomime. Surely 
 nobody supposes that the young mother in the 
 pit, who falls into fits of laughter when the baby 
 is boiled or sat upon, would be at all diverted 
 by such an occurrence oft" the stage. Nor is 
 the decent workman in the gallery, who is 
 transported beyond the ignorant present by the 
 delight with which he sees a stout gentleman 
 pushed out of a two pair of stairs window, to 
 be slandered by the suspicion that he would be 
 in the least entertained by such a spectacle in 
 any street in London, Paris, or New York. It 
 always appears to me that the secret of this 
 enjoyment lies in the temporary superiority to 
 the common hazards and mischances of life ; in 
 seeing casualties, attended when they really 
 occur with bodily and mental suffering, tears, 
 and poverty, happen through a very rough sort 
 of poetry without the least harm being done to 
 any one — the pretence of distress in a jianto- 
 mime being so broadly humorous as to be no 
 pretence at all. Much as in the comic fiction 
 
154 
 
 THE POOR RELATION'S STORY. 
 
 I can understand the mother with a very vuhier- 
 able baby at home, greatly relishing the invul- 
 nerable baby on the stage, so in the Cremorne 
 reality I can understand the mason who is always 
 liable to fall oft' a scaflbld in his working jacket, 
 and to be carried to the hospital, having an 
 infinite admiration of the radiant personage in 
 spangles who goes into the clouds upon a bull, 
 or upside down, and who, he takes it for granted 
 — not reflecting upon the thing — has, by uncom- 
 mon skill and dexterity, conquered such mis- 
 chances as those to which he and his acquaintance 
 are continually exposed. 
 
 I wish the jSIorgue in Paris would not come 
 here as I lie awake, with its ghastly beds, and 
 the swollen saturated clothes hanging up, and 
 the water dripping, dripping all day long, upon 
 that other swollen saturated something in the 
 corner, like a heap of crushed over-ripe figs that 
 I have seen in Italy ! And this detestable Morgue 
 comes back again at the head of a procession of 
 forgotten ghost stories. This will never do. I 
 must think of something else as I lie awake ; or, 
 like that sagacious animal in the United States 
 who recognised the colonel who was such a dead 
 shot, I am a gone 'Coon. What shall I think 
 of? The late brutal assaults. Very good sub- 
 ject. The late brutal assaults. 
 
 (Though wh^her, supposing I should see, 
 here before me as I he awake, the awful phan- 
 tom described in one of those ghost stories, 
 who, with a head-dress of shroud, was always 
 seen looking in through a certain glass door at 
 a certain dead hour — whether, in such a case, it 
 would be the least consolation to me to know 
 on philosophical grounds that it was merely my 
 imagination, is a question I can't help asking 
 myself by the way.) 
 
 The late brutal assaults. I strongly question 
 the expediency of advocating the revival of 
 whipping for those crimes. It is a natural and 
 generous impulse to be indignant at the perpe- 
 tration of inconceivable brutality, but I doubt 
 the whipping panacea gravely. Not in the least 
 regard or pity for the criminal, whom I hold in 
 far lower estimation than a mad wolf, but in 
 consideration for the general tone and feeling, 
 which is very much improved since the whip- 
 ping times. It is bad for a people to be fami- 
 liarised with such punishments. When the whip 
 went out of Bridewell, and ceased to be flourished 
 at the cart's tail and at the whipping-post, it 
 began to fade out of mad-houses, and work- 
 houses, and schools, and families, and to give 
 place to a better system everywhere than cruel 
 driving. It would be hasty, because a few 
 brutes may be inadequately punished, to revive, 
 
 in any aspect, what, in so many aspects, society 
 is hardly yet happily rid of. The whip is a very 
 contagious kind of thing, and difficult to con- 
 fine within one set of bounds. Utterly abolish 
 punishment by fine — a barbarous device, quite 
 as much out of date as wager by battle, but 
 particularly connected in the vulgar mind with 
 this class of offence — at least quadruple the 
 term of imprisonment for aggravated assaults — 
 and, above all, let us, in such cases, have no 
 Pet Prisoning, vain-glorifying, strong soup, and 
 roasted meats, but hard work, and one un- 
 changing and uncompromising dietary of bread 
 and water, well or ill ; and we shall do much 
 better than by going down into the dark to 
 grope for the whip among the rusty fragments 
 of the rack, and the branding-iron, and the 
 chains and gibbet from the public roads, and 
 the weights that pressed men to death in the 
 cells of Newgate. 
 
 I had proceeded thus far, when I found I had 
 been lying awake so long that the very dead 
 began to wake too, and to crowd into my 
 thoughts most sorrowfully. Therefore, I re- 
 solved to lie awake no more, but to get up and 
 go out for a night walk — which resolution was 
 an acceptable relief to me, as I dare say it may 
 prove now to a great many more. 
 
 THE POOR RELATION'S STORY. 
 
 E was very reluctant to take prece- 
 dence of so many respected members 
 of the family, by beginning the round 
 of stories they were to relate as they 
 •mir-K^ sat in a goodly circle by the Christ- 
 
 ^('ijj^ mas fire ; and he modestly suggested that 
 } gi^^ it would be more correct if " John, our 
 ■^ esteemed host" (whose health he begged 
 to drink), would have the kindness to begin. 
 For as to himself, he said, he was so little used 
 
 to lead the way that really But as they all 
 
 cried out here, that he must begin, and agreed 
 with one voice that he might, could, would, and 
 should begin, he left oft' rubbing his hands, and 
 took his legs out from under his arm-chair, 
 and did begin. 
 
 I have no doubt (said the poor relation) that 
 I shall surprise the assembled members of our 
 family, and particularly John, our esteemed host, 
 to whom we are so much indebted for the great 
 hospitality with which he has this day enter- 
 tained us, by the confession I am going to make. 
 But, if you do me the honour to be surprised at 
 
HIS SUPPOSED HABITS AND PURSUITS. 
 
 155 
 
 anything that falls from a person so unimportant 
 in the family as I am, I can only say that I shall 
 be scrupulously accurate in all I relate. 
 
 I am not ^vhat I am supposed to be. I am 
 quite another thing. Perhaps, before I go further, 
 I had better glance at what I am supposed to be. 
 
 It is supposed, unless I mistake — the assem- 
 bled members of our family will correct me if I 
 do, which is very likely (here the poor relation 
 looked mildly about him for contradiction) — 
 that I am nobody's enemy but my own. That 
 I never met with any particular success in any- 
 thing. That I failetl in business because I was 
 unbusiness-like and credulous — in not being 
 prepared for the interested designs of my partner. 
 That I failed in love because I was ridiculously 
 trustful — in thinking it impossible that Christiana 
 could deceive me. That I failed in my expec- 
 tations from my uncle Chill, on account of not 
 being as sharp as he could have wished in 
 worldly matters. That, through life, I have 
 been rather put upon and disappointed in a 
 general way. That I am at present a bachelor 
 of between fifty-nine and sixty years of age, 
 living on a limited income in the form of a 
 quarterly allowance, to which I see that John, 
 our esteemed host, wishes me to make no further 
 allusion. 
 
 The supposition as to my present pursuits and 
 habits is to the following effect. 
 
 I live in a lodging in the Clapham Road — a 
 very clean back-room, in a very respectable house 
 — where I am expected not to be at home in 
 the daytime, unless poorly ; and which I usually 
 leave in the morning at nine o'clock, on pretence 
 of going to business. I take my breakfast — my 
 roll and butter, and my half-pint of coffee — at 
 the old-established coffee-shop near Westminster 
 Bridge ; and then I go into the City — I don't 
 know why — and sit in Garraway's Coffee-house, 
 and on 'Change, and walk about, and look into 
 a few offices and counting-houses where some 
 of my relations or acquaintance are so good as 
 to tolerate me, and where I stand by the fire if 
 the weather happens to be cold. I get through 
 the day in this way until five o'clock, and then 
 I dine : at a cost, on the average, of one-and- 
 threepence. Having still a little money to spend 
 on my evening's entertainment, I look into the 
 old-established cofi'ee-shop as I go home, and 
 take my cup of tea, and perhaps my bit of toast. 
 So, as the large hand of the clock makes its way 
 round to the morning hour again, I make my 
 way round to the Clapham Road again, and go 
 to bed when I get to my lodging — fire being 
 expensive, and being objected to by the family 
 on account of its giving trouble and making a dirt. 
 
 Sometimes, one of my relations or acquaint- 
 ances is so obliging as to ask me to dinner. 
 Those are holiday occasions, and then I gene- 
 rally walk in the Park. I am a solitary man, 
 and seldom walk with anybody. Not that I am 
 avoided because I am shabby ; for I am not at 
 all shabby, having always a very good suit of 
 black on (or rather Oxford mixture, which has 
 the appearance of black, and wears much better; ; 
 but I have got into a habit of speaking low, and 
 being rather silent, and my spirits are not high, 
 and I am sensible that I am not an attractive 
 companion. 
 
 The only exception to this general rule is the 
 child of my first cousin. Little Frank. I have a 
 particular affection for that child, and he takes 
 very kindly to me. Pie is a diftident boy by 
 nature ; and in a crowd he is soon run over, as 
 I may say, and forgotten. He and I, however, 
 get on exceedingly well. I have a fancy that 
 the poor child will in time succeed to my pecu- 
 liar position in the family. We talk but little ; 
 still, we understand each other. We walk about 
 hand-in-hand ; and without much speaking he 
 knows what I mean, and I know what he means. 
 When he was very little indeed, I used to take 
 him to the windows of the toy-shops, and show 
 him the toys inside. It is surprising how soon 
 he found out that I would have made him a 
 great many presents if I had been in circum- 
 stances to do it. 
 
 Little Frank and I go and look at the outside 
 of the Monument — he is very fond of the Monu- 
 ment — and at the Bridges, and at all the sights 
 that are free. On two of my birthdays we have 
 dined on a-la-mode beef, and gone at half-price 
 to the play, and been deeply interested. 1 was 
 once walking with him in Lombard Street, which 
 we often visit on account of my having men- 
 tioned to him that there are great riches there — 
 he is very fond of Lombard Street — when a gen- 
 tleman said to me as he passed by, " Sir, your 
 little son has dropped his glove." I assure you, 
 if you will excuse my remarking on so trivial a 
 circumstance, this accidental mention of the 
 child as mine, ([uite touched my heart and 
 brought the foolish tears into my eyes. 
 
 When little Frank is sent to school in the 
 country, I shall be very much at a loss what to 
 do with myself, but I have the intention of walk- 
 ing down there once a month, and seeing him 
 on a half-holiday. I am told he will then be at 
 play upon the Heath ; and if my visits should 
 be objected to, as unsettling the child, I can see 
 him from a distance without his seeing me, and 
 walk back again. His mother comes of a highly 
 genteel family, and rather disapproves, I am 
 
i:^6 
 
 THE POOR RELATION'S STORY. 
 
 aware, of our being too much together. I know 
 that I am not calculated to improve his retiring 
 disposition; but I think he would miss me be- 
 yond the feeling of the moment, if we were 
 wholly separated. 
 
 When I die in the Clapham Road, I shall not 
 leave much more in this world than I shall take 
 out of it ; but, I happen to have a miniature of 
 a bright-fliced boy, with a curling head, and an 
 open shirt-frill waving down his bosom (my 
 mother had it taken for me, but I can't believe 
 that it was ever like), which will be worth nothing 
 to sell, and which 1 shall beg may be given to 
 Frank. I have written my dear boy a little 
 letter with it, in which I have told him that I 
 felt very sorry to part from him, though bound 
 to confess that I knew no reason why I should 
 remain here. I have given him some short 
 advice, the best in my power, to take warning 
 of the consequences of being nobody's enemy 
 but his own ; and I have endeavoured to com- 
 fort him for what I fear he will consider a 
 bereavement, by pointing out to him that I was 
 ■only a superfluous something to every one but 
 him ; and that having by some means failed to 
 find a place in this great assembly, I am better 
 out of it. 
 
 Such (said the poor relation, clearing his 
 throat and beginning to speak a little louder) is 
 the general impression about me. Now, it is a 
 remarkable circumstance, which forms the aim 
 and purpose of my story, that this is all wrong. 
 This is not my life, and these are not my habits. 
 I do not even live in the Clapham Road. Com- 
 paratively speaking, I am very seldom there. I 
 reside, mostl}', in a — I am almost ashamed to 
 say the word, it sounds so full of pretension — 
 in a Castle. I do not mean that it is an old 
 baronial habitation, but still it is a building 
 always known to every one by the name of a 
 Castle. In it I preserve the particulars of my 
 history ; they run thus : 
 
 It was Avhen I first took John Spatter (who 
 had been my clerk) into partnership, and when 
 I was still a young man of not more than five- 
 and-twenty, residing in the house of my uncle 
 Chill, from whom I had considerable expecta- 
 tions, that I ventured to propose to Christiana. 
 I had loved Christiana a long time. She was 
 very beautiful, and very winning in all respects. 
 I rather mistrusted her widowed mother, who I 
 feared was of a plotting and mercenary turn of 
 mind ; but, I thought as well of her as I could, 
 for Christiana's sake. I never had loved any 
 one but Christiana, and she had been all the 
 world, and oh, far more than all the world, to 
 me, from our childhood ! 
 
 Christiana accepted me with her mother's 
 consent, and I was rendered very happy indeed. 
 My life at my uncle Chill's was of a spare dull 
 kind, and my garret chamber was as dull, and 
 bare, and cold, as an upper prison-room in some 
 stern northern fortress. But, having Christiana's 
 love, I wanted nothing upon earth. I would 
 not have changed my lot with any human being. 
 
 Avarice was, unhappily, my uncle Chill's mas- 
 ter vice. Though he was rich, he pinched, and 
 scraped, and clutched, and hved miserably. As 
 Christiana had no fortune, I was for some time 
 a little fearful of confessing our engagement to 
 him : but, at length I wrote him a letter, saying 
 how it all truly was. I put it into his hand one 
 night, on going to bed. 
 
 As I came down-stairs next morning, shiver- 
 ing in the cold December air ; colder in my 
 uncle's unwarrned house than in the street, where 
 the winter sun did sometimes shine, and which 
 was at all events enlivened by cheerful faces and 
 voices passing along; I carried a heavy heart 
 towards the long, low breakfast-room in which 
 my uncle sat. It was a large room with a small 
 fire, and there was a great bay-window in it, 
 which the rain had marked in the night as if 
 with the tears of houseless people. It stared 
 upon a raw yard, with a cracked stone pave- 
 ment, and some rusted iron railings half up- 
 rooted, whence an ugly outbuilding that had 
 once been a dissecting-room (in the time of the 
 great surgeon who had mortgaged the house to 
 my uncle) stared at it. 
 
 We rose so early always, that at that time of 
 the year we breakfasted by candle-light. When I 
 went into the room, my uncle was so contracted 
 by the cold, and so huddled together in his chair 
 behind the one dim candle, that I did not see 
 him until I was close to the table. 
 
 As I held out my hand to him, he caught up 
 his stick (being infirm, he always walked about 
 the house with a stick), and made a blow at me, 
 and said, " You fool ! " 
 
 " Uncle," I returned, "I didn't expect you to 
 be so angry as this." Nor had I expected it, 
 though he was a hard and angry old man. 
 
 " You didn't expect ! " said he. " When did 
 you ever expect ? When did you ever calcu- 
 late, or look forward, you contemptible dog ? " 
 
 " These are hard words, uncle ! " 
 
 " Hard words ? Feathers, to pelt such an 
 idiot as you with," said he. " Here ! Betsy 
 Snap ! Look at him ! " 
 
 Betsy Snap was a withered, hard-favoured, 
 yellow old woman — our only domestic — always 
 employed, at this time of the morning, in rubbing 
 my uncle's legs. As my uncle adjured her to 
 
HIS UNCLE'S RAGE. 
 
 157 
 
 look at me, he put his lean grip on the crown of 
 her head, she kneeling beside him, and turned 
 her face towards me. An involuntary thought 
 connecting them both with the Dissecting Room, 
 as it must often have been in the surgeon's time, 
 pasesd across my mind in the midst of my anxiety. 
 " Look at the snivelling milksop ! " said my 
 uncle. " Look at the baby ! This is the gentle- 
 man who, people say, is nobody's enemy but 
 his own. This is the gentleman who can't say 
 no. This is the gentleman who was making 
 
 such large profits in his business that he must 
 needs take a partner t'other day. This is the 
 gentleman who is going to marry a wife without 
 a penny, and who falls into the hands of Jeze- 
 bels who are speculating on my death ! " 
 
 I knew, now, how great my uncle's rage was ; 
 for nothing short of his being almost beside 
 himself would have induced him to utter that 
 concluding word, which he held in such repug- 
 nance that it was never spoken or hinted at 
 before him on any account. 
 
 " LOOK AT THE SNIVELLING illLKSOP ! " SAID MY UNCLE. 
 
 " On my death," he repeated, as if he were 
 defying me by defying his own abhorrence of the 
 word. " On my death — death — Death ! But 
 I'll spoil the speculation. Eat your last under 
 this roof, you feeble wretch, and may it choke you ! " 
 
 You may suppose that I had not much appe- 
 tite for the breakfast to which I was bidden in 
 these terms ; but I took my accustomed seat. I 
 saw that I was repudiated henceforth by my 
 uncle ; still I could bear that very well, possess- 
 ing Christiana's heart. 
 
 He emptied his basin of bread-and-milk as 
 usual, only that he took it on his knees with his 
 chair turned away from the table where I sat. 
 When he had done, he carefully snuffed out the 
 candle; and the cold, slate-coloured, miserable 
 day looked in upon us. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Michael," said he, " before we 
 part, I should like to have a word with these 
 ladies in your presence." 
 
 " As you will, sir," I returned ; " but you de- 
 ceive yourself, and wrong us cruelly, if you 
 
i=;8 
 
 THE POOR RELATION'S STORY 
 
 suppose that there is any feeling at stake in this 
 contract but pure, disinterested, faithful love." 
 
 To this he only rephed, " You lie ! " and not 
 one other word. 
 
 ^^^e went, through half-thawed snow and half- 
 frozen rain, to the house where Christiana and 
 her mother lived. My uncle knew them very 
 well. They Avere sitting at their breakfast, and 
 were surprised to see us at that hour. 
 
 " Your servant, ma'am," said my uncle to the 
 mother. " You divine the purpose of my visit, 
 I dare say, ma'am. I understand there is a 
 world of pure, disinterested, faithful love cooped 
 up here. I am happy to bring it all it wants, to 
 make it complete. I bring you your son-in- 
 law, ma'am — and you your husband, miss. The 
 gentleman is a perfect stranger to me, but I wish 
 him joy of his wise bargain." 
 
 He snarled at me as he went out, and I never 
 saw him again. 
 
 It is altogether a mistake (continued the poor 
 relation) to suppose that my dear Christiana, 
 over-persuaded and influenced by her mother, 
 married a rich man, the dirt from whose carriage 
 wheels is often, in these changed limes, thrown 
 upon me as she rides by. No, no. She married 
 me. 
 
 The Avay we came to be married rather sooner 
 than we intended was this. I took a frugal 
 lodging, and was saving and planning for her 
 sake, when, one day, she spoke to me with great 
 earnestness, and said : 
 
 " My dear Michael, I have given you my 
 heart. I have said that I loved you, and I have 
 pledged myself to be your wife. I am as much 
 yours through all changes of good and evil as if 
 we had been married on the day when such 
 words passed between us. I know you Avell, 
 and know that if we should be separated and 
 our union broken off, your whole life would be 
 shadowed, and all that might, even now, be 
 stronger in your character for the conflict with 
 the world would then be weakened to the shadow 
 of what it is ! " 
 
 " God help me, Christiana ! " said I. " You 
 speak the truth." 
 
 " Michael ! " said she, putting her hand in 
 mine, in all maidenly devotion, "let us keep 
 apart no longer. It is but for me to say that I 
 can live contented upon such means as you 
 have, and I well know you are happy. I say so 
 from my heart. Strive no more alone ; let us 
 strive together. My dear Michael, it is not 
 right that I should keep secret from you what 
 you do not suspect, but what distresses my whole 
 life. ISIy mother : without considering that what 
 
 you have lost, you have lost for me, and on the 
 assurance of my faith : sets her heart on riches, 
 and urges another suit upon me, to my misery. 
 I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue 
 to you. I would rather share your struggles 
 than look on. I want no better home than you 
 can give me. I know that you will aspire and 
 labour A\ith a higher courage if I am wholly 
 yours, and let it be so when you will !" 
 
 I was blessed indeed that day, and a new 
 world opened to me. We were married in a very 
 little while, and I took my wife to our happy 
 home. That was the beginning of the residence 
 I have spoken of ; the Castle we have ever since 
 inhabited together, dates from that time. All 
 our children have been born in it. Our first 
 child — now married — was a little girl, whom we 
 called Christiana. Her son is so like little 
 Frank, that I hardly know which is which. 
 
 The current impression as to my partner's 
 dealings with me is also quite erroneous. He 
 did not begin to treat me coldly, as a poor 
 simpleton, when my uncle and I so fatally quar- 
 relled ; nor did lie afterwards gradually possess 
 himself of our business and edge me out. On 
 the contrary, he behaved to me with the utmost 
 good faith and honour. 
 
 Matters between us took this turn : — On the 
 day of my separation from my uncle, and even 
 before the arrival at our counting-house of my 
 trunks (which he sent after me, 7iot carriage 
 paid), I went down to our room of business on 
 our little wharf, overlooking the river ; and there 
 I told John Spatter what had happened. John 
 did not say, in reply, that rich old relatives were 
 palpable facts, and that love and sentiment were 
 moonshine and fiction. He addressed me 
 thus : 
 
 "Michael," said John, "we were at school 
 together, and I generally had the knack of get- 
 ting on better than you, and making a higher 
 reputation." 
 
 " You had, John," I returned. 
 
 " Although," said John, " I borrowed your 
 books and lost them; borrowed your pocket- 
 money, and never repaid it ; got you to buy my 
 damaged knives at a higher price than I had 
 given for them new ; and to own to the windows 
 that I had broken." 
 
 " All not worth mentioning, John Spatter," 
 said I, " but certainly true." 
 
 " When you were first established in this infant 
 business, which promises to thrive so well," pur- 
 sued John, " I came to you, in my search for 
 almost any employment, and you made me your 
 clerk." 
 
HIS CASTLE. 
 
 159 
 
 " Still not worth mentioning, my dear John 
 Spatter," said I ; " still, equally true." 
 
 " And finding that I had a good head for 
 business, and that I was really useful to the busi- 
 ness, you did not like to retain me in that capa- 
 city, and thought it an act of justice soon to 
 make me your partner." 
 
 " Still less Avorth mentioning than any of those 
 other little circumstances you have recalled, 
 John Spatter," said I ; " for I was, and am, sen- 
 sible of your merits and my deficiencies." 
 
 " Now, my good friend," said John, drawing 
 my arm through his, as he had had a habit of 
 doing at school ; while two vessels outside the 
 windows of our counting-house — which were 
 shaped like the stern windows of a ship — went 
 lightly down the river with the tide, as John and 
 I might then be sailing away in company, and in 
 trust and confidence, on our voyage of life ; " let 
 there, under these friendly circumstances, be a 
 right understanding between us. You are too 
 easy, Michael. You are nobody's enemy but 
 your own. If I were to give you that damaging 
 character among our connection, with a shrug, 
 and a shake of the head, and a sigh ; and if I 
 were further to abuse the trust you place in 
 me 
 
 " But you never will abuse it at all, John," I 
 observed. 
 
 " Never ! " said he ; " but I am putting a case 
 — I sa)'-, and if I were further to abuse that trust 
 by keeping this piece of our common aftairs in 
 the dark, and this other piece in the light, and 
 again this other piece in the twilight, and so on, 
 I should strengthen my strength, and weaken 
 your weakness, day b)'' day, until at last I found 
 myself on the high-road to fortune, and you left 
 behind on some bare common, a hopeless num- 
 ber of miles out of the way." 
 
 " Exactly so," said I. 
 
 " To prevent this, Michael," said John Spatter, 
 " or the remotest chance of this, there must be 
 perfect openness between us. Nothing must 
 be concealed, and we must have but one in- 
 terest." 
 
 " My dear John Spatter," I assured him, " that 
 is precisely what I mean." 
 
 " And when you are too easy," pursued John, 
 his face glowing with friendship, " you must 
 allow me to prevent that imperfection in your 
 nature from being taken advantage of by any 
 one ; you must not expect me to humour it " 
 
 '' My dear John Spatter," I interrupted, " I 
 don't expect you to humour it. I want to correct 
 it." 
 
 " And I, too ! " said John. 
 
 " Exactly so ! " cried I. " We both have the 
 
 same end in view; and honourably seeking it, 
 and fully trusting one another, and having but 
 one interest, ours will be a prosperous and happy 
 partnership." 
 
 " I am sure of it," returned John Spatter. 
 And we shook hands most aftectionately. 
 
 I took John home to my Castle, and we had 
 a very happy day. Our partnership throve well. 
 My friend and partner supplied what I wanted, 
 as I had foreseen that he would ; and by improv- 
 ing both the business and myself, amply acknow- 
 ledged any little rise in life to which 1 had helped 
 him. 
 
 I am not {said the poor relation, looking at 
 the fire as he slowly rubbed his hands) very rich, 
 for I never cared to be that ; but I have enough, 
 and am above all moderate wants and an.xieties. 
 My Castle is not a splendid place, but it is very 
 comfortable, and it has a warm and cheerful air, 
 and is quite a picture of Home. 
 
 Our eldest girl, who is very like her mother, 
 married John Spatter's eldest son. Our two 
 families are closely united in other ties of at- 
 tachment. It is very pleasaiit of an evening, 
 when v/e are all assembled together — which fre- 
 quently happens — and when John and I talk 
 over old times, and the one interest there has 
 always been between us. 
 
 I really do not know, in my Castle, what lone- 
 liness is. Some of our children or grandchildren 
 are always about it, and the young voices of my 
 descendants are delightful — oh, how delightful ! 
 — to me to hear. My dearest and most devoted 
 wife, ever faithful, ever loving, ever helpful and 
 sustaining and consoHng, is the priceless bless- 
 ing of my house ; from whom all its other bless- 
 ings spring. We are rather a musical family, 
 and when Christiana sees me, at any time, a 
 little weary or depressed, she steals to the piano 
 and sings a gentle air she used to sing when Ave 
 were first betrothed. So weak a man am I, that 
 I cannot bear to hear it from any other source. 
 They played it once at the theatre, when I was 
 there with little Frank ; and the child said won- 
 dering, " Cousin Michael, whose hot tears are 
 these that have fallen on my hand ?" 
 
 Such is my Castle, and such are the real par- 
 ticulars of my life therein preserved. I often 
 take little Frank home there. He is very wel- 
 come to my grandchildren, and they play to- 
 gether. At this time of the year — the Christmas 
 and New Year time — I am seldom out of my 
 Castle. For, the associations of the season seem 
 to hold me there, and the precepts of the 
 season seem to teach me that it is well to be 
 there. 
 
i6o 
 
 THE CHILD'S STORY. 
 
 " And the Castle is " observed a grave, 
 
 kind voice among the company. 
 
 " Yes. My Castle," said the poor relation, 
 shaking his head as he still looked at the fire, 
 " is in the Air. John, our esteemed host, sug- 
 gests its situation accurately. My Castle is in 
 the Air ! I have done. Will you be so good 
 as to pass the story ? " 
 
 THE CHILD'S STORY. 
 
 NCE upon a lime, a good many years 
 ago, there was a traveller, and he set 
 out upon a journey. It was a magic 
 journey, and was to seem very long 
 when he began it, and very short 
 Avhen he got half-way through. 
 He travelled along a rather dark path 
 for some little time, without meeting 
 anything, until at last he came to a beautiful 
 child. So he said to the child, " What do you 
 do here ? " And the child said, " I am always 
 at play. Come and play with me ! " 
 
 So he played with the child the whole day 
 long, and they were very merry. The sky was 
 so blue, the sun was so bright, the water was so 
 sparkling, the leaves were so green, the flowers 
 were so lovely, and they heard such singing- 
 birds, and saw so many butterflies, that every- 
 thing was beautiful. This was in fine v/eather. 
 When it rained, they loved to watch the falling 
 drops, and to smell the fresh scents. When ic 
 blew, it was delightful to listen to the wind, and 
 fancy what it said, as it came rushing from its 
 home — where w-as that, they wondered ? — whis- 
 tling and howling, driving the clouds before it, 
 bending the trees, rumbling in the chimneys, 
 shaking the house, and making the sea roar in 
 fury. But, when it snowed, that was best of 
 all ; for, they liked nothing so well as to look 
 up at the white flakes falling fast and thick, like 
 down from the breasts of millions of white birds ; 
 and to see how smooth and deep the drift was ; 
 and to listen to the hush upon the paths and roads. 
 They had plenty of the finest toys in the 
 world, and the most astonishing picture-books ; 
 all about scimitars and slippers and turbans, 
 and dwarfs and giants and genii and fairies, and 
 Blue-Beards and bean-stalks and riches and 
 caverns and forests and Valentines and Orsons ; 
 and all new and all true. 
 
 But, one day, of a sudden, the traveller lost 
 the child. He called to him over and over 
 again, but got no answer. So he went upon his 
 
 road, and went on for a little while without 
 meeting anything, until at last he came to a 
 handsome boy. So he said to the boy, " What 
 do you do here?" And the boy said, "I am 
 always learning. Come and learn with me." 
 
 So he learned with that boy about Jupiter 
 and Juno, and the Greeks and the Romans, and 
 I don't know what, and learned more than I 
 could tell — or he either, for he soon forgot a 
 great deal of it. But, they were not always 
 learning ; they had the merriest games that ever 
 were played. They rowed upon the river in 
 summer, and skated on the ice in winter; they 
 were active afoot, and active on horseback ; at 
 cricket, and all games at ball ; at prisoners' 
 base, hare and hounds, follow my _ leader, and 
 more sports than I can think of; nobody could 
 beat them. They had holidays, too, and Twelfth 
 cakes, and parties where they danced till mid- 
 night, and real Theatres where they saw palaces 
 of real gold and silver rise out of the real earth, 
 and saw all the wonders of the world at once. As 
 to friends, they had such dear friends and so 
 many of them, that I want the time to reckon 
 them up. They were all young, like the hand- 
 some boy, and were never to be strange to one 
 another all their lives through. 
 
 Still, one day, in the midst of all these plea- 
 sures, the traveller lost the boy as he had lost 
 the child, and, after calling to him in vain, went 
 on upon his journey. So he went on for a little 
 while without seeing anything, until at last he 
 came to a young man. So he said to the young 
 man, "What do you do here?" And die young 
 man said, "I am always in love. Come and 
 love with me." 
 
 So he went away with that young man, and 
 presently they came to one of the prettiest girls 
 that ever was seen — just hke Fanny in the 
 corner there — and she had eyes like Fanny, 
 and hair like Fanny, and dimples like Fanny's, 
 and she laughed and coloured just as Fanny 
 does while I am talking about her. So the 
 young man fell in love directly — ^just as Some- 
 body I won't mention, the first time he came 
 here, did with Fanny. Well ! He was teased 
 sometimes — just as Somebody used to be by 
 Fanny; and they quarrelled sometimes — just as 
 Somebody and Fanny used to quarrel ; and they 
 made it up, and sat in the dark, and wrote 
 letters every day, and never were happy asunder, 
 and were always looking out for one another 
 and pretending not to, and were engaged at 
 Christmas-time, and sat close to one another by 
 the fire, and were going to be married very soon 
 — all exactly like Somebody I won't mention, 
 and Fanny ! 
 
A VISION OF LIFE. 
 
 iGx 
 
 But, the traveller lost them one day, as he 
 had lost the rest of his friends, and, after calling 
 to them to come back, which they never did, 
 went on upon his journey. So he went on for 
 a little while without seeing anything, until at 
 last he came to a middle-aged gentleman. So 
 he said to the gentleman, " What are you doing 
 here ? " And his answer was, " I am always 
 busy. Come and be busy with me ! " 
 
 So he began to be very busy with that gen- 
 tleman, and they went on through the wood 
 together. The whole journey was through a 
 wood, only it had been open and green at first, 
 like a wood in spring ; and now began to be 
 thick and dark, like a wood in summer; some 
 of the little trees that had come out earliest, 
 were even turning brown. The gentleman was 
 not alone, but had a lady of about the same age 
 with him, who was his Wife ; and they had chil- 
 dren, who were with them too. So they all 
 went on together through the wood, cutting 
 down the trees, and making a path through the 
 branches and the fallen leaves, and carrying 
 burdens, and working hard. 
 
 Sometimes they came to a long green avenue 
 that opened into deeper woods. Then they 
 would hear a very little distant voice crying, 
 " Father, father, I am another child ! Stop for 
 me ! " And presently they would see a very 
 little figure, growing larger as it came along, 
 running to join them. When it came up, they 
 all crowded round it, and kissed and welcomed 
 it ; and then they all went on together. 
 
 Sometimes they came to several avenues at 
 once, and then they all stood still, and one of 
 the children said, " Father, I am going to sea," 
 and another said, "Father, I am going to India," 
 and another, " Father, I am going to seek my 
 fortune where I can," and another, " Father, I 
 am going to Heaven ! " So, with many tears at 
 parting, they went, solitary, down those avenues, 
 each child upon its way ; and the child who went 
 to Heaven, rose into the golden air and vanished. 
 
 Whenever these partings happened, the travel- 
 ler looked at the gentleman, and saw him glance 
 up at the sky above the trees, where the day was 
 beginning to decline, and the sunset to come 
 on. He saw, too, that his hair was turning grey. 
 But they never could rest long, for they had 
 their journey to perform, and it was necessary 
 for them to be always busy. 
 
 At last, there had been so many partings that 
 there were no children left, and only the travel- 
 ler, the gentleman, and the lady went upon their 
 way in company. And now the wood was 
 yellow ; and now brown ; and the leaves, even 
 of the forest trees, began to fall. 
 Edw^in Dkood, Etc., ii. 
 
 So they came to an avenue that was darker 
 than the rest, and were pressing forward on 
 their journey without looking down it when the 
 lady stopped. 
 
 " My husband," said the lady, " I am called." 
 
 They listened, and they heard a voice, a long 
 way down the avenue, say, " Mother, mother ! " 
 
 It was the voice of the first child who had 
 said, " I am going to Heaven ! " and the father 
 said, " I pray not yet. The sunset is very near, 
 I pray not yet ! " 
 
 But the voice cried, " Mother, mother ! " 
 without minding him, though his hair was now 
 quite white, and tears were on his face. 
 
 Then, the mother, who was already drawn 
 into the shade of the dark avenue, and moving 
 away with her arms still round his neck, kissed 
 him, and said, " My dearest, I am summoned 
 and I go ! " And she was gone. And the 
 traveller and he were left alone together. 
 
 And they Avent on and on together, until they 
 came to very near the end of the wood : so near, 
 that they could see the sunset shining red before 
 them through the trees. 
 
 Yet once more, while he broke his way among 
 the branches, the traveller lost his friend. He 
 called and called, but there \vas no reply, and 
 when he passed out of the wood, and saw the 
 peaceful sun going down upon a wide purple 
 prospect, he came to an old man sitting on a 
 fallen tree. So he said to the old man, " What 
 do you do here ? " And the old man said, with 
 a calm smile, " I am always remembering. Come 
 and remember with me ! " 
 
 So the traveller sat down by the side of that 
 old man, face to face with the serene sunset; 
 and all his friends came softly back and stood 
 around him. The beautiful child, the handsome 
 boy, the young man-in love, the father, mother, 
 and children ; every one of them was there, and 
 he had lost nothing. So he loved them all, and 
 was kind and forbearing with them all, and was 
 always pleased to watch them all, and they all 
 honoured and loved him. And I think the 
 traveller must be yourself, dear Grandfather, 
 because this is what you do to us, and what we 
 do to you. 
 
 THE SCHOOL-BOY'S STORY. 
 
 BEING rather young at present — I am get- 
 ting on in years, but still I am rather 
 young — I have no particular adventures of my 
 own to fall back upon. It wouldn't much 
 interest anybody here, I suppose, to know whai 
 
l62 
 
 THE SCHOOL-BOY'S STORY. 
 
 a screw the Reverend is, or what a griffin 
 she is, or how they do stick, it into parents — par- 
 ticularly hair-cutting and medical attendance. 
 One of our fellows was charged in his half's 
 account twelve - and - sixpence for two pills — 
 tolerably profitable at six-and-threepence apiece, 
 I should think — and he never took them either, 
 but put them up the sleeve of his jacket. 
 
 As to the beef, it's shameful. It's not beef. 
 Regular beef isn't veins. You can chew regular 
 beef. Besides which, there's gravy to regular 
 beef, and you never see a drop to ours. Another 
 of our fellows went home ill, and heard the 
 family doctor tell his father that he couldn't 
 account for his complaint unless it was the beer. 
 Of course it was the beer, and well it might be ! 
 
 However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two 
 different things. So is beer. It was Old 
 Cheeseman I meant to tell about ; not the 
 manner in which our fellows get their constitu- 
 tions destroyed for the sake of profit. 
 
 Why, look at the pie-crust alone. There's no 
 flakiness in it. It's solid — like damp lead. 
 Then our fellows get nightmares, and are bol- 
 stered for calling out and waking other fellows. 
 Who can wonder? 
 
 Old Cheeseman one night walked in his 
 sleep, put his hat on over his nightcap, got 
 hold of a fishing-rod and a cricket-bat, and went 
 down into the parlour, where they naturally 
 thought from his appearance he was a Ghost. 
 Why, he never would have done that if his 
 meals had been wholesome. When we all begin 
 to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they'll be sorry 
 for it. 
 
 Old Cheeseman wasn't second Latin Master 
 then ; he was a fellow himself. He was first 
 brought there, very small, in a post-chaise, by a 
 woman who was always taking snufi" and shaking 
 him — and that was the most he remembered 
 about it. He never went home for the holidays. 
 His accounts (he never learnt any extras) were 
 sent to a Bank, and the Bank paid them; and 
 he had a brown suit twice a year, and went into 
 boots at twelve. They were always too big for 
 him, too. 
 
 In the Midsummer holidays, some of our fel- 
 lows who lived within walking distance used to 
 come back and climb the trees outside the play- 
 ground wall, on purpose to look at Old Cheese- 
 man reading there by himself He was always 
 as mild as the tea — and that's pretty mild, I 
 should hope ! — so when they whistled to him, 
 he looked up and nodded ; and when they said, 
 " Halloa, Old Cheeseman, what have you had for 
 dinner?" he said, '• Boiled mutton ;" and when 
 they said, " An't it solitary, Old Cheeseman?" 
 
 he said, "It is a little dull sometimes;" and 
 then they said, " Well, good-bye. Old Cheese- 
 man !" and climbed down again. Of course it 
 was imposing on Old Cheeseman to give him 
 nothing but boiled mutton through a whole 
 Vacation, but that was just like the system. 
 When they didn't give him boiled mutton they 
 gave him rice pudding, pretending it was a treat. 
 And saved the butcher. 
 
 So Old Cheeseman went on. The holidays 
 brought him into other trouble besides the loneli- 
 ness ; because when the fellows began to come 
 back, not wanting to, he was always glad to see 
 them : which was aggravating when they were 
 not at all glad to see him, and so he got his 
 head knocked against walls, and that was the 
 way his nose bled. But he was a favourite in 
 general. Once a subscription was raised for 
 him ; and, to keep up his spirits, he was pre- 
 sented before the holidays with two white mice, 
 a rabbit, a pigeon, and a beautiful puppy. Old 
 Cheeseman cried about it — especially soon after- 
 wards, when they all ate one another. 
 
 Of course Old Cheeseman used to be called 
 by the names of all sorts of cheeses — Double 
 Glo'sterman, Family Cheshireman, Dutchman, 
 North Wiltshireman, and all that. But he never 
 minded it. And I don't mean to say he was 
 old in point of years — because he wasn't — only 
 he was called, from the first, Old Cheese- 
 man. 
 
 At last. Old Cheeseman was made second 
 Latin Master. He was brought in one morning 
 at the beginning of a new half, and presented 
 to the school in that capacity as " Mr. Cheese- 
 man." Then our fellows all agreed that Old 
 Cheeseman was a spy, and a deserter, who had 
 I gone over to the enemy's camp, and sold him- 
 self for gold. It was no excuse for him that he 
 had sold himself for very little gold — two pound 
 ten a quarter and his washing, as was reported. 
 It was decided by a Parliament which sat about 
 it, that Old Cheeseman's mercenary motives 
 could alone be taken into account, and that he 
 had " coined our blood for drachmas."' The 
 Parliament took the expression out of the quarrel 
 scene between Brutus and Cassius. 
 
 When it was settled in this strong way that 
 Old Cheeseman was a tremendous traitor, who 
 had wormed himself into our fellows' secrets on 
 purpose to get himself into favour by giving up 
 everything he knew, all courageous fellows were 
 invited to come forward and enrol themselves 
 in a Society for making a set against him. The 
 President of the Society was First boy, named 
 Bob Tarter. His father was in the West Indies, 
 and he owned, himself, that his father was worth 
 
OLD CHEESEMAN. 
 
 163 
 
 Millions. He had great power among our fel- 
 lows, and he wrote a parody beginning, 
 
 "Who made believe to be so meek 
 Tluit we could hardly hear him speak, 
 Yet turned out an lnformin<: Sneak ? 
 
 Old Cheeseman : " 
 
 — and on in that way through more than a 
 dozen verses, which he used to go and sing, 
 every morning, close by the new master's desk. 
 He trained one of the low boys too, a rosy-cheeked 
 little Brass who didn't care what he did, to go 
 up to him with his Latin Grammar one morning, 
 and say it so : — No»iuiativus pronominum — Old 
 Cheeseman, raro exprimUur — was never sus- 
 pected, nisi distinciioiiis — of being an informer, 
 aut emphasis gratia — until he proved one. Ui 
 — for instance, Vos damnastis — when he sold 
 the boys. Quasi — as though, dicat — he should 
 say, Fneterca nemo — I'm a Judas ! All this pro- 
 duced a great effect on Old Cheeseman. He 
 had never had much hair; but what he had 
 began to get thinner and thinner every day. 
 He grew paler and more worn ; and sometimes 
 of an evening he was seen sitting at his desk 
 with «. precious long snuff to his candle, and his 
 hands before his face, crying. But no member 
 of the Society could pity him, even if he felt 
 inclined, because the President said it was Old 
 Cheeseman's conscience. 
 
 So Old Cheeseman went on, and didn't he 
 lead a miserable life ! Of course the Reverend 
 turned up his nose at him, and of course she(^\^ 
 — because both of them always do that at all 
 the masters — but he suffered from the fellows 
 most, and he suffered from them constantly. 
 He never told about it, that the Society could 
 find out ; but he got no credit for that, because 
 the President said it was Old Cheeseman's 
 cowardice. 
 
 He had only one friend in the world, and 
 that one was almost as powerless as he was, for 
 it was only Jane. Jane was a sort of wardrobe- 
 woman to our fellows, and took care of the 
 boxes. She had come at first, I believe, as a 
 kind of apprentice — some of our fellows say 
 from a Charity, but / don't know — and after her 
 time was out, had stopped at so much a year. 
 So little a year, perhaps I ought to say, for it is 
 far more likely. However, she had put some 
 pounds in the Savings Bank, and she was a very 
 nice young woman. She was not quite pretty ; 
 but she had a very frank, honest, bright face, 
 and all our fellows were fond of her. She was 
 uncommonly neat and cheerful, and uncom- 
 monly comfortable and kind. And if anything 
 was the matter with a fellow's mother, he always 
 went and showed the letter to Jane. 
 
 Jane was Old Cheeseman's friend. The more 
 the Society went against him, the more Jane 
 stood by him. She used K) give him a good- 
 humoured look out of her still-room window, 
 sometimes, that seemed to set him up for the 
 day. She used to pass out of the orchard and 
 the kitchen garden (always kept locked, I be- 
 lieve you !) through the playground, when she 
 might have gone the other way, only to give a 
 turn of her head, as much as to say, " Keep up 
 your spirits ! " to Old Cheeseman. His slip of 
 a room was so fresh and orderly, that it was 
 well known who looked after it while he was at 
 his desk ; and when our fellows saw a smoking 
 hot dumpling on his ])late at dinner, they knew 
 with indignation who had sent it up. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the Society re- 
 solved, after a quantity of meeting and debating, 
 that Jane should be requested to cut Old 
 Cheeseman dead ; and that if she refused, she 
 must be sent to Coventry herself. So a depu- 
 tation, headed by the President, was appointed 
 to wait on Jane, and inform her of the vote the 
 Society had been imder the painful necessity of 
 passing. She was very much respected for all 
 her good qualities, and there was a story about 
 her having once waylaid the Reverend in his 
 own study, and got a fellow off from severe 
 punishment, of her own kind comfortable heart. 
 So the deputation didn't much like the job. 
 However, they went up, and the President told 
 Jane all about it. Upon which Jane turned 
 very red, burst into tears, informed the Presi- 
 dent and the deputation, in a way not at all 
 like her usual way, that they were a parcel of 
 malicious young savages, and turned the whole 
 respected body out of the room. Consequently 
 it was entered in the Society's book (kept in 
 astronomical cipher for fear of detection), that 
 all communication with Jane was interdicted; 
 and the President addressed the members on 
 this convincing instance of Old Cheeseman's 
 undermining. 
 
 But Jane was as true to Old Cheeseman as 
 Old Cheeseman was false to our fellows — in 
 their opinion at all events — and steadily con- 
 tinued to be his only friend. It was a great 
 exasperation to the Society, because Jane was 
 as much a loss to them as she was a gain to 
 him ; and being more inveterate against him 
 than ever, they treated him worse than ever. 
 At last, one morning, his desk stood empty, his 
 room was peeped into and found to be vacant, 
 and a whisper went about among the pale faces 
 of our fellows tliat Old Cheeseman, unable to 
 bear it any longer, hatl got up early and drowned 
 himself. 
 
1 64 
 
 THE SCHOOL-BOY'S STORY. 
 
 The mysterious looks of the other masters 
 after breakfast, and the evident fact that Old 
 Cheeseman was not expected, confirmed the 
 Society in this opinion. Some began to discuss 
 whether the President was liable to hanging or 
 only transportation for life, and the President's 
 face showed a great anxiety to know which. 
 However, he said that a jury of his country 
 should find him game ; and that in his address 
 he should put it to them to lay their hands 
 upon their hearts, and say whether they as 
 Britons approved of informers, and how they 
 thought they would like it themselves. Some 
 of the Society considered that he had better run 
 away until he found a forest, where he might 
 change clothes with a wood-cutter and stain his 
 face with blackberries ; but the majority be- 
 lieved that if he stood his ground, his father — 
 belonging as he did to the West Indies, and 
 being worth Millions — could buy him off. 
 
 All our fellows' hearts beat fast when the 
 Reverend came in, and made a sort of a 
 Roman, or a Field Marshal, of himself with the 
 ruler ; as he always did before delivering an 
 address. But their fears were nothing to their 
 astonishment when he came out with the story 
 that Old Cheeseman, " so long our respected 
 friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains 
 of knowledge," he called him — Oh yes ! I dare 
 say ! Much of that ! — was the orphan child of 
 a disinherited young lady who had married 
 against her father's wish, and whose young 
 husband had died, and who had died of sorrow 
 herself, and whose unfortunate baby (Old 
 Cheeseman) had been brought up at the cost 
 of a grandfather who would never consent to 
 see it, baby, boy, or man : which grandfather 
 was now dead, and serve him right — that's viy 
 putting in — and which grandfather's large pro- 
 perty, there being no will, was now, and all of a 
 sudden and for ever, Old Cheeseman's ! Our 
 so long respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in 
 the pleasant plains of knowledge, the Reverend 
 wound up a lot of bothering quotations by say- 
 ing, would " come among us once more " that 
 day fortnight, when he desired to take leave of 
 us himself in a more particular manner. With 
 these words, he stared severely round at our 
 fellows, and went solemnly out. 
 
 There was precious consternation among the 
 members of the Society now. Lots of them 
 wanted to resign, and lots more began to try to 
 make out that they had never belonged to it. 
 However, the President stuck up, and said that 
 they must stand or fail together, and that if a 
 breach was made it should be over his body — 
 which was meant to encourage the Society : but 
 
 it didn't. The President further said, he would 
 consider the position in which they stood, and 
 would give them his best opinion and advice in 
 a few days. This was eagerly looked for, as he 
 knew a good deal of the world on account of 
 his father's being in the West Indies. 
 
 After days and days of hard thinking, and 
 drawing armies all over his slate, the President 
 called our fellows together, and made the matter 
 clear. He said it was plain that when Old 
 Cheeseman came on the appointed day, his first 
 revenge would be to impeach the Society, and 
 have it flogged all round. After witnessing with 
 joy the torture of his enemies, and gloating over 
 the cries which agony would extort from them, 
 the probability was that he would invite the 
 Reverend, on pretence of conversation, into a 
 private room — say the parlour into which Parents 
 were shown, where the two great globes were 
 which were never used — and would there re- 
 proach him with the various frauds and oppres- 
 sions he had endured at his hands. At the 
 close of his observations he would make a signal 
 to a Prizefighter concealed in the passage, who 
 would then appear and pitch into the Revferend 
 till he was left insensible. Old Cheeseman 
 would then make Jane a present of from five to 
 ten pounds, and would leave the establishment 
 in fiendish triumph. 
 
 The President explained that against the par- 
 lour part, or the Jane part, of these arrangements 
 he had nothing to say ; but, on the part of the 
 Society, he counselled deadly resistance. With 
 this view he recommended that all available 
 desks should be filled with stones, and that the 
 first word of the complaint should be the signal 
 to every fellow to let fly at Old Cheeseman. 
 The bold advice put the Society in better spirits, 
 and was unanimously taken. A post about Old 
 Cheeseman's size was put up in the playground, 
 and all our fellows practised at it till it was 
 dinted all over. 
 
 When the day came, and Places were called, 
 every fellow sat down in a tremble. There had 
 been much discussing and disputing as to how 
 Old Cheeseman would come ; but it was the 
 general opinion that he would appear in a sort 
 of triumphal car drawn by four horses, with two 
 livery servants in front, and the Prizefighter in 
 disguise up behind. So all our fellows sat 
 listening for the sound of wheels. But no wheels 
 were heard, for Old Cheeseman walked after all, 
 and came into the school without any prepara- 
 tion. Pretty much as he used to be, only 
 dressed in black. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said the Reverend, presenting 
 him, " our so long respected friend and fellow- 
 
OLD CHEESEMAN'S TREAT AND MARRIAGE. 
 
 i6S 
 
 pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge, is 
 desirous to offer a word or two. Attention, 
 gentlemen, one and all ! " 
 
 Every fellow stole his hand into his desk and 
 looked at the President. The President was all 
 ready, and taking aim at Old Cheeseman with 
 his eyes. 
 
 What did Old Cheeseman then, but walk up 
 to his old desk, look round him with a queer 
 smile as if there was a tear in his eye, and begin 
 in a quavering mild voice, " My dear com- 
 panions and old friends ! " 
 
 Every fellow's hand came out of his desk, and 
 the President suddenly began to cry. 
 
 " My dear companions and old friends," said 
 Old Cheeseman, " you have heard of my good 
 fortune. I have passed so many years under 
 this roof — my entire life so far, I may say — that 
 I hope you have been glad to hear of it for my 
 sake. I could never enjoy it without exchang- 
 ing congratulations with you. If we have ever 
 misunderstood one another at all, pray, my dear 
 boys, let us forgive and forget. I have a great 
 tenderness for you, and I am sure you return it. 
 I want, in the fulness of a grateful heart, to 
 shake hands with you every one. I have come 
 back to do it, if you please, my dear boys." 
 
 Since the President had begun to cry, several 
 other fellows had broken out here and there ; 
 but now, when Old Cheeseman began with him 
 as first boy, laid his left hand affectionately on 
 his shoulder and gave him his right; and when 
 the President said, " Indeed I don't deserve 
 it, sir ; upon my honour I don't ; " there was 
 sobbing and crying all over the school. Every 
 other fellow said he didn't deserve it, much in 
 the same way ; but Old Cheeseman, not mind- 
 ing that a bit, went cheerfully round to every 
 boy, and wound up with every master — finishing 
 off the Reverend last. 
 
 Then a snivelling little chap in a corner, who 
 was always under some punishment or other, set 
 up a shrill cry of " Success to Old Cheeseman ! 
 Hooray ! " The Reverend glared upon him, 
 and said, " Mr. Cheeseman, sir." But, Old 
 Cheeseman protesting that he liked his old name 
 a great deal better than his new one, all our 
 fellows took up the cry ; and, for I don't know 
 how many minutes, there was such a thundering 
 of feet and hands, and such a roaring of Old 
 Cheeseman, as never was heard. 
 
 After that, there was a spread in the dining- 
 room of the most magnificent kind. Fowls, 
 tongues, preserves, fruits, confectioneries, jellies, 
 neguses, barley-sugar temples, trifles, crackers 
 — eat all you can and pocket what you like — all at 
 Old Cheeseman's expense. After that, speeches, 
 
 whole holiday, double and treble sets of all 
 manners of things for all manners of games, 
 donkeys, pony-chaises and drive yourself, dinner 
 for all the masters at the Seven Bells (twenty 
 pounds a head our fellows estimated it at), an 
 annual holiday and feast fixed for that day every 
 year, and another on Old Cheeseman's birthday 
 — Reverend bound down before the fellows to 
 allow it, so that he could never back out — all at 
 Old Cheeseman's expense. 
 
 And didn't our fellows go down in a body 
 and cheer outside the Seven Bells ! Oh no ! 
 
 But there's something else besides. Don't 
 look at the next story-teller, for there's more yet. 
 Next day, it was resolved that the Society should 
 make it up with Jane, and then be dissolved. 
 What do you think of Jane being gone, though ? 
 " What ! Gone for ever ? " said our fellows, with 
 long faces. " Yes, to be sure," was all the 
 answer they could get. None of the people 
 about the house would say anything more. At 
 length, the first boy took upon himself to ask 
 the Reverend whether our old friend Jane was 
 really gone? The Reverend (he has got a 
 daughter at home — turn-up nose, and red) re- 
 plied severely, " Yes, sir. Miss Pitt is gone." 
 The idea of calling Jane Miss Pitt ! Some said 
 she had been sent away in disgrace for taking 
 money from Old Cheeseman ; others said she 
 had gone into Old Cheeseman's service at a rise 
 of ten pounds a year. All that our fellows knew 
 was, she was gone. 
 
 It was two or three months afterwards, when, 
 one afternoon, an open carriage stopped at the 
 cricket-field, just outside bounds, with a lady 
 and gentleman in it, who looked at the game a 
 long time, and stood up to see it played. No- 
 body thought much about them, until the same 
 little snivelling chap came in, against all rules, 
 from the post where he was Scout, and said, 
 " It's Jane ! " Both Elevens forgot the game 
 directly, and ran crowding round the carriage. 
 It was Jane ! In such a bonnet ! And if you 
 believe me, Jane was married to Old Cheese- 
 man. 
 
 It soon became quite a regular thing, when 
 our fellows were hard at it in the playground, to 
 see a carriage at the low part of the wall where 
 it joins the high part, and a lady and gentleman 
 standing up in it, looking over. The gentleman 
 was always Old Cheeseman, and the lady was 
 always Jane. 
 
 The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in 
 that way. There had been a good many 
 changes among our fellows then, and it had 
 turned out that Bob Tarter's father wasn't worth 
 Millions ! He wasn't worth anything. Bob 
 
i66 
 
 NOBODY'S STORY. 
 
 had gone for a soldier, and Old Cheeseman had 
 purchased his discharge. But that's not the 
 carriage. The carriage stopped, and all our fel- 
 lows stopped as soon as it was seen. 
 
 " So you have never sent me to Coventry 
 after all ! " said the lady, laughing, as our fellows 
 swarmed up the wall to shake hands with her, 
 " Are you never going to do it ? " 
 
 " Never ! never ! never ! " on all sides. 
 
 I didn't understand what she meant then, but 
 of course I do now. I was very much pleased 
 with her face, though, and with her good way, 
 and 1 couldn't help looking at her — and at him 
 too — with all our fellows clustering so joyfully 
 about them. 
 
 They soon took notice of me as a new boy, so 
 I thought I might as well swarm up the wall 
 myself, and shake hands with them as the rest 
 did. I was quite as glad to see them as the 
 rest were, and was quite as familiar with them 
 in a moment. 
 
 " Only a fortnight, now," said Old Cheeseman, 
 " to the holidays. Who stops ? Anybody .? " 
 
 A good many fingers pointed at me, and a 
 good many voices cried, "He does!" For it 
 was the year when you were all away; and 
 rather low I was about it, I can tell you. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Old Cheeseman. " But it's 
 sohtary here in the holiday-time. He had better 
 come to us." 
 
 So I went to their delightful house, and was 
 as happy as I could possibly be. They under- 
 stand how to conduct themselves towards boys, 
 they do. When they take a boy to the play, for 
 instance, they do take him. They don't go in 
 after it's begun, or come out before its over. 
 They know how to bring a boy up, too. Look 
 at their own ! Though he is very little as yet, 
 what a capital boy he is ! Why, my next 
 favourite to Mrs. Cheeseman and Old Cheese- 
 man is young Cheeseman. 
 
 So, now I have told you all I know about Old 
 Cheeseman. And it's not much after all, I am 
 afraid. Is it ? 
 
 NOBODY'S STORY. 
 
 E lived on the bank • of a mighty 
 river, broad and deep, which was 
 always silently rolling on to a vast 
 
 , . , . . undiscovered ocean. It had rolled 
 
 nO^^; '/^-'■^ on ever since the world began. It 
 \f^y had changed its course sometunes, and 
 ^^^T^ turned into new channels, leaving its 
 ^ old ways dry and barren ; but it had 
 
 ever been upon the flow, and ever was to flow 
 
 until Time should be no more. Against its 
 strong, unfathomable stream nothing made head. 
 No living creature, no flower, no leaf, no particle 
 of animate or inanimate existence, ever strayed 
 back from the undiscovered ocean. The tide 
 of the river set resistlessly towards it ; and the 
 tide never stopped, any more than the earth 
 stops in its circling round the sun. 
 
 He lived in a busy place, and he worked very 
 hard to live. He had no hope of ever being 
 rich enough to live a month without hard work, 
 but he was quite content, God knows, to labour 
 with a cheerful will. He was one of an immense 
 family, all of whose sons and daughters gained 
 their daily bread by daily work, prolonged from 
 their rising up betimes until their lying down at 
 night. Beyond this destiny he had no prospect, 
 and he sought none. 
 
 There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, 
 and speech-making in the neighbourhood where 
 he dwelt ; but he had nothing to do with that. 
 Such clash and uproar came from the Bigwig 
 family, at the unaccountable proceedings of 
 which race he marvelled much. They set up 
 the strangest statues, in iron, marble, bronze, 
 and brass, before his door ; and darkened his 
 house with the legs and tails of uncouth 
 images of horses. He wondered what it all 
 meant, smiled in a rough good-humoured way 
 he had, and kept at his hard work. 
 
 The Bigwig family (composed of all the state- 
 liest people thereabouts, and all the noisiest) 
 had undertaken to save him the trouble of 
 thinking for himself, and to manage him and his 
 affairs. " Why, truly," said he, " I have little 
 time upon my hands; and if you will be so 
 good as to take care of me, in return for the 
 money I pay over " — for the Bigwig family were 
 not above his money — " I shall be relieved and 
 much obliged, considering that you know best." 
 Hence the drumming, trumpeting, and speech- 
 making, and the ugly images of horses which he 
 was expected to fall down and worship. 
 
 " I don't understand all this," said he, rubbing 
 his furrowed brow confusedly. " But it has a 
 meaning, maybe, if I could find it out." 
 
 " It means," returned the Bigwig family, sus- 
 pecting something of what he said, "honour and 
 glory in the highest to the highest merit." 
 
 " Oh ! " said he. And he was glad to hear 
 that. 
 
 But, when he looked among the images in 
 iron, marble, bronze, and brass, he failed to find 
 a rather meritorious countryman of his, once the 
 son of a Warwickshire wool-dealer, or any single 
 countryman whomsoever, of that kind. He 
 could find none of the men whose knowledge 
 
THE BIGWIG FA Mil Y. 
 
 167 
 
 had rescued him ami his children from terrific 
 and disfiguring disease, whose boldness had 
 raised his forefathers from the condition of serfs, 
 whose wise flmcy had opened a new and high 
 existence to the humblest, whose skill had filled 
 the working man's world with accumulated won- 
 ders. Whereas, he did find others whom he 
 knew no good of, and even others whom he 
 knew much ill of. 
 
 " Humph ! " said he. " I don't quite under- 
 stand it." 
 
 So he went home, and sat down by his fire- 
 side to get it out of his mind. 
 
 Now, his fireside was a bare one, all hemmed 
 in by blackened streets ; but it was a precious 
 place to him. The hands of his wife were 
 hardened with toil, and she was old before her 
 time : but she was dear to him. His children, 
 stunted in their growth, bore traces of unwhole- 
 some nurture ; but they had beauty in his sight. 
 Above all other things, it was an earnest desire 
 of this man's soul that his children should be 
 taught. " If I am sometimes misled," said he, 
 '• for want of knowledge, at least let them know 
 better, and avoid my mistakes. If it is hard to 
 me to reap the harvest of pleasure and instruc- 
 tion that is stored in books, let it be easier to 
 them." 
 
 But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent 
 family quarrels concerning what it was lawful to 
 teach to this man's children. Some of the family 
 insisted on such a thing being primary and in- 
 dispensable above all other things ; and others 
 of the family insisted on such another thing being 
 primary and indispensable above all other things; 
 and the Bigwig family, rent into factions, wrote 
 pamphlets, held convocations, delivered charges, 
 orations, and all varieties of discourses ; im- 
 pounded one another in courts Lay and courts 
 Ecclesiastical ; threw dirt, exchanged pummel- 
 lings, and fell together by the ears in unintel- 
 ligible animosity. Meanwhile, this man, in his 
 short evening snatches at his fireside, saw the 
 demon Ignorance arise there, and take his chil- 
 dren to itself. He saw his daughter perverted 
 into a heavy slatternly drudge ; he saw his son 
 go moping down the w-ays of low sensuality, to 
 brutality and crime ; he saw the dawning light 
 of intelligence in the eyes of his babies so 
 changing into cunning and suspicion, that he 
 could have rather wished them idiots. 
 
 " I don't understand this any the better," said 
 he; "but I think it cannot be right. Nay, by 
 the clouded Heaven above me, I protest against 
 this as my wrong ! " 
 
 Becoming peaceable again (for his passion 
 was usually short-lived, and his nature kind), he 
 
 looked about hiin on his Sundays and holidays, 
 and he saw how much monotony and weariness 
 there was, and thence how drunkenness arose 
 witli all its train of ruin. Then he appealed to 
 the Bigwig family, and said, " \Ve are a labour- 
 ing people, and I have a glimmering suspicion 
 in me that labouring people of whatever condi- 
 tion were made — by a higher intelligence than 
 yours, as I poorly understand it — to be in need 
 of mental refreshment and recreation. See what 
 we fall into when we rest without it. Come ! 
 Amuse me harmlessly, show me something, give 
 me an escape ! " 
 
 But, here the Bigwig family fell into a state of 
 uproar absolutely deafening. When some few 
 voices were faintly heard, proposing to show 
 him the wonders of the world, the greatness of 
 creation, the mighty changes of time, the work- 
 ings of nature and the beauties of art — to show 
 him these things, that is to say, at any period of 
 his life when he could look upon them — there 
 arose among the Bigwigs such roaring and rav- 
 ing, such pulpiting and petitioning, such maun- 
 dering and memorialising, such name-calling and 
 dirt-throwing, such a shrill wind of parliament- 
 ary questioning and feeble replying — where " I 
 dare not " waited on " I would " — that the poor 
 fellow stood aghast, staring wildly around. 
 
 " Have I provoked all this," said he, with his 
 hands to his afirighted ears, " by what was meant 
 to be an innocent request, plainly arising out of 
 my familiar experience, and the common know- 
 ledge of all men who choose to open their eyes ? 
 I don't understand, and I am not understood. 
 What is to come of such a state of things ? " 
 
 He was bending over his work, often asking 
 himself the question, when the news began to 
 spread that a pestilence had appeared among 
 the labourers, and was slaying them by thou- 
 sands. Going forth to look about him, he soon 
 found this to be true. The dying and the dead 
 were mingled in the close and tainted houses 
 among which his life was passed. New poison 
 was distilled into the always murky, always sick- 
 ening air. The robust and the weak, old age 
 and infancy, the father and the mother, all were 
 stricken down alike. 
 
 What means of flight had he ? He remained 
 there, where he was, and saw those who were 
 dearest to him die. A kind preacher came to 
 him, and would have said some prayers to soften 
 his heart in his gloom, but he replied : 
 
 " Oh, what avails it, missionary, to come to 
 me, a man condemned to residence in this foetid 
 place, where every sense bestowed upon me for 
 my delight becomes a torment, and where every 
 minute of my numbered days is new mire added 
 
i68 
 
 THE GHOST OF ART. 
 
 to the heap under which I He oppressed ? But, 
 give nie my first glimpse of Heaven, through a 
 little of its light and air ; give me pure water ; 
 help me to be clean ; lighten this heavy atmo- 
 sphere and heavy life, in which our spirits sink, 
 and we become the indifferent and callous crea- 
 tures you too often see us ; gently and kindly 
 take the bodies of those who die among us out 
 of the small room, where we grow to be so 
 familiar with the awful change that even its 
 sanctity is lost to us ; and, Teacher, then I will 
 hear — none know better than you, how willingly 
 — of Him whose thoughts were so much with 
 the poor, and who had compassion for all human 
 sorrow ! " 
 
 He was at his work again, solitary and sad, 
 when his Master came and stood near to him 
 dressed in black. He, also, had suffered heavily. 
 His young wife, his beautiful and good young 
 wife, was dead ; so, too, his only child. 
 
 " Master, 'tis hard to bear — I know it — but 
 be comforted. I would give you comfort if I 
 could." 
 
 The Master thanked him from his heart, but, 
 said he, " Oh, you labouring men ! The cala- 
 mity began among you. If you had but lived 
 more healthily and decently, I should not be 
 the widowed and bereft mourner that I am this 
 day." 
 
 " Master," returned the other, shaking his 
 head, " I have begun to understand a little that 
 most calamities will come from us, as this one did, 
 and that none will stop at our poor doors, until 
 we are united with that great squabbling family 
 yonder, to do the things that are right. We 
 cannot live healthily and decently unless they 
 who undertook to manage us provide the means. 
 ^V'e cannot be instructed unless they will teach 
 us ; we cannot be rationally amused unless they 
 will amuse us ; we cannot but have some false 
 gods of our own, while they set up so many of 
 theirs in all the public places. The evil conse- 
 quences of imperfect instruction, the evil con- 
 sequences of pernicious neglect, the evil conse- 
 quences of unnatural restraint and the denial of 
 humanising enjoyments, will all come from us, 
 and none of them will stop with us. They will 
 spread far and wide. They always do ; they 
 always have done — just like the pestilence. I 
 understand so much, I think, at last." 
 
 But the Master said again, " Oh, you labour- 
 ing men ! How seldom do we ever hear of you, 
 except in connection with some trouble ! " 
 
 " Master," he replied, " I am Nobody, and 
 little likely to be heard of (nor yet much wanted 
 to be heard of, perhaps), except when there is 
 some trouble. But it never begins with me, and 
 
 it never can end with me. As sure as Death, it 
 comes down to me, and it goes up from me." 
 
 There was so much reason in what he said, 
 that the Bigwig family, getting wind of it, and 
 being horribly frightened by the late desolation, 
 resolved to unite with him to do the things that 
 were right — at all events, so far as the said 
 things were associated with the direct prevention, 
 humanly speaking, of another pestilence. But, 
 as their fear wore off, which it soon began to do, 
 they resumed their falling out among themselves, 
 and did nothing. Consequently the scourge ap- 
 peared again — low down as before — and spread 
 avengingly upward as before, and carried off 
 vast numbers of the brawlers. But not a man 
 among them ever admitted, if in the least de- 
 gree he ever perceived, that he had anything to 
 do with it. 
 
 So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old 
 way ; and this, in the main, is the whole of No- 
 body's story. 
 
 Had he no name, you ask ? Perhaps it was 
 Legion. It matters little what his name was. 
 Let us call him Legion. 
 
 If you were ever in the Belgian villages near 
 the field of Waterloo, you will have seen, in 
 some quiet little church, a monument erected 
 by faithful companions in arms to the memory 
 of Colonel A, Major B, Captains C, D, and E, 
 Lieutenants F and G, Ensigns H, I, and J, 
 seven non-commissioned officers, and one hun- 
 dred and thirty rank and file, who fell in the dis- 
 charge of their duty on the memorable day. 
 The story of Nobody is the story of the rank 
 and file of the earth. They bear their share of 
 the battle ; they have their part in the victory ; 
 they fall ; they leave no name but in the mass. 
 The march of the proudest of us leads to the 
 dusty way by which they go. Oh ! let us think 
 of them this year at the Christmas fire, and not 
 forget them when it is burnt out. 
 
 THE GHOST OF ART. 
 
 AM a bachelor, residing in rather a 
 dreary set of chambers in the Tem- 
 ple. They are situated in a square 
 court of high houses, which would 
 be a complete well, but for the want 
 of water and the absence of a bucket. 
 I live at the top of the house, among 
 the tiles and sparrows. Like the little 
 man in the nursery story, I live by myself, and 
 all the bread and cheese I get — which is not 
 much — I put upon a shelf. I need scarcely 
 
A TERRIBLE BEING. 
 
 169 
 
 add, perhaps, that I am in love, and that the 
 father of my charming JuHa objects to our 
 union. 
 
 I mention these little particulars as I might 
 deliver a letter of introduction. The reader is 
 now acquainted with me, and perhaps will con- 
 descend to listen to my narrative. 
 
 I am naturally of a dreamy turn of mind ; 
 and my abundant leisure — for I am called to 
 the bar — coupled with much lonely listening to 
 the twittering of sparrows and the pattering of 
 rain, has encouraged that disposition. In my 
 "■ top set " I hear the wind howl, on a winter 
 night, when the man on the ground-floor be- 
 lieves it is perfectly still weather. The dim 
 lamps with which our Honourable Society (sup- 
 posed to be as yet unconscious of the new 
 discovery called Gas) make the horrors of the 
 staircase visible, deepen the gloom which 
 generally settles on my soul when I go home 
 at night. 
 
 I am in the Law, but not of it. I can't 
 exactly make out what it means. I sit in 
 Westminster Hall sometimes (in character) 
 from ten to four ; and when I go out of Court, 
 I don't know whether I am standing on my wig 
 or my boots. 
 
 It appears to me (I mention this in confi- 
 dence) as if there were too much talk and too 
 much law — as if some grains of truth were 
 started overboard into a tempestuous sea of 
 chatf. 
 
 All this may make me mystical. Still, I am 
 confident that what I am going to describe 
 myself as having seen and heard, I actually did 
 see and hear. 
 
 It is necessary that I should observe that I 
 have a great delight in pictures. I am no 
 painter myself, but I have studied pictures and 
 written about them. I have seen all the most 
 famous pictures in the world ; my education 
 and reading have been sufficiently general to 
 possess me beforehand with a knowledge of 
 most of the subjects to which a Painter is likely 
 to have recourse ; and, although I might be in 
 some doubt as to the rightful fashion of the 
 scabbard of King Lear's sword, for instance, I 
 think I should know King Lear tolerably well, 
 if I happened to meet with him. 
 
 I go to all the Modern Exhibitions every 
 season, and of course I revere the Royal 
 Academy. I stand by its forty Academical 
 articles almost as firmly as I stand by the thirty- 
 nine Articles of the Church of England. I am 
 convinced that in neither case could there be, 
 by any rightful possibility, one article more or 
 less. 
 
 It is now exactly three years — three years 
 ago this very month — since I went from West- 
 minster to the Temple, one Thursday afternoon, 
 in a cheap steamboat. The sky was black 
 when I imprudently walked on board. It be- 
 gan to thunder and lighten immediately after- 
 wards, and the rain poured down in torrents. 
 The deck seeming to smoke with the wet, I 
 went below ; but so many passengers were 
 there, smoking too, that I came up again, and 
 buttoning my pea-coat, and standing in the 
 shadow of the paddle-box, stood as upright as 
 I could, and made the best of it. 
 
 It was at this moment that I first beheld the 
 terrible Being who is the subject of my present 
 recollections. 
 
 Standing against the funnel, apparently with 
 the intention of drying himself by the heat as 
 fast as he got wet, was a shabby man in thread- 
 bare black, and with his hands in his pockets, 
 who fascinated me from the memorable instant 
 when I caught his eye. 
 
 Where had I caught that eye before ? Who 
 was he ? Why did I connect him, all at once, 
 with the Vicar of Wakefield, Alfred the Great, 
 Gil Bias, Charles the Second, Joseph and his 
 Brethren, the Fairy Queen, Tom Jones, the 
 Decameron of Boccaccio, Tarn O'Shanter, the 
 Marriage of the Doge of Venice with the 
 Adriatic, and the Great Plague of London ? 
 Why, when he bent one leg, and placed one 
 hand upon the back of the seat near him, did 
 my mind associate him wildly with the words, 
 " Number one hundred and forty-two, Portrait 
 of a gentleman ? " Could it be that I was going 
 mad? 
 
 I looked at him again, and now I could have 
 taken my affidavit that he belonged to the Vicar 
 of Wakefield's family. Whether he was the 
 Vicar, or Moses, or Mr. Burchill, or the Squire, 
 or a conglomeration of all four, I knew not ; 
 but I was impelled to seize him by the throat, 
 and charge him with being, in some fell way, 
 connected with the Primrose blood. He looked 
 up at the rain, and then — oh heaven ! — he 
 became St. John. He folded his arms, resign- 
 ing himself to the weather, and I was frantically 
 inclined to address him as the Spectator, and 
 firmly demand to know what he had done with 
 Sir Roger de Coverley. 
 
 The frightful suspicion that I was becoming 
 deranged returned upon me with redoubled 
 force. Meantime, this awful stranger, inexpli- 
 cably linked to my distress, stood drying him- 
 self at the funnel ; and ever, as the steam rose 
 from his clothes, diffusing a mist around him, I 
 saw through the ghostly medium all the people 
 
lyo 
 
 THE GHOST OF ART 
 
 I have mentioned, and a score more, sacred and 
 profane. 
 
 I am conscious of a dreadful inclination that 
 stole upon me, as it thundered and lightened, 
 to grapple with this man, or demon, and plunge 
 him over the side. But, I constrained myself — 
 I know not how — to speak to him, and in a 
 pause of the storm I crossed the deck, and said : 
 
 " What are you ? " 
 
 He replied hoarsely, " A Model." 
 
 "A what?" said I. 
 
 " A Model," he replied. " I sets to the pro- 
 fession for a bob a hour." (All through this 
 narrative I give his own words, which are in- 
 delibly imprinted on my memory.) 
 
 The relief which this disclosure gave me, the 
 jexquisite delight of the restoration of my confi- 
 dence in my own sanity, I cannot describe. I 
 should have fallen on his neck, but for the con- 
 sciousness of being observed by the man at the 
 wheel. 
 
 " You, then," said I, shaking him so warmly 
 by the hand, that I wrung the rain out of his 
 coat-cuff, " are the gentleman whom I have so 
 frequently contemplated, in connection with a 
 high-backed chair with a red cushion, and a 
 table with twisted legs ? " 
 
 " I am that Model," he rejoined moodily, 
 " and I wish I was anything else." 
 
 " Say not so," I returned. " I have seen you 
 in the society of many beautiful young women j" 
 as in truth I had, and always (I now remember) 
 in the act of making the most of his legs. 
 
 " No doubt," said he. " And you've seen me 
 along with warses of flowers, and any number of 
 table-kivers, and antique cabinets, and warious 
 gammon." 
 
 " Sir .^ " said I. 
 
 " And warious gammon," he repeated in a 
 louder voice. " You might have seen me in 
 armour, too, if you had looked sharp. Blest if 
 I ha'n't stood in half the suits of armour as ever 
 came out of Pratt's shop : and sat, for weeks 
 together, a eating nothing, out of half the gold 
 and silver dishes as has ever been lent for the 
 purpose out of Storrses, and Mortimerses, or 
 Garrardses, and Davenportseseses." 
 
 Excited, as it appeared, by a sense of injury, 
 I thought he never would have found an end for 
 the last word. But, at length it rolled sullenly 
 away wth the thunder. 
 
 " Pardon me," said I, "you are a well-favoured, 
 well-made man, and yet — forgive me — I find, on 
 examining my mind, that I associate you with — 
 that my recollection indistinctly makes you, in 
 short — excuse me — a kind of powerful mon- 
 ster." 
 
 " It would be a wonder it it didn't," he said. 
 " Do you know what my points are?" 
 
 " No," said I. 
 
 " My throat and my legs," said he. " When 
 I don't set for a head, I mostly sets for a throat 
 and a pair of legs. Now, granted you was a 
 painter, and was to work at my throat for a week 
 together, I suppose you'd see a lot of lumps and 
 bumps there, that would never be there at all, if 
 you looked at me complete, instead of only my 
 throat. Wouldn't you ? " 
 
 " Probably," said I, surveying him. 
 
 " Why, it stands to reason," said the Model. 
 " Work another week at my legs, and it'll be 
 the same thing. You'll make 'em out as knotty 
 and as knobby, at last, as if they was the trunks 
 of two old trees. Then, take and stick my legs 
 and throat on to another man's body, and you'll 
 make a reg'lar monster. And that's the way the 
 public gets their reg'lar monsters, every first 
 Monday in May, when the Royal Academy 
 Exhibition opens." 
 
 " You are a critic," said I, with an air of 
 deference. 
 
 " Pm in an uncommon ill-humour, if that's 
 it," rejoined the Model, with great indignation. 
 " As if it warn't bad enough, for a bob a hour, 
 for a man to be mixing himself up with that 
 there jolly old furniter that one 'ud think the 
 public know'd the wery nails in by this time — or 
 to be putting on greasy old 'ats and cloaks, and 
 playing tambourines in the Bay o' Naples, with 
 Wesuvius a smokin' according to pattern in the 
 background, and the wines a bearing wonderful 
 in the middle distance — or to be unpolitely kick- 
 ing up his legs among a lot o' gals, with no 
 reason whatever in his mind, but to show 'em — 
 as if this warn't bad enough, Pm to go and be 
 thrown out of employment too ! '' 
 
 " Surely no !" said I. 
 
 " Surely yes," said the indignant Model. "But 
 I'll grow one." 
 
 The gloomy and threatening manner in which 
 he muttered the last words can never be effaced 
 from my remembrance. My blood ran cold. 
 
 I asked of myself, what was it that this des- 
 perate Being was resolved to grow? My breast 
 made no response. 
 
 I ventured to implore him to explain his 
 meaning. With a scornful laugh, he uttered 
 this dark prophecy : 
 
 " I'll grow one. And, mark my words, it 
 shall haunt you ! " 
 
 We parted in the storm, after I had forced 
 half-a-crown on his acceptance with a trembling 
 hand. I conclude that something supernatural 
 happened to the steamboat, as it bore his reek- 
 
THE GERMAN TASTE. 
 
 171 
 
 ing figure down the river ; but it never got into 
 the papers. 
 
 Two years elapsed, during which I followed 
 my profession without any vicissitudes : never 
 holding so much as a motion, of course. At 
 the expiration of that period, I found myself 
 making my way home to the Temple, one night, 
 in precisely such another storm of thunder and 
 lightning as that by which I had been overtaken 
 on board the steamboat — except that this storm, 
 bursting over the town at midnight, was ren- 
 dered much more awful by the darkness and tlie 
 hour. 
 
 As I turned into my court, I really thought a 
 thunderbolt would fall, and plough the pavement 
 up. Every brick and stone in the place seemed 
 to have an echo of its own for the thunder. 
 The water-spouts were overcharged, and the 
 rain came tearing down from the housetops as 
 if they had been mountain-tops. 
 
 Mrs. Parkins, my laundress — wife of Parkins 
 the porter, then newly dead of a dropsy — had 
 particular instructions to place a bedroom candle 
 and a match under the staircase lamp on my 
 landing, in order that I might light my candle 
 there whenever I came home. Mrs. Parkins 
 invariably disregarding all instructions, they 
 were never there. Thus it happened that on 
 this occasion I groped my way into my sitting- 
 room to find the candle, and came out to 
 light it. 
 
 What were my emotions when, underneath 
 the staircase lamp, shining with wet as if he had 
 never been dry since our last meeting, stood 
 the mysterious Being whom I had encountered 
 on the steamboat, in a thunder-storm, two years 
 before I His prediction rushed upon my mind, 
 and I turned faint. 
 
 " I said I'd do it," he observed in a hollow 
 voice, " and I have done it. May I come 
 in?'' 
 
 " Misguided creature, what have you done ?" 
 I returned. 
 
 " I'll let you know," was his reply, " if you'll 
 let me in." 
 
 Could it be murder that he had done ? And 
 had he been so successful that he wanted to do 
 it again at my expense ? 
 
 I hesitated. 
 
 " May I come in?" said he. 
 
 I inclined my head with as much presence of 
 mind as I could command, and he followed me 
 into my chambers. There I saw that the lower 
 part of his face was tied up, in what is com- 
 monly called a Belcher handkerchief. He 
 slowly removed this bandage, and exposed to 
 view a long dark beard, curling over his upper 
 
 lip, twisting about the corners of his mouth, and 
 hanging down upon his breast. 
 
 " Wliat is this?" I exclaimed involuntarily; 
 " and what have you become ? " 
 
 " I am the Ghost of Art ! " said he. 
 
 The effect of these words, slowly uttered in 
 the thunder-storm at midnight, was appalling in 
 the last degree. More dead than alive, I sur- 
 veyed him in silence. 
 
 *' The German taste came up," said he, " and 
 threw me out of bread. I am ready for the 
 taste now." 
 
 He made his beard a litde jagged with his 
 hands, folded his arms, and said, 
 
 " Severity ! " 
 
 I shuddered. It was so severe. 
 
 He made his beard flowing on his breast, and, 
 leaning both hands on the staff of a carpet- 
 broom which Mrs. Parkins had left among my 
 books, said : 
 
 " Benevolence." 
 
 I stood transfixed. The change of sentiment 
 was entirely in the beard. The man might have 
 left his face alone, or had no face. The beard 
 did everything. 
 
 He lay down, on his back, on my table, and 
 with tliat action of his head threw up his beard 
 at the chin. 
 
 " That's Death ! " said he. 
 
 He got off my table, and, looking up at the 
 ceiling, cocked his beard a little awry ; at the 
 same time making it stick out before him. 
 
 " Adoration, or a vow of vengeance," he ob- 
 served. 
 
 He turned his profile to me, making his 
 upper lip very bulgy with the upper part of his 
 beard. 
 
 " Romantic character," said he. 
 
 He looked sideways out of his beard, as if it 
 were an ivy-bush. " Jealousy," said he. He 
 gave it an ingenious twist in the air, and in- 
 formed me that he was carousing. He made it 
 shaggy with his fingers — and it was Despair ; 
 lank — and it was Avarice ; tossed it all kinds 
 of ways — and it was Rage. The beard did 
 everything. 
 
 "I am the Ghost of Art," said he. "Two 
 bob a hour now, and more when it's longer ! 
 Hair's the true expression. There is no other. 
 I SAID I'd grow it, and I've grown it, and it 
 
 SHALL haunt VOU ! " 
 
 He may have tumbled down-stairs in the 
 dark, but he never walked down or ran down. 
 I looked over the banisters, and I was alone 
 with the thunder. 
 
 Need I add more of my terrific fate ? It has 
 haunted me ever since. It glares up®n me from 
 
172 
 
 OUT OF TOWN. 
 
 the walls of the Royal Academy, (except when 
 Maclise subdues it to his genius,) it fills my 
 soul with terror at the British Institution, it 
 lures young artists on to their destruction. Go 
 where I will, the Ghost of Art, eternally work- 
 ing the passions in hair, and expressing every- 
 thing by beard, pursues me. The prediction is 
 accomplished, and the victim has no rest. 
 
 OUT OF TOWN. 
 
 ITTING, on a bright September 
 morning, among my books and 
 papers at my open window on the 
 cliff overhanging the sea-beach, I 
 have the sky and ocean framed be- 
 fore me like a beautiful picture. A 
 beautiful picture, but with such move- 
 ment in it, such changes of light upon 
 the sails of ships and wake of steamboats, such 
 dazzling gleams of silver far out at sea, such 
 fresh touches on the crisp wave-tops as they 
 break and roll towards me — a picture with such 
 music in the billowy rush upon the shingle, the 
 blowing of the morning wind through the corn- 
 sheaves where the farmers' waggons are busy, 
 the singing of the larks, and the distant voices 
 of children at play — such charms of sight and 
 sound as all the Galleries on earth can but 
 poorly suggest. 
 
 So dreamy is the murmur of the sea below my 
 window, that I may have been here, for anything 
 I know, one hundred years. Not that I have 
 grown old, for, daily on the neighbouring downs 
 and grassy hill-sides, I find that I can still in 
 reason walk any distance, jump over anything, 
 and climb up anywhere ; but, that the sound of 
 the ocean seems to have become so customar)' 
 to my musings, and other realities seem so to 
 have gone aboard ship and floated away over 
 the horizon, that, for aught I will undertake to 
 the contrary, I am the enchanted son of the 
 King my father, shut up in a tower on the sea- 
 shore, for protection against an old she-goblin 
 who insisted on being my godmother, and who 
 foresaw at the font — wonderful creature ! — that 
 I should get into a scrape before I was twenty- 
 one. I remember to have been in a City (my 
 Royal parent's dominions, I suppose), and ap- 
 parently not long ago either, that was in the 
 dreariest condition. The principal inhabitants 
 had all been changed into old newspapers, and 
 in that form were preserving their window-blinds 
 from dust, and wrapping all their smaller house- 
 hold gods in curl-papers. I walked through 
 
 gloomy streets where every house was shut up 
 and newspapered, and where my solitary foot- 
 steps echoed on the deserted pavements. In 
 the public rides there were no carriages, no 
 horses, no animated existence, but a few sleepy 
 policemen, and a few adventurous boys taking 
 advantage of the devastation to swarm up the 
 lamp-posts. In the Westward streets there was 
 no traffic ; in the Westward shops, no business. 
 The water-patterns which the 'Prentices had 
 trickled out on the pavements early in the 
 morning, remained uneffaced by human feet. 
 At the corners of mews, Cochin-China fowls 
 stalked gaunt and savage ; nobody being left in 
 the deserted city (as it appeared to me) to feed 
 them. Public-Houses, where splendid footmen 
 swinging their legs over gorgeous hammer-cloths 
 beside wigged coachmen were wont to regale, 
 were silent, and the unused pewter pots shone, 
 too bright for business, on the shelves. I be- 
 held a Punch's Show leaning against a wall near 
 Park Lane, as if it had fainted. It was deserted, 
 and there were none to heed its desolation. In 
 Belgrave Square I met the last man — an hostler 
 — sitting on a post in a ragged red waistcoat, 
 eating straw, and mildewing away. 
 
 If I recollect the name of the little town on 
 whose shore this sea is murmuring — but I am 
 not just now, as I have premised, to be relied 
 upon for anything — it is Pavilionstone. Within 
 a quarter of a century, it was a little fishing 
 town, and they do say that the time was when 
 it was a little smuggling town. I have heard 
 that it was rather famous in the hollands and 
 brandy way, and that, coevally with that repu- 
 tation, the lamplighter's was considered a bad 
 life at the Assurance offices. It was observed 
 that if he were not particular about lighting up, 
 he lived in peace ; but, that if he made the best 
 of the oil-lamps in the steep and narrow streets, 
 he usually fell over the cHff at an early age. 
 Now, gas and electricity run to the very water's 
 edge, and the South-Eastern Railway Company 
 screech at us in the dead of night. 
 
 But, the old little fishing and smuggling town 
 remains, and is so tempting a jDlace for the 
 latter purpose, that I think of going out some 
 night next week, in a fur cap and a pair of petti- 
 coat trousers, and rmming an empty tub, as a 
 kind of archaeological pursuit. Let nobody with 
 corns come to Pavilionstone, for there are break- 
 neck flights of ragged steps, connecting the prin- 
 cipal streets by back-ways, which will cripple 
 that visitor in half an hour. These are the ways 
 by which, when I run tliat tub, I shall escape. 
 I shall make a Thermopylae of the corner of one 
 of them, defend it with my cutlass against the 
 
PA VILIONSTONE. 
 
 173 
 
 coastguard until my brave companions have 
 sheered off, then dive into the darkness, and 
 regain my Susan's arms. In connection with 
 these break-neck steps I observe some wooden 
 cottages, with tumble-down out-houses, and back- 
 yards three feet square, adorned jvith garlands 
 
 of dried fish, in which (though the General 
 Board of Health might object) my Susan dwells. 
 The South-Eastern Company have brought 
 Pavilionstone into such vogue, with their tidal 
 trains and splendid steam-packets, that a new 
 Pavilionstone is rising uj). I am, myself, of 
 
 " WHETHER HE WAS THE VICAR, OR MOSES, OR MR. BURCHILL, OR THE SQUIRE, OR A CONGLOMERATION 
 
 OK ALL FOUR, I KNEW NOT." 
 
 New Pavilionstone. We are a little mortary 
 and limy at present, but we are getting on capi- 
 tally. Indeed, we were getting on so fast at one 
 time, that we rather overdid it, and built a 
 street of shops, the business of which may be 
 expected to arrive in aoout ten years. We are 
 
 sensibly laid out in general ; and, with a little 
 care and pains (by no means wanting so far), 
 shall become a very pretty place. We ought to 
 be, for our situation is delightful, our air is deli- 
 cious, and our breezy hills and downis, carpeted 
 with wild thyme, and decorated with millions of 
 
174 
 
 OUT OF TOWN. 
 
 wild flowers, are, on the faith of a pedestrian, 
 perfect. In New Pavilionstone we are a little 
 too much addicted to small windows with more 
 bricks in them than glass, and we are not over- 
 fanciful in the way of decorative architecture, 
 and we get unexpected sea views through cracks 
 in the street-doors ; on the whole, however, we 
 are very snug and comfortable, and well accom- 
 modated. But the Home Secretary (if there be 
 such an officer) cannot too soon shut up the 
 burial-ground of the old parish church. It is in 
 the midst of us, and Pavilionstone will get no 
 good of it, if it be too long left alone. 
 
 The lion of Pavilionstone is its Great Hotel. 
 A dozen years ago, going over to Paris by 
 South-Eastern Tidal Steamer, you used to be 
 dropped upon the platform of the main line 
 Pavilionstone Station (not a junction then) at 
 eleven o'clock on a dark winter's night, in a 
 roaring wind; and in the howling wilderness 
 outside the station was a short omnibus, which 
 brought you up by the forehead the instant you 
 got in at the door ; and nobody cared about 
 you, and you were alone in the world. You 
 bumped over infinite chalk, until you were 
 turned out at a strange building which had just 
 left off being a barn without having quite begun 
 to be a house, where nobody expected your 
 coming, or knew what to do with you when you 
 were come, and where you were usually blown 
 about, until you happened to be blown against 
 the cold beef, and finally into bed. At five in 
 the morning you were blown out of bed, and 
 after a dreary breakfast, with crumpled company, 
 in the midst of confusion, were hustled on board 
 a steamboat, and lay wretched on deck until you 
 saw France lunging and surging at you with 
 great vehemence over the bowsprit. 
 
 Now, you come down to Pavilionstone in a 
 free and easy manner, an irresponsible agent, 
 made over in trust to the South-Eastern Com- 
 pany, until you get out of the railway carriage 
 at high- water mark. If you are crossing by the 
 boat at once, you have nothing to do but walk 
 on board and be happy there if you can — I can't. 
 If you are going to our Great Pavilionstone Hotel, 
 the sprightliest porters under the sun, whose 
 cheerful looks are a pleasant welcome, shoulder 
 your luggage, drive it off in vans, bowl it away 
 in trucks, and enjoy themselves in playing ath- 
 letic games with it. If you are for public life at 
 our Great Pavilionstone Hotel, you walk into 
 that establishment as if it were your club ; and 
 find ready for you your news-room, dining-room, 
 smoking-room, billiard-room, music-room, public 
 breakfiist, public dinner twice a day (one pkiin, 
 one gorgeous), hot baths and cold baths. If 
 
 you want to be bored, there are plenty of bores 
 always ready for you, and from Saturday to 
 Monday, in particular, you can be bored (if you 
 like it) through and through. Should you want 
 to be private at our Great Pavilionstone Hotel, 
 say but the word, look at the list of charges, 
 choose your floor, name your figure — there you 
 are, established in your castle, by the day, week, 
 month, or year, innocent of all comers or goers, 
 unless you have my fancy for walking early in 
 the morning down the groves of boots and shoes, 
 which so regularly flourish at all the chamber 
 doors before breakfast, that it seems to me as if 
 nobody ever got up or took them in. Are you 
 going across the Alps, and would you like to air 
 your Italian at our Great Pavilionstone Hotel ? 
 Talk to the Manager — always conversational, 
 accomplished, and polite. Do you want to be 
 aided, abetted, comforted, or advised, at our 
 Great PaviHonstone Hotel? Send for the good 
 landlord, and he is your friend. Should you, or 
 any one belonging to you, ever be taken ill at 
 our Great Pavilionstone Hotel, you will not soon 
 forget him or his kind wife. And when you pay 
 your bill at our Great Pavihonstone Hotel, you 
 will not be put out of humour by anything you 
 find in it. 
 
 A thoroughly good inn, in the days of coach- 
 ing and posting, was a noble place. But, no 
 such inn would have been equal to the reception 
 of four or five hundred people, all of them wet 
 through, and half of them dead sick, every day 
 in the year. This is where we shine, in our 
 Pavilionstone Hotel. Again — who, coming and 
 going, pitching and tossing, boating and train- 
 ing, hurrying in, and flying out, could ever have 
 calculated the fees to be paid at an old-fashioned 
 house? In our Pavilionstone Hotel vocabulary 
 there is no such word as fee. Everything is 
 done for you ; every service is provided at a 
 fixed and reasonable charge ; all the prices are 
 hung up in all the rooms ; and you can make 
 out your own bill beforehand, as well as the 
 book-keeper. 
 
 In the case of your being a pictorial artist, 
 desirous of studying at small expense the phy- 
 siognomies and beards of difterent nations, come, 
 on receipt of this, to Pavilionstone. You shall 
 find all the nations of the earth, and all the 
 styles of shaving and not shaving, hair-cutting 
 and hair letting alone, for ever flowing through 
 our hotel. Couriers you shall see by hundreds ; 
 fat leathern bags for five-franc pieces, closing 
 with violent snaps, like discharges of fire-arms, 
 by thousands ; more luggage in a morning than, 
 fifty years ago, all Europe saw in a week. 
 Looking at trains, steamboats, sick travellers, 
 
AMUSEMENT AND INSTRUCTION. 
 
 175 
 
 and luggage, is our great Pavilionstone recrea- 
 tion. We are not strong in other public amuse- 
 ments. We have a Literary and Scientific In- 
 stitution, and we have a Working Men's Insti- 
 tution — may it hold many gipsy holidays in 
 summer fields with the kettle boiling, the band 
 of music playing, and the people dancing ; and 
 may I be on the hill-side, looking on with plea- 
 sure at a wholesome sight too rare in England ! 
 — and we have two or three churches, and more 
 chapels than I have yet added up. But public 
 amusements are scarce with us. If a poor 
 theatrical manager comes with his company to 
 give us, in a loft, Mary Bax, or the Murder on 
 the- Sand Hills, we don't care much for him — 
 starve him out, in fact. We take more kindly 
 to wax-work, especially if it moves ; in which 
 case it keeps much clearer of the second com- 
 mandment than when it is still. Cook's Circus 
 (Mr. Cook is my friend, and always leaves a 
 good name behind him) gives us only a night in 
 passing through. Nor does the travelling 
 menagerie think us worth a longer visit. It 
 gave us a look-in the other day, bringing with it 
 the residentiary van with the stained-glass win- 
 dows, which her Majesty kept ready-made at 
 Windsor Castle, until she found a suitable oppor- 
 tunity of submitting it for the proprietor's accept- 
 ance. I brought away five wonderments from 
 this exhibition. I have wondered ever since. 
 Whether the beasts ever do get used to those 
 small places of confinement ; Whether the mon- 
 keys have that very horrible flavour in their free 
 state ; Whether wild animals have a natural ear 
 for time and tune, and therefore every four- 
 footed creature began to howl in despair when 
 the band began to play 3 What the giraffe does 
 with his neck when his cart is shut up ; and. 
 Whether the elephant feels ashamed of himself 
 when he is brought out of his den to stand on 
 his head in the presence of the whole Collec- 
 tion. 
 
 We are a tidal harbour at Pavilionstone, as 
 indeed I have implied already in my mention of 
 tidal trains. At low water we are a heap of 
 mud, with an empty channel in it where a couple 
 of men in big boots always shovel and scoop : 
 witli what exact object I am unable to say. At 
 that time, all the stranded fishing-boats turn 
 over on their sides, as if they were dead marine 
 monsters ; the colliers and other shipping stick 
 ■disconsolate in the mud ; the steamers look as 
 if their white chimneys would never smoke more, 
 and their red paddles never turn again; the 
 green sea-slime and weed upon the rough stones 
 at the entrance seem records of obsolete high 
 tides never more to flow; the flagstaft'-halyards 
 
 droop ; the very little wooden lighthouse shrinks 
 in the idle glare of the sun. And here I may 
 observe of the very little wooden lighthouse, that 
 when it is lighted at night, — red and green, — it 
 looks so like a medical man's, that several dis- 
 tracted husbands have at various times been 
 found, on occasions of premature domestic 
 anxiety, going round and round it, trying to find 
 the Night-bell. 
 
 But, the moment the tide begins to make, the 
 Pavilionstone Harbour begins to revive. It 
 feels the breeze of the rising water before the 
 water comes, and begins to flutter and stir. 
 When the little shallow waves creep in, barely 
 overlapping one another, the vanes at the mast- 
 heads wake and become agitated. As the tide 
 rises, the fishing-boats get into good spirits and 
 dance, the flagstaff" hoists a bright red flag, the 
 steamboat smokes, cranes creak, horses and car- 
 riages dangle in the air, stray passengers and 
 luggage appear. Now, the shipping is afloat, 
 and comes up buoyantly to look at the wharf. 
 Now, the carts that have come down for coals, 
 load away as hard as they can load. Now, the 
 steamer smokes immensely, and occasionally 
 blows at the paddle-boxes like a vaporous whale 
 — greatly disturbing nervous loungers. Now, 
 both the tide and the breeze have risen, and you 
 are holding your hat on (if you want to see how 
 the ladies hold their hats on, with a stay, passing 
 over the broad brim and down the nose, come 
 to Pavilionstone). Now, everything in the 
 harbour splashes, dashes, and bobs. Now, the 
 Down Tidal Train is telegraphed, and you know 
 (without knowing how you know), that two hun- 
 dred and eighty-seven people are coming. Now, 
 the fishing-boats that have been out, sail in at 
 the top of the tide. Now, the bell goes, and 
 the locomotive hisses and shrieks, and the train 
 comes gliding in, and the two hundred and 
 eighty-seven come scuffling out. Now, there is 
 not only a tide of water, but a tide of people, 
 and a tide of luggage — all tumbling and flowing 
 and bouncing about together. Now, after in- 
 finite bustle, the steamer steams out, and we (on 
 the Pier) are all delighted when she rolls as if 
 she would roll her funnel out, and are all dis- 
 appointed when she don't. Now, the other 
 steamer is coming in, and the Custom House 
 prepares, and the wharf labourers assemble, and 
 the hawsers are made ready, and the Hotel 
 Porters come rattling down with van and truck, 
 eager to begin more Olympic games with more 
 luggage. And this is the way in which we go 
 on, down at Pavilionstone, every tide. And, 
 if you want to live a life of luggage, or to see it 
 lived, or to breathe sweet air which will send 
 
176 
 
 OUT OF THE SEASON. 
 
 you to sleep at a moment's notice at any period 
 of the day or night, or to disport yourself upon 
 or in the sea, or to scamper about Kent, or to 
 come out of town for the enjoyment of all or 
 any of these pleasures, come to Pavilionstone. 
 
 OUT OF THE SEASON. 
 
 -"^T fell to my lot, this last bleak 
 spring, to find myself in a watering- 
 place out of the Season. A vicious 
 north-east squall blew me into it 
 from foreign parts, and I tarried in 
 ^ it alone for three days, resolved to 
 
 ^^ ^ be exceedingly busy, 
 a* On the first day, I began business by 
 
 looking for two hours at the sea, and staring the 
 Foreign Militia out of countenance. Having 
 disposed of these important engagements, I sat 
 down at one of the two windows of my room, 
 intent on doing something desperate in the way 
 of literary composition, and writing a chapter of 
 unheard-of excellence — with which the present 
 essay has no connection. 
 
 It is a remarkable quality in a watering-place 
 out of the season, that everything in it will and 
 must be looked at. I had no previous suspicion 
 of this fatal truth ; but, the moment I sat down 
 to write, I began to perceive it. I had scarcely 
 fallen into my most promising attitude, and 
 dipped my pen in the ink, when I found the 
 clock upon the pier — a red-faced clock with a 
 white rim — importuning me in a highly vexa- 
 tious manner to consult my watch, and see how 
 I was off for Greenwich time. Having no in- 
 tention of making a voyage or taking an obser- 
 vation, I had not the least need of Greenwich 
 time, and could have put up with watering-place 
 time as a sufficiently accurate article. The pier 
 clock, however, persisting, I felt it necessary to 
 lay down my pen, compare my watch with him, 
 and fall into a grave solicitude about half- 
 seconds. I had taken up my pen again, and 
 was about to commence that valuable chapter, 
 when a Custom-House cutter under the window 
 requested that I would hold a naval review of 
 her immediately. 
 
 It was impossible, under the circumstances, 
 for any mental resolution, merely human, to 
 dismiss the Custom-House cutter, because the 
 shadow of her topmast fell upon my paper, and 
 the vane played on the masterly blank chapter. 
 I was therefore under the necessity of going to 
 the other window ; sitting astride of the chair 
 there, like Napoleon bivouacking in the print ; 
 
 and inspecting the cutter as she lay, all that day, 
 in the way of my chapter, O ! She was rigged 
 to carry a quantity of canvas, but her hull was 
 so very small that four giants aboard of her 
 (three men and a boy), who were vigilantly 
 scraping at her, all together, inspired me with a 
 terror lest they should scrape her away. A fifth 
 giant, who appeared to consider himself " be- 
 low " — as indeed he was, from the waist down- 
 wards — meditated in such close proximity with 
 the little gusty chimney-pipe, that he seemed to 
 be smoking it. Several boys looked on from 
 the wharf, and, when the gigantic attention ap- 
 peared to be fully occupied, one or other of 
 these would furtively swing himself in mid-air 
 over the Custom-House cutter, by means of a 
 line pendent from her rigging, like a young 
 spirit of the storm. Presently, a sixth hand 
 brought down two little water-casks ; presently 
 afterwards, a truck came, and delivered a ham- 
 per. I was now under an obligation to consider 
 that the cutter was going on a cruise, and to 
 wonder where she was going, and when she was 
 going, and why she was going, and at what date 
 she might be expected back, and who com- 
 manded her ? With these pressing questions I 
 was fully occupied when the Packet, making 
 ready to go across, and blowing off her spare 
 steam, roared, " Look at me ! " 
 
 It became a positive duty to look at the 
 Packet preparing to go across ; aboard of which, 
 the people newly come down by the lailroad 
 were hurrying in a great fluster. The crew had 
 got their tarry overalls on — and one knew what 
 that meant — not to mention the white basins, 
 ranged in neat little piles of a dozen each, 
 behind the door of the after-cabin. One lady 
 as I looked, one resigning and far-seeing woman, 
 took her basin from the store of crockery, as she 
 might have taken a refreshment ticket, laid her- 
 self down on deck with that utensil at her ear, 
 muffled her feet in one shawl, solemnly covered 
 her countenance after the antique manner with 
 another, and on the completion of these pre- 
 parations appeared, by the strength of her 
 volition, to become insensible. The mail-bags 
 (oh that I myself had the sea-legs of a mail- 
 bag !) were tumbled aboard ; the Packet left off 
 roaring, warped out, and made at the white 
 line upon the bar. One dip, one roll, one break 
 of the sea over her bows, and Moore's Alma- 
 nac or the sage Raphael could not have told 
 me more of the state of things aboard than I 
 knew. 
 
 The famous chapter was all but begun now, 
 and would have been quite begun, but for the 
 wind. It was blowing stiffly from the east, and 
 
WINDY. 
 
 ^77 
 
 it rumbled in the chimney and shook the house. 
 That was not much ; but, looking out into the 
 wind's grey eye for inspiration, I laid down my 
 pen again to make the remark to myself, how 
 emphatically everything by the sea declares that 
 it has a great concern in the state of the wind. 
 The trees blown all one way ; the defences of 
 the harbour reared highest and strongest against 
 the raging point ; the shingle flung up on the 
 beach from the same direction ; the number of 
 arrows pointed at the common enemy ; the sea 
 tumbling in and rushing towards them as if it 
 were inflamed by the sight. This put it in my 
 head that I really ought to go out and take a 
 walk in the wind ; so, I gave up the magnificent 
 chapter for that day, entirely persuading myself 
 that I was under a moral obligation to have ablow. 
 
 I had a good one, and that on the high-road 
 — the very high road — on the top of the cliffs, 
 where I met the stage-coach with all the out- 
 sides holding their hats on and themselves too, 
 and overtook a flock of sheep with the wool 
 about their necks blown into such great ruffs 
 that they looked like fleecy owls. The wind 
 played upon the lighthouse as if it were a great 
 whistle, the spray was driven over the sea in a 
 cloud of haze, the ships rolled and pitched 
 heavily, and at intervals long slants and flaws 
 of light made mountain-steeps of communica- 
 tion between the ocean and the sky. A walk 
 of ten miles brought me to a seaside town 
 without a cliff, which, like the town I had come 
 from, was out of the season too. Half of the 
 houses were shut up ; half of the other half 
 were to let ; the town might have done as much 
 business as it was doing then, if it had been at 
 the bottom of the sea. Nobody seemed to 
 flourish save the attorney; his clerk's pen 
 was going in the bow-window of his wooden 
 house ; his brass door-plate alone was free from 
 salt, and had been polished up that morning. 
 On the beach, among the rough luggers and 
 capstans, groups of storm-beaten boatmen, like 
 a sort of marine monsters, watched under the 
 lee of those objects, or stood leaning forward 
 against the wind, looking out through battered 
 spy-glasses. The parlour bell in the Admiral 
 Benbow had grown so flat with being out of the 
 season, that neither could I hear it ring when I 
 pulled the handle for lunch, nor could the young 
 woman in black stockings and strong shoes, who 
 acted as waiter out of the season, until it had 
 been tinkled three times. 
 
 Admiral Benbow's cheese was out of the sea- 
 son, but his home-made bread was good, and 
 his beer was perfect. Deluded by some earlier 
 spring day which had been warm and sunny, the 
 Edwin Dkood, Etc, 12. 
 
 Admiral had cleared the firing out of his parlour 
 stove, and had put some flower-pots in — which 
 was amiable and hopeful in the Admiral, but 
 not judicious : the room being, at that present 
 visiting, transcendently cold. I therefore took 
 the liberty of peeping out across a little stone 
 passage into the Admiral's kitchen, and, seeing 
 a high settle with its back towards me drawn out 
 in front of the Admiral's kitchen fire, I strolled 
 in, bread and cheese in hand, munching and 
 looking about. One landsman and two boat- 
 men were seated on the settle, smoking pipes 
 and drinking beer out of thick pint crockery 
 mugs — mugs peculiar to such places, with party- 
 coloured rings round them, and ornaments be- 
 tween the rings like frayed -out roots. The 
 landsman was relating his experience, as yet 
 only three nights old, of a fearful running-down 
 case in the Channel, and therein presented to 
 my imagination a sound of music that it will not 
 soon forget. 
 
 " At that identical moment of time," said he 
 (he was a prosy man by nature, who rose with 
 his subject), " the night being light and calm, 
 but with a grey mist upon the water that didn't 
 seem to spread for more than two or three mile, 
 I was walking up and down the wooden cause- 
 way next the pier, off where it happened, along 
 with a friend of mine, which his name is Mr. 
 Clocker. Mr. Clocker is a grocer over yonder." 
 (From the direction in which he pointed the 
 bowl of his pipe, I might have judged Mr. 
 Clocker to be a Merman, estabhshed in the 
 grocery trade in five -and -twenty fathoms of 
 water.) " We were smoking our pipes, and 
 walking up and down the causeway, talking of 
 one thing and talking of another. We were 
 quite alone there, except that a few hovellers " 
 (the Kentish name for long-shore boatmen like 
 his companions) " were hanging about their lugs, 
 waiting while the tide made, as hovellers will." 
 (One of the two boatmen, thoughtfully regard- 
 ing me, shut up one eye ; this I understood to 
 mean : first, that he took me into the conversa- 
 tion : secondly, that he confirmed the proposi- 
 tion : thirdly, that he announced himself as a 
 hoveller.) " All of a sudden Mr. Clocker and 
 me stood rooted to the spot, by hearing a sound 
 come through the stillness, right over the sea, 
 like a great sorrowful fiute or ^-EoHan harp. We 
 didn't in the least know what it was, and judge 
 of our surprise when we saw the hovellers, to a 
 man, leap into the boats and tear about to hoist 
 sail and get off, as if they had every one of 'em 
 gone, in a moment, raving mad ! But they knew 
 it was the cry of distress from the sinking emi- 
 grant ship." 
 
178 
 
 OUT OF THE SEASON. 
 
 When I got back to my watering-place out of 
 the season, and had done my twenty miles in 
 good style, I found that the celebrated Black 
 Mesmerist intended favouring the public that 
 evening in the Hall of the Muses, which he had 
 engaged for the purpose. After a good dinner, 
 seated by the fire in an easy-chair, I began to 
 waver in a design I had formed of waiting on 
 the Black Mesmerist, and to incline towards the 
 expediency of remaining where I was. Indeed, 
 a point of gallantry was involved in my doing 
 so, inasmuch as I had not left France alone, but 
 had come from the prisons of St, Pelagic with 
 my distinguished and unfortunate friend Madame 
 Roland (in two volumes, which I bought for two 
 francs each, at the bookstall in the Place de la 
 Concorde, Paris, at the corner of the Rue Royale). 
 Deciding to pass the evening tete-a-tete with 
 Madame Roland, I derived, as I always do, great 
 pleasure from that spiritual woman's society, and 
 the charms of her brave soul and engaging con- 
 versation. I must confess that if she had only 
 some more faults, only a few more passionate 
 failings of any kind, I might love her better; 
 but I am content to believe that the deficiency 
 is in me, and not in her. We spent some sadly 
 interesting hours together on this occasion, and 
 she told me again of her cruel discharge from 
 the Abbaye, and of her being re-arrested before 
 her free feet had sprung lightly up half a-dozen 
 steps of her own staircase, and carried off to the 
 prison which slie only left for the guillotine. 
 
 Madame Roland and I took leave of one 
 another before midnight, and I went to bed full 
 of vast intentions for next day in connection 
 with the unparalleled chapter. To hear the 
 foreign mail-steamers coming in at dawn of day, 
 and to know that I was not aboard or obliged 
 to get up, was very comfortable ; so, I rose for 
 the chapter in great force. 
 
 I had advanced so far as to sit down at my 
 window again on my second morning, and to 
 write the first half-line of the chapter and strike 
 it out, not liking it, when my conscience re- 
 proached me with not having surveyed the 
 watering-place out of the season, after all, yes- 
 terday, but with having gone straight out of it 
 at the rate of four miles and a half an hour. 
 Obviously the best amends that I could make 
 for this remissness was to go and look at it 
 without another moment's delay. So — altogether 
 as a matter of duty — I gave up the magnificent 
 chapter for another day, and sauntered out wiih 
 my hands in my pockets. 
 
 All the houses and lodgings ever let to visitors 
 were to let that morning. It seemed to have 
 snowed bills with To Let upon them. This put 
 
 me upon thinking what the owners of all those 
 apartments did out of the season ; how they 
 employed their time, and occupied their minds. . 
 They could not be always going to the Methodist 
 chapels, of which I passed one every other minute. 
 They must have some other recreation. Whether 
 they pretended to take one another's lodgings,, 
 and opened one another's tea-caddies in fun ? 
 Whether they cut slices oft' their own beef and 
 mutton, and made believe that it belonged to 
 somebody else? Whether they played little 
 dramas of life, as children do, and said, " I 
 ought to come and look at your apartments, 
 and you ought to ask two guineas a week too 
 much, and then I ought to say I must have the 
 rest of the day to think of it, and then you 
 ought to say that another lady and gentleman 
 with no children in family had made an ofter 
 very close to your own terms, and you had 
 passed your word to give them a positive answer 
 in half an hour, and indeed were just going ta 
 take the bill down when you heard the knock, 
 and then I ought to take them you know?" 
 Twenty such speculations engaged my thoughts. 
 Then, after passing, still clinging to the walls, 
 defaced rags of the bills of last year's Circus, 1 
 came to a back-field near a timber-yard where 
 the Circus itself had been, and where there was- 
 yet a sort of monkish tonsure on the grass, in- 
 dicating the spot where the young lady had 
 gone round upon her pet steed Fnefly in her 
 daring flight. Turning into the town again, I 
 came among the shops, and they were emphati- 
 cally out of the season. The chemist had no 
 boxes of ginger-beer powders, no beautifying 
 seaside soaps and washes, no attractive scents ; 
 nothing but his great goggle-eyed red bottles, 
 looking as if the winds of winter and the drift 
 of the salt-sea had inflamed them. The grocers' 
 hot pickles, Harvey's Sauce, Dr. Kitchener's 
 Zest, Anchovy Paste, Dundee Marmalade, and 
 the whole stock of luxurious helps to appetite,, 
 were hibernating somewhere underground. The 
 china shop had no trifles from anywhere. The 
 Bazaar had given in altogether, and presented a 
 notice on the shutters that this establishment 
 would reopen at Whitsuntide, and that the pro- 
 i:)rietor in the meantime might be heard of at 
 Wild Lodge, East Cliff". At the Sea-bathing 
 Establishment, a row of neat little wooden houses- 
 seven or eight feet high, I saio the proprietor in 
 bed in the shower-bath. As to the bathing 
 macliines, they were (how they got there, is not 
 for me to say) at the top of a hill at least a mile 
 and a half oft'. The library, which I had never 
 seen otherwise than wide open, was tight shut; 
 and two peevish bald old gentlemen seemed to 
 
THE SHOPS. 
 
 179 
 
 be hermetically sealed up inside, eternally read- 
 ing the paper. That wonderful mystery, the 
 music shop, carried it oft" as usual (except that 
 it had more cabinet pianos in stock), as if season 
 or no season were all one to it. It made the 
 same prodij^ious display of bright brazen wind 
 instruments, horribly twisted, worth, as I should 
 conceive, some thousands of pounds, and which 
 it is utterly impossible that anybody in any 
 season can ever play or want to play. It had 
 five triangles in the window, six pairs of cas- 
 tanets, and three harps ; likewise every polka 
 with a coloured frontispiece that ever was pub- 
 lished : from the original one where a smooth 
 male and female Pole of high rank are coming 
 at the observer with their arms a-kimbo, to the 
 Ratcatcher's Daughter. Astonishing establish- 
 ment, amazing enigma ! Three other shops were 
 pretty much out of the season what they were 
 used to be in it. First, the shop where they 
 sell the sailors' watches, which had still the old 
 collection of enormous timekeepers, apparently 
 designed to break a fall from the masthead : 
 with places to wind them up like fire-plugs. 
 Secondly, the shop where they sell the sailors' 
 clothing, which displayed the old sou'-westers, 
 and the old oily suits, and the old pea-jackets, 
 and the old one sea-chest, with its handles like 
 a pair of rope ear-rings. Thirdly, the unchange- 
 able shop for the sale of literature that has been 
 left behind. Here, Dr. Faustus was still going 
 down to very red and yellow perdition, under 
 the superintendence of three green personages 
 of a scaly humour, with excrescential serpents 
 growing out of their blade-bones. Here, the 
 Golden Dreamer and the Norwood Fortune 
 Teller were still on sale at sixpence each, with 
 instructions for making the dumb cake, and 
 reading destinies in teacups, and with a picture 
 of a young woman with a high waist lying on a 
 sofa in an attitude so uncomfortable as almost 
 to account for her dreaming at one and the 
 same time of a conflagration, a shipwreck, an 
 earthquake, a skeleton, a church porch, light- 
 ning, funerals performed, and a young man in a 
 bright blue coat and canary pantaloons. Here 
 were Little Warblers and Fairburn's Comic 
 Songsters. Here, too, were ballads on the old 
 ballad paper and in the old confusion of types ; 
 with an old man in a cocked-hat, and an arm- 
 chair, for the illustration to Will Watch the 
 Bold Smuggler ; and the Friar of Orders Grey, 
 represented by a little girl in a hoop, with a 
 ship in the distance. All these as of yore, when 
 they were infinite dehghts to me ! 
 
 It took me so long fully to relish these many 
 enjoyments, that I had not more than an hour 
 
 before bedtime to devote to Madame Roland. 
 We got on admirably together on the subject of 
 her convent education, and I rose next morning 
 with the full conviction that the day for the 
 great chapter was at last arrived. 
 
 It had fallen calm, however, in the night, and 
 as I sat at breakfast I blushed to remember that 
 I had not yet been on the Downs. I a walker, 
 and not yet on the Downs ! Really, on so 
 quiet and bright a morning this must be set 
 right. As an essential part of the Whole Duty 
 of Man, therefore, I left the chapter to itself — 
 for the present — and went on the Downs. 
 They were wonderfully green and beautiful, and 
 gave me a good deal to do. When I had done 
 with the free air and the view, I had to go 
 down into the valley and look after the hops 
 (which I know nothing about), and to be 
 equally solicitous as to the cherry orchards. 
 Then I took it on myself to cross-examine a 
 tramping family in black (mother alleged, I 
 have no doubt by herself in person, to have 
 died last week), and to accompany eighteen- 
 pence, which produced a great effect, with 
 moral admonitions which produced none at all. 
 Finally, it was late in the afternoon before I got 
 back to the unprecedented chapter, and then I 
 determined that it was out of the season, as the 
 place was, and put it away. 
 
 I went at night to the benefit of Mrs. B. 
 Wedgington at the Theatre, who had placarded 
 the town with the admonition, " Don't forget 
 IT ! " I made the house, according to my cal- 
 culation, four-and-ninepence to begin with, and 
 it may have warmed up, in the course of the 
 evening, to half-a-sovereign. There was nothing 
 to offend any one, — the good Mr. Baines of 
 Leeds excepted. Mrs. B. Wedgington sang to 
 a grand piano. Mr. B. Wedgington did the 
 like, and also took off his coat, tucked up his 
 trousers, and danced in clogs. Master B. 
 Wedgington, aged ten months, Avas nursed by a 
 shiA^ering young person in the boxes, and the 
 eye of Mrs. B. Wedgington wandered that way 
 more than once. Peace be with all the Wedg- 
 ingtons from A. to Z. May they find them- 
 selves in the Season somewhere ! 
 
 A POOR MAN'S TALE OF A PATENT. 
 
 I AM not used to writing for print. What 
 working-man that never labours less (some 
 Mondays, and Christmas Time and Easter Time 
 excepted) than twelve or fourteen hour a day. 
 
i8o 
 
 A POOR MAN'S TALE OF A PATENT. 
 
 is ? But I have been asked to put down, plain, 
 what I have got to say ; and so I take pen and 
 ink, and do it to the best of my power, hoping 
 defects will find excuse. 
 
 I was born nigh London, but have worked in 
 a shop at Birmingham (what you would call 
 Manufactories, we call Shops), almost ever since 
 I was out of my time. I served my apprentice- 
 ship at Deptford, nigh where I was born, and I 
 am a smith by trade. My name is John. I 
 have been called " Old John " ever since I was 
 nineteen year of age, on account of not having 
 much hair. I am fifty-six year of age at the 
 present time, and I don't find myself with more 
 hair, nor yet with less, to signify, than at nine- 
 teen year of age aforesaid. 
 
 I have been married five-and-thirty year, come 
 -next April. I was married on All Fools' Day. 
 Let them laugh that win. I won a good wife 
 that day, and it was as sensible a day to me as 
 ever I had. 
 
 We have had a matter of ten children, six 
 whereof are living. My eldest son is engineer 
 in the Italian steam-packet " Mezzo Giorno, 
 plying between Marseilles and Naples, and 
 calling at Genoa, Leghorn, and Civita Vecchia." 
 He was a good workman. He invented a many 
 useful little things that brought him in — nothing. 
 I have two sons doing well at Sydney, New 
 South Wales— single, when last heard from. 
 One of my sons (James) went wild and for a 
 soldier, where he was shot in India, living six 
 weeks in hospital with a musket- ball lodged in 
 his shoulder-blade, which he wrote with his own 
 hand. He was the best looking. One of my 
 two daughters (Mary) is comfortable in her 
 circumstances, but water on the chest. The 
 other (Charlotte), her husband run away from 
 her in the basest manner, and she and her three 
 children live with us. The youngest, six year 
 old, has a turn for mechanics. 
 
 I am not a Chartist, and I never was. I don't 
 mean to say but what I see a good many public 
 points to complain of; still I don't think that's 
 the way to set them right. If I did think so, I 
 should be a Chartist. But I don't think so, and I 
 am not a Chartist. I read the paper, and hear dis- 
 cussion, at what we call " a parlour" in Birming- 
 ham, and I know many good men and workmen 
 who are Chartists. Note. Not Physical force. 
 
 It won't be took as boastful in me if I make 
 the remark (for I can't put down what I have 
 got to say, without putting that down before 
 going any further), that I have always been of an 
 ingenious turn. I once got twenty pound by a 
 screw, and it's in use now. I have been twenty 
 year, off and on, completing an Invention and 
 
 perfecting it. I perfected of it last Christmas Eve 
 at ten o'clock at night. Me and my wife stood 
 and let some tears fall over the Model, when it 
 was done and I brought her in to take a look at it. 
 
 A friend of mine, by the name of William 
 Butcher, is a Chartist. Moderate. He is a 
 good speaker. He is very animated. I have 
 often heard him deliver that what is, at every 
 turn, in the way of us working-men, is, that too 
 many places have been made in the course of 
 time, to provide for people that never ought to 
 have been provided for; and that we have to 
 obey forms and to pay fees to support those 
 places when we shouldn't ought. " True," (de- 
 livers William Butcher,) " all the public has to 
 do this, but it falls heaviest on the working- 
 man, because he has least to spare ; and like- 
 wise because impediments shouldn't be put in 
 his way, when he wants redress of wrong, or 
 furtherance of right." Note. I have wrote 
 down those words from William Butcher's own 
 mouth. W. B. delivering them fresh for the 
 aforesaid purpose. 
 
 Now, to my Model again. There it was, 
 perfected of, on Christmas Eve, gone nigh a 
 year, at ten o'clock at night. All the money I 
 could spare I had laid out upon the Model; 
 and when times was bad, or my daughter Char- 
 lotte's children sickly, or both, it had stood still, 
 months at a spell. I had pulled it to pieces, 
 and made it over again with improvements, I 
 don't know how often. There it stood at last, 
 a perfected Model, as aforesaid. 
 
 William Butcher and me had a long talk, 
 Christmas Day, respecting of the Model. Wil- 
 liam is very sensible. But sometimes cranky. 
 William said, " What will you do with it, John ?" 
 I said, " Patent it." William said, " How 
 Patent it, John ? " I said, " By taking out a 
 Patent." William then deUvered that the law 
 of Patent was a cruel wrong. William said, 
 " John, if you make your invention public before 
 you get a Patent, any one may rob you of the 
 fruits of your hard work. You are put in a cleft 
 stick, John, Either you must drive a bargain 
 very much against yourself, by getting a party 
 to come forward beforehand with the great 
 expenses of the Patent ; or, you must be put 
 about, from post to pillar, among so many 
 parties, trying to make a better bargain for 
 yourself, and showing your invention, that your 
 invention will be took from you over your head." 
 I said, " William Butcher, are you cranky? You 
 are sometimes cranky." William said, " No, 
 John, I tell you the truth;" which he then 
 delivered more at length. I said to W. B. I 
 would Patent the invention myself. 
 
A COSTLY PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 i8i 
 
 My wife's brother, George Bury of West 
 Bromwich (his wife unfortunately took to drink- 
 ing, made away with everything, and seventeen 
 times committed to Birmingham Gaol before 
 happy release in every point of view), left my 
 wife, his sister, when he died, a legacy of one 
 hundred and twenty-eight pound ten. Bank of 
 England Stocks. Me and my wife had never 
 broke into that money yet. Note. We might 
 come to be old, and past our work. We now 
 agreed to Patent the invention. We said we 
 would make a hole in it — I mean in the afore- 
 said money — and Patent the invention. Wil- 
 liam Butcher wrote me a letter to Thomas Joy, 
 in London. T. J. is a carpenter, six foot four in 
 height, and plays quoits well. He lives in 
 Chelsea, London, by the church. I got leave 
 from the shop, to be took on again when I come 
 back. I am a good workman. Not a Teeto- 
 taler; but never drunk. When the Christmas 
 holidays were over, I went up to London by 
 the Parliamentary Train, and hired a lodging 
 for a week with Thomas Joy. He is married. 
 He has one son gone to sea. 
 
 Thomas Joy delivered (from a book he had) 
 that the first step to be took, in Patenting the 
 invention, was to prepare a petition unto Queen 
 Victoria. William Butcher had delivered simi- 
 lar, and drawn it up. Note. William is a ready 
 writer. A declaration before a Master in Chan- 
 cery was to be added to it. That we likewise 
 drew up. After a deal of trouble I found out 
 a Master, in Southampton Buildings, Chancery 
 Lane, nigh Temple Bar, where I made the de- 
 claration, and paid eighteenpence. I was told 
 to take the declaration and petition to the Home 
 Office, in Whitehall, where I left it to be signed 
 by the Home Secretary (after I had found the 
 office out), and where I paid two pound, two, 
 and sixpence. In six days he signed it, and I 
 was told to take it to the Attorney-General's 
 chambers, and leave it there for a report. I did 
 so, and paid four pound, four. Note. Nobody, 
 all through, ever thankful for their money, but 
 all uncivil. 
 
 My lodging at Thomas Joy's was now hired 
 for another week, whereof five days were gone. 
 The Attorney-General made what they called a 
 Report-of-course (my invention being, as William 
 Butcher had delivered before starting, unop- 
 posed), and I was sent back with it to the Home 
 Office. They made a Copy of it, which was 
 called a Warrant. For this warrant, I paid seven 
 pound, thirteen, and six. It was sent to the 
 Queen, to sign. The Queen sent it back, signed. 
 The Home Secretary signed it again. The gen- 
 tleman throwed it at me when I called, and said, 
 
 " Now take it to the Patent Office in Lincoln's 
 Inn." I was then in my third week at Thomas 
 Joy's, living very sparing, on account of fees. I 
 found myself losing heart. 
 
 At the Patent Office in Lincoln's Inn, they 
 made " a draft of the Queen's bill," of my inven- 
 tion, and a " docket of the bill." I paid five 
 pound, ten, and six, for this. They " engrossed 
 two copies of the bill ; one for the Signet Office, 
 and one for the Privy-Seal Office." I paid one 
 pound, seven, and six, for this. Stamp duty 
 over and above, three pound. The Engrossing 
 Clerk of the same office engrossed the Queen's 
 bill for signature. I paid him one pound, one. 
 Stamp duty, again, one pound, ten. I was next 
 to take the Queen's bill to the Attorney-General 
 again, and get it signed again. I took it, and 
 paid five pound more. I fetched it away, and 
 took it to the Home Secretary again. He sent 
 it to the Queen again. She signed it again. I 
 paid seven pound, thirteen, and six, more, for 
 this. I had been over a month at Thomas Joy's. 
 I was quite wore out, patience and pocket. 
 
 Thomas Joy delivered all this, as it went on, 
 to William Butcher. William Butcher delivered 
 it again to three Birmingham Parlours, from 
 which it got to all the other Parlours, and was 
 took, as I have been told since, right through all 
 the shops in the North of England. Note. 
 William Butcher delivered, at his Parlour, in a 
 speech, that it was a Patent way of making 
 Chartists. 
 
 But I hadn't nigh done yet. The Queen's 
 bill was to be took to the Signet Office in 
 Somerset House, Strand — where the stamp shop 
 is. The Clerk of the Signet made "a Signet 
 bill for the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal." I 
 paid him four pound, seven. The Clerk of the 
 Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal made " a Privy- 
 Seal bill for the Lord Chancellor." I paid him 
 four pound, two. The Privy-Seal bill was handed 
 over to the Clerk of the Patents, who engrossed 
 the aforesaid. I paid him five pound, seventeen, 
 and eight ; at the same time, I paid Stamp duty 
 for the Patent, in one lump, thirty pound. I 
 next paid for " boxes for the Patent," nine and 
 sixpence. Note. Thomas Joy would have made 
 the same at a profit for eighteenpence. I next 
 paid " fees to the Deputy, the Lord Chancellor's 
 Purse-bearer," two pound, two. I next paid 
 " fees to the Clerk of the Hanaper," seven pound, 
 thirteen. I next paid " fees to the Deputy Clerk 
 of the Hanaper," ten shillings. I next paid, to 
 the Lord Chancellor again, one pound, eleven, 
 and six. Last of all, I paid " fees to the De- 
 puty Sealer, and Deputy Chaff-wax," ten shillings 
 and sixpence. I had lodged at Thomas Joy's 
 
THE NOBLE SAVAGE. 
 
 over six weeks, and the unopposed Patent for 
 my invention, for England only, had cost me 
 ninety-six pound, seven, and eightpence. If I 
 had taken it out for the United Kingdom, it 
 would have cost me more than three hundred 
 pound. 
 
 Now, teaching had not come up but very 
 limited when I was young. So much the worse 
 for me you'll say. I say the same. ^ViIliam 
 Butcher is twenty year younger than me. He 
 knows a hundred year more. If William But- 
 cher had wanted to Patent an invention, he 
 might have been sharper than myself when 
 hustled backwards and forwards among all those 
 offices, though I doubt if so patient. Note. 
 William being sometimes cranky, and consider 
 porters, messengers, and clerks. 
 
 Tliereby I say nothing of my being tired of 
 my life, while I was Patenting my invention. 
 But I put this : Is it reasonable to make a man 
 feel as if, in inventing an ingenious improvement 
 meant to do good, he had done something 
 wrong ? How else can a man feel, when he is 
 met by such difficulties at every turn ? All in- 
 ventors taking out a Patent must feel so. And 
 look at the expense. How hard on me, and 
 how hard on the country if there's any merit in 
 me (and my invention is took up now, I am 
 thankful to say, and doing well), to put me to 
 all that expense before I can move a finger ! 
 Make the addition yourself, and it'll come to 
 ninety-six pound, seven, and eightpence. No 
 more, and no less. 
 
 What can I say against William Butcher about 
 places ? Look at the Home Secretar}'-, the 
 Attorney-General, the Patent Office, the En- 
 grossing Clerk, the Lord Chancellor, the Privy 
 Seal, the Clerk of the Patents, the Lord Chan- 
 cellor's Purse-bearer, the Clerk of the Hanaper, 
 the Deputy Clerk of the Hanaper, the Deputy 
 Sealer, and the Deputy Chaff-wax. No man in 
 England could get a Patent for an india-rubber 
 band, or an iron hoop, without feeing all of 
 them. Some of them, over and over again. I 
 went through thirty-five stages. I began with 
 the Queen upon the Throne. I ended with the 
 Deputy Chaff-wax. Note. I should like to see 
 the Deputy Chaff wax. Is it a man, or what 
 is it? 
 
 What I had to tell, I have told. I have wrote 
 it down. I hope it's plain. Not so much in 
 the handwriting (though nothing to boast of 
 there), as in the sense of it. I will now con- 
 clude with Thomas Joy. Thomas said to me, 
 when we parted, "John, if the laws of this country 
 were as honest as they ought to be, you would 
 have come to London — registered an exact de- 
 
 scription and drawing of your invention — paid 
 half-a-crown or so for doing of it — and therein 
 and thereby have got your Patent." 
 
 My opinion is the same as Thomas Joy. 
 Further. In William Butcher's delivering '' that 
 the whole gang of Hanapers and Chaft-waxes 
 must be done away with, and that England has 
 been chaffed and waxed sufficient," I agree. 
 
 •"xHE NOBLE SAVAGE. 
 
 O come to the point at once, I beg 
 to say that I have not the least 
 belief in the Noble Savage. I con- 
 sider him a prodigious nuisance, 
 and an enormous superstition. His 
 calling rum fire-water, and me a pale face, 
 wholly fails to reconcile me to him. I 
 don't care what he calls me. I call him 
 a savage, and I call a savage a something highly 
 desirable to be civilised off the face of the earth. 
 I think a mere gent (which I take to be the low- 
 est form of civilisation) better than a howling, 
 whistling, clucking, stamping, jumping, tearing 
 savage. It is all one to me, whether he sticks a 
 fish-bone through his visage, or bits of trees 
 through the lobes of his ears, or birds' feathers 
 in his hair ; whether he flattens his head be- 
 tween two boards, or spreads his nose over the 
 breadth of his face, or drags his lower lip down 
 by great weights, or blackens his teeth, or 
 knocks them out, or paints one cheek red and 
 the other blue, or tattooes himself, or oils him- 
 self, or rubs his body with fat, or crimps it with 
 knives. Yielding to whichsoever of these agree- 
 able eccentricities, he is a savage — cruel, false, 
 thievish, murderous ; addicted more or less to 
 grease, entrails, and beastly customs ; a wild 
 animal with the questionable gift of boasting ; 
 a conceited, tiresome, bloodthirsty, monotonous 
 humbug. 
 
 Yet it is extraordinary to observe how some 
 people will talk about him, as they talk about 
 the good old times ; how they will regret his 
 disappearance, in the course of this world's 
 development, from such and such lands where 
 his absence is a blessed relief, and an indispen- 
 sable preparation for the sowing of the very first 
 seeds of any influence that can exalt humanity ; 
 how, even with the evidence of himself before 
 them, they will either be determined to believe, 
 or will suffer themselves to be persuaded into 
 believing, that he is something which their five 
 senses tell them he is not. 
 
 There was Mr. Catlin, some iay^ years ago, 
 
MR. CATLIN AND HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 183 
 
 with his Ojibbeway Indians. Mr, Catlin was 
 an energetic, earnest man, who had Hved among 
 more tribes of Indians than I need reckon ui) 
 here, and who had written a picturesciue and 
 •flowing book about them. With his party of 
 Indians squatting and spitting on the table 
 before him, or dancing their miserable jigs after 
 their own dreary manner, he called, in all good 
 faith, upon his civilised audience to take notice 
 of their symmetry and grace, their perfect limbs, 
 and the exquisite expression of their panto- 
 mime ; and his civilised audience, in all good 
 faith, complied and admired. Whereas, as 
 mere animals, they were wretched creatures, 
 very low in the scale and very poorly formed ; 
 and as men and women possessing any power 
 of truthful dramatic expression by means of 
 action, they were no better than the chorus at 
 an Italian Opera in England — and would have 
 been worse if such a thing were possible. 
 
 Mine are no new views of the noble savage. 
 The greatest writers on natural history found 
 him out long ago. Buffon knew what he was, 
 and showed why he is the sulky tyrant that he 
 is to his women, and how it happens (Heaven 
 be praised !) that his race is spare in numbers. 
 For evidence of the quality of his moral nature, 
 pass himself for a moment and refer to his 
 " faithful dog." Has he ever improved a dog, 
 or attached a dog, since his nobility first ran 
 wild in woods, and was brought down (at a very 
 long shot) by Pope ? Or does the animal that 
 is the friend of man always degenerate in his 
 low society? 
 
 It is not the miserable nature of the noble 
 savage that is the new thing ; it is the whimper- 
 ing over him with maudlin admiration, and the 
 affecting to regret him, and the drawing of any 
 comparison of advantage between the blemishes 
 of civilisation and the tenor of his swinish life. 
 There may have been a change now and then 
 in those diseased absurdities, but there is none 
 in him. 
 
 Think of the Bushmen. Think of the two 
 men and the two women who have been exhi- 
 bited about England for some years. Are the 
 majority of persons — who remember the horrid 
 little leader of that party in his festering bundle 
 of hides, with his filth and his antipathy to water, 
 and his straddled legs, and his odious eyes 
 shaded by his brutal hand, and his cry of 
 " Qu-u-u-u-aaa ! " (Bosjesman for something 
 desperately insulting I have no doubt) — con- 
 scious of an affectionate yearning towards that 
 noble savage, or is it idiosyncratic in me to 
 abhor, detest, abominate, and abjure him? I 
 tjave no reserve on this subject, and will frankly 
 
 state that, setting aside that stage of the enter- 
 tainment when he counterfeited the death of 
 some creature he had shot, by laying his head 
 on his hand and shaking his left leg — at which 
 time I think it would have been justifiable 
 homicide to slay him — I have never seen that 
 group sleeping, smoking, and expectorating 
 round their brazier, but I have sincerely de- 
 sired that something might happen to the char- 
 coal smouldering therein, which would cause the 
 immediate suftbcation of the whole of the noble 
 strangers. 
 
 There is at present a party of Zulu Kaffirs 
 exhibiting at the St. George's Gallery, Hyde 
 Park Corner, London. These noble savages 
 are represented in a most agreeable manner ; 
 they are seen in an elegant theatre, fitted with 
 appropriate scenery of great beauty, and they 
 are described in a very sensible and unpretend- 
 ing lecture, delivered with a modesty which is 
 quite a pattern to all similar exponents. Though 
 extremely ugly, they are much better shaped 
 than such of their predecessors as I have referred 
 to ; and they are rather picturesque to the eye, 
 though far from odoriferous to the nose. What 
 a visitor left to his own interpretings and ima- 
 ginings might suppose these noblemen to be 
 about, when they give vent to that pantomimic 
 expression which is quite settled to be the natural 
 gift of the noble savage, I cannot possibly con- 
 ceive ; for it is so much too luminous for my 
 personal civilisation that it conveys no idea to 
 my mind beyond a general stamping, ramping, 
 and raving, remarkable (as everything in savage 
 life is) for its dire uniformity. But let us — with 
 the interpreter's assistance, of which I for one 
 stand so much in need — see what the noble 
 savage does in Zulu Kaffirland. 
 
 The noble savage sets a king to reign over 
 him, to whom he submits his life and limbs with- 
 out a murmur or question, and whose whole life 
 is passed chin deep in a lake of blood ; but who, 
 after killing incessantly, is in his turn killed by 
 his relations and friends, the moment a grey 
 hair appears on his head. All the noble savage's 
 wars with his fellow-savages (and he takes no 
 pleasure in anything else) are wars of extermi- 
 nation — which is the best thing I know of him, 
 and the most comfortable to my mind when I 
 look at him. He has no moral feelings of any 
 kind, sort, or description ; and his " mission " 
 may be summed up as simply diabolical. 
 
 The ceremonies with which he faintly diver- 
 sifies his life are, of course, of a kindred nature. 
 If he wants a wife, he appears before the kennel 
 of the gentleman whom he has selected for his 
 father-in-law. attended by a party of male friends 
 
iS4 
 
 THE NOBLE SAVAGE. 
 
 of a very strong flavour, who screech and whistle 
 and stamp an ofier of so many cows for the 
 young lady's hand. The chosen falher-in-law — 
 also supported by a high-flavoured party of male 
 friends — screeches, whistles, and yells (being 
 seated on the ground, he can't stamp) that there 
 never was such a daughter in the market as his 
 daughter, and that he must have six more cows. 
 The son-in-law and his select circle of backers 
 screech, whistle, stamp, and yell in reply, that 
 they will give three more cows. The father-in- 
 law (an old deluder, overpaid at the beginning) 
 accepts four, and rises to bind the bargain. 
 The whole party, the young lady included, then 
 falling into epileptic convulsions, and screech- 
 ing, whistling, stamping, and yelling together — 
 and nobody taking any notice of the young lady 
 (whose charms are not to be thought of without 
 a shudder) — the noble savage is considered mar- 
 ried, and his friends make demoniacal leaps at 
 him by way of congratulation. 
 
 When the noble savage finds himself a little 
 unwell, and mentions the circumstance to his 
 friends, it is immediately perceived that he is 
 under the influence of witchcraft. A learned 
 personage, called an Imyangeror Witch Doctor, 
 is immediately sent for to Nooker the Umtar- 
 gartie, or smell out the witch. The male inha- 
 bitants of the kraal being seated on the ground, 
 the learned doctor, got up like a grizzly bear, 
 appears, and administers a dance of a most 
 terrific nature, during the exhibition of which 
 remedy he incessantly gnashes his teeth and 
 howls : — " I am the original physician to Nooker 
 the Umtargartie. Yow yow yow ! No connec- 
 tion with any other establishment. Till till till ! 
 All other Umtargarties are feigned Umtargarties, 
 Boroo Boroo ! but I perceive here a genuine 
 and real Umtargartie, Hoosh Hoosh Hoosh ! in 
 whose blood I, the original Imyanger and Nook- 
 erer, Blizzerum Boo ! will wash these bear's 
 claws of mine. O yow yow yow!" All this 
 time the learned physician is looking out among 
 the attentive faces for some unfortunate man 
 who owes him a cow, or who has given him any 
 small offence, or against whom, without offence, 
 he has conceived a spite. Him he never fails to 
 Nooker as the Umtargartie, and he is instantly 
 killed. In the absence of such an individual, 
 the usual practice is to Nooker the quietest and 
 most gentlemanly person in company. But the 
 nookering is invariably followed on the spot by 
 the butchering. 
 
 Some of the noble savages in whom Mr. Catlin 
 was so strongly interested, and the diminution 
 of whose numbers, by rum and small-pox, greatly 
 affected him, had a custom not unlike this, 
 
 though much more appalling and disgusting in 
 its odious details. 
 
 The women being at work in the fields, hoeing 
 the Indian corn, and the noble savage being 
 asleep in the shade, the chief has sometimes the 
 condescension to come forth, and lighten the 
 labour by looking at it. On these occasions, 
 he seats himself in his own savage chair, and is 
 attended by his shield-bearer, who holds over 
 his head a shield of cowhide — in shape like 
 an immense mussel shell — fearfully and wonder- 
 fully, after the manner of a theatrical super- 
 numerary. But lest the great man should forget 
 his greatness in the contemplation of the humble 
 works of agriculture, there suddenly rushes in a 
 poet, retained for the purpose, called a Praiser. 
 This literary gentleman wears a leopard's head 
 over his own, and a dress of tigers' tails ; he has 
 the appearance of having come express on his 
 hind-legs from the Zoological Gardens ; and he 
 incontinently strikes up the chief's praises, plung- 
 ing and tearing all the while. There is a frantic 
 wickedness in this brute's manner of worrying 
 the air, and gnashing out, " Oh what a delight- 
 ful chief he is ! Oh what a delicious quantity 
 of blood he sheds ! Oh how majestically he 
 laps it up ! Oh how charmingly cruel he is ! 
 Oh how he tears the flesh of his enemies and 
 crunches the bones ! Oh how like the tiger and 
 the leopard and the wolf and the bear he is ! 
 Oh, row row row row, how fond I am of him ! " 
 — which might tempt the Society of Friends to 
 charge at a hand-gallop into the Swartz-Kop 
 location and exterminate the whole kraal. 
 
 When war is afoot among the noble savages 
 — which is always — the chief holds a council to 
 ascertain whether it is the opinion of his brothers 
 and friends in general that the enemy shall be 
 exterminated. On this occasion, after the per- 
 formance of an Umsebeuza, or war song, — 
 which is exactly like all the other songs, — the 
 chief makes a speech to his brothers and friends, 
 arranged in single file. No particular order is 
 observed during the delivery of this address, but 
 every gentleman who finds himself excited by 
 the subject, instead of crying " Hear, hear ! " 
 as is the custom with us, darts from the rank 
 and tramples out the life, or crushes the skull, 
 or mashes the face, or scoops out the eyes, or 
 breaks the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of 
 atrocities on the body of an imaginary enemy. 
 Several gentlemen becoming thus excited at 
 once, and pounding away without the least 
 regard to the orator, that illustrious person is 
 rather in the position of an orator in an Irish 
 House of Commons. But, several of these 
 scenes of savage life bear a strong generic re- 
 
TRA YELLING COMPANIONS. 
 
 i8s 
 
 semblance to an Irish election, and I think 
 would be extremely well received and under- 
 stood at Cork. 
 
 In all these ceremonies the noble savage holds 
 forth to the utmost possible extent about him- 
 self; from which (to turn him to some civilised 
 account) we may learn, I tliink, that as egotism 
 is one of the most offensive and contemptible 
 littlenesses a civilised man can exhibit, so it is 
 really incompatible with the interchange of ideas ; 
 inasmuch as if we all talked about ourselves we 
 should soon have no listeners, and must be all 
 yelling and screeching at once on our own 
 separate accounts : making society hideous. It 
 is my opinion that if we retained in us anything 
 of the noble savage, we could not get rid of it 
 too soon. But the fact is clearly otherwise. 
 Upon the wife and dowry question, substituting 
 coin for cows, we have assuredly nothing of the 
 Zulu Kaffir left. The endurance of despotism 
 is one great distinguishing mark of a savage 
 always. The improving world has quite got the 
 better of that too. In like manner, Paris is a 
 civilised city, and the Theatre Fran^ais a highly 
 civilised theatre ; and we shall never hear, and 
 never have heard in these later days (of course), 
 of the Praiser there. No, no, civilised poets 
 have better work to do. As to Nookering Um- 
 targarties, there are no pretended Umtargarties 
 in Europe, and no European powers to Nooker 
 them ; that would be mere spydom, suborna- 
 tion, small malice, superstition, and false pre- 
 tence. And as to private Umtargarties, are we 
 not, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-three, 
 with spirits rapping at our doors ? 
 
 To conclude as I began. My position is, that 
 if we have anything to learn from the Noble 
 Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues are a 
 fable ; his happiness is a delusion ; his nobility, 
 nonsense. We have no greater justification for 
 being cruel to the miserable object, than for 
 being cruel to a William Shakspeare or an 
 Isaac Newton ; but he passes away before an 
 immeasurably better and higher power than ever 
 ran wild in any earthly woods, and the world 
 will be all the better when his place knows him 
 no more. 
 
 A FLIGHT. 
 
 WHEN Don Diego de — I forget his name 
 — the inventor of the last new Flying Ma- 
 chines, price so many francs for ladies, so many 
 more for gentlemen — when Don Diego, by per- 
 mission of Deputy Chaft"-wax and his noble band, 
 shall have taken out a Patent for the Queen's 
 
 dominions, and shall have opened a commo- 
 dious Warehouse in an airy situation ; and when 
 all persons of any gentility will keep at least 
 a pair of wings, and be seen skimming about 
 in every direction ; I shall take a flight to Paris 
 (as I soar round the world) in a cheap and in- 
 dependent manner. At present, my reliance is 
 on the South- Eastern Railway Company, in 
 whose Express Train here I sit, at eight of the 
 clock on a very hot morning, under the very hot 
 roof of the Terminus at London Bridge, in 
 danger of being " forced " like a cucumber or 
 a melon, or a pine-apple. And talking of pine- 
 apples, I suppose there never were so many 
 pine-apples in a Train as there appear to be in 
 ^his Train. 
 
 Whew ! The hothouse air is faint with pine- 
 apples. Every French citizen or citizeness is 
 carrying pine-apples home. The compact little 
 Enchantress in the corner of my carriage (French 
 actress, to whom I yielded up my heart under 
 the auspices of that brave child, " Meat-chell," 
 at the St. James's Theatre the night before last) 
 has a pine-apple in her lap. Compact En- 
 chantress's friend, confidante, mother, mystery, 
 Heaven knows what, has two pine-apples in her 
 lap, and a bundle of them under the seat. To- 
 bacco-smoky Frenchman in Algerine wrapper, 
 with peaked hood behind, who might be Abd- 
 el-Kader dyed rifie-green, and who seems to be 
 dressed entirely in dirt and braid, carries pine- 
 apples in a covered basket. Tall, grave, melan- 
 choly Frenchman, with black Vandyke beard, 
 and hair close-cropped, with expansive chest to 
 waistcoat, and compressive waist to coat: satur- 
 nine as to his pantaloons, calm as to his femi- 
 nine boots, precious as to his jewellery, smooth 
 and white as to his linen : dark-eyed, high-fore- 
 headed, hawk-nosed — got up, one thinks, like 
 Lucifer or Mephistophiles, or Zamiel, trans- 
 formed into a highly genteel Parisian — has the 
 green end of a pine-apple sticking out of his 
 neat valise. 
 
 Whew ! If I were to be kept here long under 
 this forcing-frame, I wonder what would become 
 of me — whether 1 should be forced into a giant, 
 or should sprout or blow into some other phe- 
 nomenon ! Compact Enchantress is not ruffled 
 by the heat — she is always composed, always 
 compact. Oh, look at her little ribbons, frills, 
 and edges, at her shawl, at her gloves, at her 
 hair, at her bracelets, at her bonnet, at everj-- 
 thing about her ! How is it accomplished ? 
 What does she do to be so neat? How is it 
 that every trifle she wears belongs to her, and 
 cannot choose but he a part of her? And even 
 Mystery, look at her ! A model. Mystery is 
 
1 86 
 
 A FLIGHT. 
 
 not young, not pretty, though still of an average 
 
 candle-light passability; but she does such mira- 
 cles in her own behalf, that, one of these days, 
 when she dies, they'll be amazed to find an old 
 woman in her bed distantly like her. She was 
 an actress once. I shouldn't wonder, and had a 
 Mystery attendant on herself. Perhaps, Com- 
 pact Enchantress will live to be a Mystery, and 
 to wait with a shawl at the side-scenes, and to 
 sit opposite to Mademoiselle in railway carriages, 
 and smile and talk, subserviently, as Mystery 
 does now. That's hard to believe ! 
 
 Two Englishmen, and now our carriage is 
 full. First Englishman, in the moneyed in- 
 terest — flushed, highly respectable — Stock Ex- 
 change, perhaps — City, certainly. Faculties of 
 second Englishman entirely absorbed in hurry. 
 Plunges into the carriage, blind. Calls out of 
 window concerning his luggage, deaf. Suffo- 
 cates himself under pillows of great-coats, for no 
 reason, and in a demented manner. Will re- 
 ceive no assurance from any porter whatsoever. 
 Is stout and hot, and wipes his head, and makes 
 himself hotter by breathing so hard. Is totally 
 incredulous respecting assurance of Collected 
 Guard that " there's no hurry." No hurry ! 
 And a flight to Paris in eleven hours ! 
 
 It is all one to me in this drowsy corner, 
 hurry or no hurry. Untjl Don Diego shall send 
 home my wings, my flight is with the South- 
 Eastern Company. I can fly with the South- 
 Eastern more lazily, at all events, than in the 
 upper air. I have but to sit here thinking as 
 idly as 1 please, and be whisked away. I am 
 not accountable to anybody for the idleness of 
 my thoughts in such an idle summer flight ; my 
 flight is provided for by the South-Eastern, and 
 is no business of mine. 
 
 The bell ! With all my heart. It does not 
 require vie to do so much as even to flaj) my 
 wings. Something snorts for me, something 
 shrieks for me, something proclaims to every- 
 thing else that it had better keep out of my way, 
 — and away I go. 
 
 Ah ! The fresh air is pleasant after the 
 forcing-frame, though it does blow over these 
 interminable streets, and scatter the smoke of 
 this vast wilderness of chimneys. Here we are 
 — no, I mean there we were, for it has darted 
 far into the rear — in Bermondsey where the 
 tanners live. Flash ! The distant shipping in 
 the Thames is gone. Whirr ! The little streets 
 of new brick and red tile, with here and there a 
 flagstaft" growing like a tall weed out of the 
 scarlet beans, and, everywhere, plenty of open 
 sewer and ditch for the promotion of the public 
 health, have been fired off in a volley. Whizz ! 
 
 Dust-heaps, market-gardens, and waste grounds. 
 Rattle 1 New Cross Station. Shock ! There 
 we were at Croydon. Bur-r-r-r ! The tunnel. 
 
 I wonder why it is that when I shut my eyes 
 in a tunnel I begin to feel as if I were going at 
 an Express pace the other way. I am clearly 
 going back to London now. Compact Enchant- 
 ress must have forgotten something, and reversed 
 the engine. No 1 After long darkness, pale 
 fitful streaks of light appear. I am still flying 
 on for Folkestone. The streaks grow stronger 
 — become continuous — become the ghost of day 
 — become the living day — became I mean — the 
 tunnel is miles and miles away, and here I fly 
 through sun-light, all among the harvest and the 
 Kentish hops. 
 
 There is a dreamy pleasure in this flying. I 
 wonder where it was, and when it was, that we ex- 
 ploded, blew in to space somehow, a Parliamentary 
 Train, with a crowd of heads and faces looking 
 at lis out of cages, and some hats waving. 
 Moneyed Interest says it was at Reigate Sta- 
 tion. Expounds to Mystery how Reigate Station 
 is so many miles from London, which Mystery 
 again develops to Compact Enchantress. There 
 might be neither a Reigate nor a London for 
 me, as I fly away among the Kentish hops and 
 harvest. What do / care ? 
 
 Bang ! We have let another Station off", and 
 fly away regardless. Everything is flying. The 
 hop gardens turn gracefully towards me, pre- 
 senting regular avenues of hops in rapid flight, 
 then whirl away. So do the pools and rushes, 
 haystacks, sheep, clover in full bloom delicious 
 to the sight and smell, corn-sheaves, cherry 
 orchards, apple orchards, reapers, gleaners, 
 hedges, gates, fields that taper off into little 
 angular corners, cottages, gardens, now and 
 then a church. Bang, Bang ! A double-bar- 
 relled Station ! Now a wood, now a bridge, 
 
 now a landscape, now a cutting, now a 
 
 Bang! a single-barrelled Station — there was a 
 cricket match somewhere with two white tents, 
 and then four flying cows, then turnips — now 
 the wires of the electric telegraph are all alive, 
 and spin, and blurr their edges, and go up and 
 down, and make the intervals between each 
 other most irregular: contracting and expanding 
 in the strangest manner. Now we slacken. 
 With a screwing and a grinding, and a smell of 
 water thrown on ashes, now we stop ! 
 
 Demented Traveller, who has been for two or 
 three minutes watchful, clutches his great-coats, 
 plunges at the door, rattles it, cries " Hi ! " eager 
 to embark on board of impossible packets, far 
 inland. Collected Guard appears. " Are you 
 for Tunbridge, sir ? " " Tunbridge .? No. 
 
NO HURRY. 
 
 187 
 
 Paris." "Plenty of time, sir. No hurry. Five 
 minutes here, sir, for refreshment." I am so 
 blessed (anticipating Zamiel by half a second) 
 as to procure a glass of water for Compact 
 Enchantress. 
 
 Who would suppose we had been flying at 
 such a rate, and shall take wing again directly ? 
 Refreshment-room full, platform full, porter 
 with watering-pot deliberately cooling a hot 
 wheel, another porter with equal deliberation 
 helping the rest of the wheels bountifully to ice 
 cream. Moneyed Interest and I re-entering the 
 carriage first, and being there alone, he intimates 
 to me that the French are " no go " as a Nation. 
 I ask why ? He says, that Reign of Terror of 
 theirs was quite enough. I venture to inquire 
 whether he remembers anything that preceded 
 said Reign of Terror ? He says not particularly. 
 ''' Because," I remark, " the harvest that is 
 reaped has sometimes been sown." Moneyed 
 Interest repeats, as quite enough for him, that the 
 French are revolutionary, " — and always at it." 
 
 Bell. Compact Enchantress, helped in by 
 Zamiel, (whom the stars confound !) gives us 
 her charming little side-box look, and smites 
 me to the core. Mystery eating sponge-cake. 
 Pine-apple atmosphere faintly tinged with sus- 
 picions of sherry. Demented Traveller flits past 
 the carriage, looking for it. Is blind with agita- 
 tion, and can't see it. Seems singled out by 
 Destiny to be the only unhappy creature in the 
 flight, who has any cause to hurry himself. Is 
 nearly left behind. Is seized by Collected 
 Guard after the Train is in motion, and bun- 
 dled in. Still has lingering suspicions that 
 there must be a boat in the neighbourhood, and 
 will look wildly out of window for it. 
 
 Flight resumed. Corn-sheaves, hop gardens, 
 reapers, gleaners, apple orchards, cherry or- 
 chards. Stations single and double barrelled, 
 Ashford. Compact Enchantress (constantly 
 talking to Mystery in an exquisite manner) 
 gives a little scream ; a sound that seems to 
 come from high up in her precious little head ; 
 from behind her bright little eyebrows. " Great 
 Heaven, my pine-apple ! My Angel ! It is 
 lost ! " Mystery is desolated. A search made. 
 It is not lost. Zamiel finds it. I curse him 
 (flying) in the Persian manner. May his face 
 be turned upside down, and jackasses sit upon 
 his uncle's grave ! 
 
 Now fresher air, now glimpses of unenclosed 
 Down-land with flapping crows flying over it 
 whom we soon outfly, now the Sea, now Folke- 
 stone at a quarter after ten. . " Tickets ready, 
 gentlemen ! " Demented dashes at the door. 
 ■^' For Paris, sir ? No hurry." 
 
 Not the least. We are dropped slowly down 
 to the Port, and sidle to and fro (the whole 
 train) before the insensible Royal George Hotel, 
 for some ten minutes. The Royal George takes 
 no more heed of us than its namesake under 
 water at Spithead, or under earth at Windsor, 
 does. The Royal George's dog lies winking 
 and blinking at us, without taking the trouble 
 to sit up ; and the Royal George's " wedding 
 party " at the open window (who seem, I must 
 say, rather tired of bliss) don't bestow a solitary 
 glance upon us, flying thus to Paris in eleven 
 hours. The first gentleman in Folkestone is 
 evidently used up on this subject. 
 
 Meanwhile, Demented chafes. Conceives 
 that every man's hand is against him, and exert- 
 ing itself to prevent his getting to Paris. Re- 
 fuses consolation. Rattles door. Sees smoke 
 on the horizon, and " knows " it's the boat gone 
 without him. Moneyed Interest resentfully ex- 
 plains that he is going to Paris too. Demented 
 signifies that if Moneyed Interest chooses to be 
 left behind, he don't. 
 
 " Refreshments in the Waiting-Room, ladies 
 and gentlemen. No hurry, ladies and gentle- 
 men, for Paris. No hurry whatever ! " 
 
 Twenty minutes' pause, by Folkestone clock, 
 for looking at Enchantress while she eats a 
 sandwich, and at Mystery while she eats of 
 everything there that is eatable, from pork-pie, 
 sausage, jam, and gooseberries, to lumps of 
 sugar. All this time there is a very waterfall of 
 luggage, with a spray of dust, tumbling slantwise 
 from the pier into the steamboat. All this time, 
 Demented (who has no business with it) 
 watches it with starting eyes, fiercely requir- 
 ing to be shown his luggage. When it at 
 last concludes the cataract, he rushes hotly 
 to refresh — is shouted after, pursued, jostled, 
 brought back, pitched into the departing 
 steamer upside down, and caught by mariners 
 disgracefully. 
 
 A lovely harvest day, a cloudless sky, a tran- 
 quil sea. The piston-rods of the engines so 
 regularly coming up from below, to look (as well 
 they may) at the bright weather, and so regu- 
 larly almost knocking their iron heads against 
 the crossbeam of the sky-light, and never doing 
 it ! Another Parisian actress is on board, at- 
 tended by another Mystery. Compact Enchan- 
 tress greets her sister artist — oh, the Compact 
 One's pretty teeth ! — and Mystery greets Mys- 
 tery. My Mystery soon ceases to be conver- 
 sational — is taken poorly, in a word, having 
 lunched too miscellaneously — and goes below. 
 The remaining Mystery then smiles upon the 
 sister artists (who, I am afraid, wouldn't greatly 
 
A FLIGHT. 
 
 mind stabbing each other), and is upon the 
 whole ravished. 
 
 And now I find that all the French people on 
 board begin to grow, and all the English people 
 to shrink. The French are nearing home, and 
 shaking off a disadvantage, whereas we are shak- 
 ing it on. Zamiel is the same man, and Abd-el- 
 Kader is the same man, but each seems to come 
 into possession of an indescribable confidence 
 that departs from us — from Moneyed Interest, 
 for instance, and from me. Just what they gain, 
 we lose. Certain British " Gents " about the 
 steersman, intellectually nurtured at home on 
 parody of everything and truth of nothing, be- 
 come subdued, and in a manner forlorn : and 
 when the steersman tells them (not unexultingly) 
 how he has " been upon this station now eight 
 year, and never see the old town of Bullum yet," 
 one of them, with an imbecile reliance on a reed, 
 asks him what he considers to be the best hotel 
 in Paris? 
 
 Now, I tread upon French ground, and am 
 greeted by the three charming words, Liberty, 
 Equality, Fraternity, painted up (in letters a little 
 too thin for their height) on the Custom-House 
 wall — also by the sight of large cocked-hats, with- 
 out which demonstrative head-gear nothing of a 
 public nature can be done upon this soil. All 
 the rabid Hotel population of Boulogne howl 
 and shriek outside a distant barrier, frantic to 
 get at us. Demented, by some unlucky means 
 peculiar to himself, is delivered over to their 
 fury, and is presently seen struggling in a whirl- 
 pool of Touters — is somehow understood to be 
 going to Paris — is, with infinite noise, rescued 
 by two cocked-hats, and brought into Custom- 
 House bondage with the rest of us. 
 
 Here, I resign the active duties of life to an 
 eager being, of preternatural sharpness, with a 
 shelving forehead and a shabby snuft'-coloured 
 coat, who (from the wharf) brought me down 
 with his eye before the boat came into port. He 
 darts upon my luggage, on the floor where all 
 the luggage is strewn like a wreck at the bottom 
 of the great deep; gets it proclaimed and weighed 
 as the property of " Monsieur a traveller un- 
 known ; " pays certain francs for it, to a certain 
 functionary behind a Pigeon-hole, like a pay- 
 box at a Theatre (the arrangements in general 
 are on a wholesale scale, half military and half 
 theatrical) ; and I suppose I shall find it when I 
 come to Paris — he says I shall. 1 know nothing 
 about it, except that I pay him his small fee, 
 and pocket the ticket he gives me, and sit upon 
 a counter, involved in the general distraction. 
 
 Railway station. " Lunch or dinner, ladies 
 and gentlemen. Plenty of time for Paris. Plenty 
 
 of time ! " Large hall, long counter, long strips 
 of dining-table, bottles of wine, plates of meat, 
 roast chickens, little loaves of bread, basins of 
 soup, little caraffes of brandy, cakes and fruit. 
 Comfortably restored from these resources, I 
 begin to fly again. 
 
 I saw Zamiel (before I took wing) presented 
 to Compact Enchantress and Sister Artist by an 
 oflicer in uniform, with a waist like a wasp's, 
 and pantaloons like two balloons. They all got 
 into the next carriage together, accompanied by 
 the two Mysteries. They laughed. I am alone 
 in the carriage (for I don't consider Demented 
 anybody), and alone in the world. 
 
 Fields, windmills, low grounds, pollard-trees, 
 windmills, fields, fortifications, Abbeville, sol- 
 diering, and drumming. I wonder where Eng- 
 land is, and when I was there last — about two 
 years ago, I should say. Flying in and out 
 among these trenches and batteries, skimming 
 the clattering drawbridges, looking down into 
 the stagnant ditches, I become a prisoner of 
 state, escaping. I am confined with a comrade 
 in a fortress. Our room is in an upper story. 
 We have tried to get up the chimney, but there's 
 an iron grating across it, embedded in the 
 masonry. After months of labour, we have 
 worked the grating loose with the poker, and 
 can lift it up. We have also made a hook, and 
 twisted our rugs and blankets into ropes. Our 
 plan is, to go up the chimney, hook our ropes 
 to the top, descend hand over hand upon the 
 roof of the guard-house far below, shake the 
 hook loose, watch the opportunity of the sen- 
 tinel's pacing away, hook again, drop into the 
 ditch, swim across it, creep into the shelter of 
 the wood. The time is come — a wild and stormy 
 night. We are up the chimney, we are on the 
 guard-house roof, we are swimming in the murky 
 ditch, when lo ! " Qui v'l^l ? " a bugle, the 
 alarm, a crash ! What is it ? Death ? No, 
 Amiens. 
 
 More fortifications, more soldiering and drum- 
 ming, more basins of soup, more little loaves of 
 bread, more bottles of wine, more caraffes of 
 brandy, more time for refreshment. Everything 
 good, and everything ready. Bright, unsub- 
 stantial-looking, scenic sort of station. People 
 waiting. Houses, uniforms, beards, moustaches, 
 some sabots, plenty of neat women, and a few 
 old-visaged children. Unless it be a delusion 
 born of my giddy flight, the grown-up people 
 and the children seem to change places in 
 France. In general the boys and girls are little 
 old men and women, and the men and women 
 lively boys and girls. 
 
 Bugle, shriek, flight resumed. Moneyed In- 
 
A RAPID RE VIE IV. 
 
 189 
 
 terest has come into my carriage. Says the 
 manner of refreshing is " not bad," but considers 
 it French. Admits great dexterity and pohte- 
 ness in the attendants. Thinks a decimal cur- 
 rency may have something to do with their 
 dispatch in setthng accounts, and don't know 
 but what it's sensible and convenient. Adds, 
 however, as a general protest, that they're a 
 revolutionary people — and always at it. 
 
 Ramparts, canals, cathedral, river, soldiering 
 and drumming, open country, river, earthenware 
 manufactures, Creil. Again ten minutes. Not 
 even Demented in a hurry. Station, a drawing- 
 room with a verandah ; like a planter's house. 
 Moneyed Interest considers it a bandbox, and 
 not made to last. Little round tables in it, at 
 one of which the Sister Artists and attendant 
 Mysteries are established with Wasp and Zamiel, 
 as if they were going to stay a week. 
 
 Anon, with no more trouble than before, I am 
 flying again, and lazily wondering as I fly. 
 What has the South-Eastern done with all the 
 horrible little villages we used to pass through 
 in the Diligence ? What have they done with 
 all the summer dust, with all the winter mud, 
 with all the dreary avenues of little trees, with 
 all the ramshackle post-yards, with all the beg- 
 gars (who used to turn out at night with bits of 
 lighted candle, to look in at the coach windows), 
 with all the long-tailed horses who were always 
 biting one another, with all the big postillions 
 in jack-boots — with all the mouldy cafes that we 
 used to stop at, where a long mildewed table- 
 cloth, set forth with jovial bottles of vinegar and 
 oil, and with a Siamese arrangement of pepper 
 and salt, was never wanting ? Where are the 
 grass-grown little towns, the wonderful little 
 market-places all unconscious of markets, the 
 shops that nobody kept, the streets that nobody 
 trod, the churches that nobody went to, the 
 bells that nobody rang, the tumble-down old 
 buildings plastered with many-coloured bills that 
 nobody read ? Where are the two-and-twenty 
 weary hours of long long day-and-night journey, 
 sure to be either insupportably hot or insupport- 
 ably cold ? Where are the pains in my bones, 
 where are the fidgets in my legs, where is the 
 Frenchman with the nightcap who never would 
 have the little coupe' window down, and who 
 always fell upon me when he went to sleep, and 
 always slept all night snoring onions ? 
 
 A voice breaks in with " Paris ! Here we 
 are ! " 
 
 I have overflown myself, perhaps, but I can't 
 believe it. I feel as if I were enchanted or be- 
 witched. It is barely eight o'clock yet — it is 
 nothing like half-past— when I have had my 
 
 luggage examined at that briskest of Custom 
 Houses attached to the station, and am rattling 
 over the pavement in a hackney cabriolet. 
 
 Surely, not the pavement of Paris ? Yes, I 
 think it is, too. I don't know any other place 
 where there are all these high houses, all these 
 haggard-looking wine-shops, all these billiard 
 tables, all these stocking-makers with flat red or 
 yellow legs of wood for signboard, all these fuel 
 shops with stacks of billets painted outside, and 
 real billets sawing in the gutter, all these dirty 
 corners of streets, all these cabinet pictures over 
 dark doorways representing discreet matrons 
 
 nursing babies. And yet this morning 
 
 I'll think of it in a warm bath. 
 
 Very like a small room that I remember in 
 the Chinese Baths upon the Boulevard, cer- 
 tainly ; and, though I see it through the steam, 
 I think that I might swear to that peculiar hot- 
 linen basket, like a large wicker hour-glass. 
 When can it have been that I left home ? When 
 was it that 1 paid " through to Paris " at Lon- 
 don Bridge, and discharged myself of all re- 
 sponsibility, except the preservation of a voucher 
 ruled into three divisions, of which the first was 
 snipped off at Folkestone, the second aboard 
 the boat, and the third taken at my journey's 
 end ? It seems to have been ages ago. Calcu- 
 lation is useless. I will go out for a walk. 
 
 The crowds in the streets, the lights in the 
 shops and balconies, the elegance, variety, and 
 beauty of their decorations, the number of the 
 theatres, the brilliant cafe's with their windows 
 thrown up high and their vivacious groups at 
 little tables on the pavement, the light and 
 glitter of the houses turned as it were inside 
 out, soon convince me that it is no dream ; 
 that I am in Paris, howsoever I got here. I 
 stroll down to the sparkling Palais Royal, up 
 the Rue de Rivoli, to the Place Vendome. As 
 I glance into a print-shop window. Moneyed 
 Interest, my late travelling companion, comes 
 upon me, laughing with the highest relish of 
 disdain. " Here's a people ! " he says, pointing 
 to Napoleon in the window and Napoleon on 
 the column. " Only one idea all over Paris. 
 A monomania ! " Humph ! I think I have 
 seen Napoleon's match ? There was a statue, 
 when I came away, at Hyde Park Corner, and 
 another in the City, and a print or two in the 
 shops. 
 
 I walk up to the Barriere de I'Etoile, suffi- 
 ciently dazed by my flight to have a pleasant 
 doubt of the reality of everything about me ; of 
 the lively crowd, the overhanging trees, the per- 
 forming dogs, the hobby-horses, the beautiful 
 perspectives of shining lamps : the hundred and 
 
X90 
 
 THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 
 
 one enclosures, where the singing is, in gleam- 
 ing orchestras of azure and gold, and where a 
 star-eyed Houri comes round with a box for 
 voluntary offerings. So, I pass to my hotel, 
 enchanted; sup, enchanted; go to bed, en- 
 chanted ; pushing back this morning (if it really 
 were this morning) into the remoteness of time, 
 blessing the South-Eastern Company for realis- 
 ing the Arabian Nights in these prose days, 
 murmuring, as 1 wing my idle flight into the 
 land of dreams, " No hurry, ladies and gentle- 
 men, going to Paris in eleven hours. It is so 
 well done, that there really is no hurry ! " 
 
 THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 
 
 "^■E are not by any means devout 
 believers in the Old Bow-Street 
 Police. To say the truth, we 
 think there Avas a vast amount of 
 humbug about those worthies. 
 Apart from many of them being 
 men of very indifferent character, and far 
 too much in the habit of consorting with 
 thieves and the like, they never lost a public 
 occasion of jobbing and trading in mystery and 
 making the most of themselves. Continually 
 puffed besides by incompetent magistrates 
 anxious to conceal their own deficiencies, and 
 hand-in-glove with the penny-a-liners of that 
 time, they became a sort of superstition. Al- 
 though as a Preventive Police they were utterly 
 ineffective, and as a Detective Police were very 
 loose and uncertain in their operations, they 
 remain with some people a superstition to the 
 present day. 
 
 On the other hand, the Detective Force 
 organised since the establishment of the existing 
 Police is so well chosen and trained, proceeds 
 so systematically and quietly, does its business 
 in such a workman-like manner, and is always 
 so calmly and steadily engaged in the service of 
 the public, that the public really do not know 
 enough of it, to know a tithe of its usefulness. 
 Impressed with this conviction, and interested 
 in the men themselves, we represented to the 
 authorities at Scotland Yard, that we should be 
 glad, if there were no official objection, to have 
 some talk with the Detectives. A most oblig- 
 ing and ready permission being given, a certain 
 evening was appointed with a certain Inspector 
 for a social conference between ourselves and 
 the Detectives, at The Household Words Office 
 in Wellington Street, Strand, London. In con- 
 sequence of which appointment the party " came 
 
 oflf," which we are about to describe. And we 
 beg to repeat that, avoiding such topics as it 
 might for obvious reasons be injurious to the 
 public, or disagreeable to respectable indivi- 
 duals, to touch upon in print, our description is 
 as exact as we can make it. 
 
 The reader will have the goodness to imagine 
 the Sanctum Sanctorum of Household Words. 
 Anything that best suits the reader's fancy will 
 best represent that magnificent chamber. We 
 merely stipulate for a round table in the middle, 
 with some glasses and cigars arranged upon it ; 
 and the editorial sofa elegantly hemmed in 
 between that stately piece of furniture and the 
 wall. 
 
 It is a sultry evening at dusk. The stones of 
 Wellington Street are hot and gritty, and the 
 watermen and hackney coachmen at the Theatre 
 opposite are much flushed and aggravated. 
 Carriages are constantly setting down the peo- 
 ple who have come to Fairy-land ; and there is 
 a mighty shouting and bellowing every now and 
 then, deafening us for the moment, through the 
 open windows. 
 
 Just at dusk. Inspectors Wield and Stalker 
 are announced ; but we do not undertake to 
 warrant the orthography of any of the names 
 here mentioned. Inspector Wield presents In- 
 spector Stalker. Inspector Wield is a middle- 
 aged man of a portly presence, with a large,, 
 moist, knowing eye, a husky voice, and a habit 
 of emphasising his conversation by the aid of a 
 corpulent forefinger, which is constantly in jux- 
 taposition with his eyes or nose. Inspector 
 Stalker is a shrewd, hard-headed Scotchman — 
 in appearance not at all unlike a very acute, 
 thoroughly-trained schoolmaster from the Nor- 
 mal Establishment at Glasgow. Inspector Wield 
 one might have known, perhaps, for what he is 
 — Inspector Stalker, never. 
 
 The ceremonies of reception over. Inspectors 
 Wield and Stalker observe that they have 
 brought some sergeants with them. The ser- 
 geants are presented — five in number. Sergeant 
 Dornton, Sergeant Witchem, Sergeant Mith,_ 
 Sergeant Fendall, and Sergeant Straw. We 
 have the whole Detective Force from Scotland 
 Yard, with one exception. They sit down in a 
 semicircle (the two Inspectors at the two ends) 
 at a little distance from the round table, facing 
 the editorial sofa. Every man of them, in a 
 glance, immediately takes an inventory of the 
 furniture and an accurate sketch of the editorial 
 presence. The Editor feels that any gentleman 
 in company could take him up, if need should 
 be, without the smallest hesitation, twenty years 
 hence. 
 
LITTLE PARTY IN WELLINGTON STREET. 
 
 191 
 
 The whole party are in plain clothes. Ser- 
 geant Dornton, about fifty years of age, with a 
 ruddy face and a high sunburnt forehead, has 
 the air of one who has been a Sergeant in the 
 army — he might have sat to Wilkie for the Sol- 
 dier in the Reading of the Will. He is famous 
 for steadily pursuing the inductive process, and, 
 from small beginnings, working on from clue to 
 clue until he bags his man. Sergeant Witcliem, 
 shorter and thicker-set, and marked with the 
 small-pox, has something of a reserved and 
 thoughtful air, as if he were engaged in deep 
 arithmetical calculations. He is renowned for 
 his acquaintance with the swell mob. Sergeant 
 Mith, a smooth-faced man with a fresh bright 
 complexion, and a strange air of simplicity, is a 
 dab at housebreakers. Sergeant Fendall, a light- 
 haired, well-spoken, polite person, is a prodigious 
 hand at pursuing private inquiries of a delicate 
 nature. Straw, a little wiry Sergeant of meek 
 demeanour and strong sense, would knock at a 
 door and ask a series of questions in any mild 
 character you chose to prescribe to him, from a 
 charity-boy upwards, and seem as innocent as 
 an infant. They are, one and all, respectable- 
 looking men ; of perfectly good deportment and 
 unusual intelligence ; with nothing lounging or 
 slinking in their manners ; with an air of keen 
 observation and quick perception when ad- 
 dressed ; and generally presenting in their faces 
 traces more or less marked of habitually leading 
 lives of strong mental excitement. They have 
 all good eyes ; and they all can, and they all do, 
 look full at whomsoever they speak to. 
 
 We light the cigars, and hand round the glasses 
 (which are very temperately used indeed), and 
 the conversation begins by a modest amateur 
 reference on the Editorial part to the swell mob. 
 Inspector Wield immediately removes his cigar 
 from his lips, waves his right hand, and says, 
 " Regarding the swell mob, sir, I can't do better 
 than call upon Sergeant Witchem. Because the 
 reason why ? I'll tell you. Sergeant Witchem 
 is better acquainted with the swell mob than any 
 officer in London." 
 
 Our heart leaping up when we beheld this rain- 
 bow in the sky, we turn to Sergeant Witchem, 
 who very concisely, and in well-chosen lan- 
 guage, goes into the subject forthwith. Mean- 
 time, the whole of his brother officers are closely 
 interested in attending to what he says, and ob- 
 serving its effect. Presently they begin to strike 
 in, one or two together, when an opportunity 
 offers, and the conversation becomes general. 
 But these brother officers only come in to the 
 assistance of each other — not to the contradic- 
 tion — and a more amicable brotherhood there 
 
 could not be. From the swell mob, we diverge 
 to the kindred topics of cracksmen, fences, 
 public-house dancers, area sneaks, designing 
 young people who go out "gonophing," and other 
 " schools." It is observable, throughout these 
 revelations, that Inspector Stalker, the Scotch- 
 man, is always exact and statistical, and that 
 when any question of figures arises, everybody as 
 by one consent pauses, and looks to him. 
 
 When we have exhausted the various schools 
 of Art — during which discussion the whole body 
 have remained profoundly attentive, except when 
 some unusual noise at the Theatre over the way 
 has induced some gentleman to glance inquir- 
 ingly towards the window in that direction, be- 
 hind his next neighbour's back — we burrow for 
 information on such points as the following. 
 Whether there really are any highway robberies 
 in London, or whether some circumstances, not 
 convenient to be mentioned by the aggrieved 
 party, usually precede the robberies complained 
 of under that head, which quite change their 
 character? Certainly the latter, almost always. 
 Whether in the case of robberies in houses, where 
 servants are necessarily exposed to doubt, inno- 
 cence under suspicion ever becomes so like guilt 
 in appearance, that a good officer need be cau- 
 tious how he judges it? Undoubtedly. Nothing 
 is so common or deceptive as such appearances 
 at first. Whether in a place of public amusement 
 a thief knows an officer, and an officer knows a 
 thief — supposing them, beforehand, strangers to 
 each other — because each recognises in the other, 
 under all disguise, an inattention to what is going 
 on, and a purpose that is not the purpose of being 
 entertained? Yes. That's the way exactly. 
 Whether it is reasonable or ridiculous to trust 
 to the alleged experiences of thieves, as narrated 
 by themselves, in prisons, or penitentiaries, or 
 anywhere? In general, nothing more absurd. 
 Lying is their habit and their trade ; and they 
 would rather He — even if they hadn't an interest 
 in it, and didn't want to make themselves agree- 
 able — than tell the truth. 
 
 From these topics, we glide into a review of 
 the most celebrated and horrible of the great 
 crimes that have been committed within the last 
 fifteen or twenty years. The men engaged in the 
 discovery of almost all of them, and in the pur- 
 suit or apprehension of the murderers, are here, 
 down to the very last instance. One of our 
 guests gave chase to and boarded the emigrant 
 ship in which the murderess last hanged in Lon- 
 don was supposed to have embarked. We learn 
 from him that his errand was not announced to 
 the passengers, who may have no idea of it to 
 this hour. That he went below with the captain, 
 
192 
 
 THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 
 
 lamp in hand — it bein^^ dark, and the whole 
 steerage abed and sea-sick — and engaged the Mrs. 
 Manning who 7uas on board in a conversation 
 about her luggage, until she was, with no small 
 pains, induced to raise her head, and turn her 
 face towards the light. Satisfied that she was not 
 the object of his search, he quietly re-embarked 
 in the Government steamer alongside, and 
 steamed home again with the intelligence. 
 
 When we have exhausted these subjects, too, 
 which occupy a considerable time in the discus- 
 sion, two or three leave their chairs, whisper 
 Sergeant Witchem, and resume their seats. 
 Sergeant Witchem, leaning forward a little, and 
 placing a hand on each of his legs, then mo- 
 destly speaks as follows : 
 
 " Aly brother officers wish me to relate a little 
 account of my taking Tally-ho Thompson. A 
 man oughtn't to tell what he has done himself; but 
 still, as nobody was with me, and consequently, 
 as nobody but myself can tell it, I'll do it in the 
 best way I can, if it should meet your approval." 
 
 We assure Sergeant Witchem that he will 
 oblige us very much, and we all compose our- 
 selves to listen with great interest and attention. 
 
 "Tally-ho Thompson," says Sergeant Witchem, 
 after merely wetting his lips with his brandy-and- 
 water, " Tally-ho Thompson was a famous horse- 
 stealer, couper, and magsman. Thompson, in 
 conjunction with a pal that occasionally worked 
 with him, gammoned a countryman out of a good 
 round sum of money, under pretence of getting 
 him a situation — the regular old dodge — and 
 was afterwards in the ' Hue and Cry' for ahorse 
 — a horse that he stole, down in Hertfordshire. 
 I had to look after Thompson, and I applied 
 myself, of course, in the first instance, to dis- 
 covering where he was. Now, Thompson's wife 
 lived, along with a little daughter, at Chelsea. 
 Knowing that Thompson was somewhere in the 
 country, I Avatched the house — especially at 
 post-time in the morning — thinking Thompson 
 was pretty likely to write to her. Sure enough, 
 one morning the postman comes up, and de- 
 livers a letter at Mrs. Thompson's door. Little 
 girl opens the door, and takes it in. We're not 
 always sure of postmen, though the people at 
 the post-offices are always very obliging. A 
 postman may help us, or he may not, — just as 
 it happens. However, I go across the road, 
 and I say to the jjostman, after he has left the 
 letter, * Good morning ! how are you ? ' ' How 
 2x^ youV says he. 'You've just delivered a 
 letter for Mrs. Thompson.' ' Yes, I have.' ' You 
 didn't happen to remark what the post-mark 
 was, perhaps?' ' No,' says he, ' I didn't.' 'Come,' 
 says I, ' I'll be plain with you. I'm in a small 
 
 way of business, and I have given Thompson 
 credit, and I can't afford to lose what he owes 
 me. I know he's got money, and I know he's 
 in the country, and if you could tell me what 
 the post-mark was, I should be very much obliged 
 to you, and you'd do a service to a tradesman 
 in a small way of business that can't afford a 
 loss.' ' Well,' he said, ' I do assure you that I 
 did not observe what the post-mark was ; all I 
 know is, that there was money in the letter — 
 I should say a sovereign.' This was enough for 
 me, because of course I knew that Thompson 
 having sent his wife money, it was probable 
 she'd write to Thompson, by return of post, to 
 acknowledge the receipt. So I said ' Thankee ' 
 to the postman, and I kept on the watch. In 
 the afternoon I i^aw the little girl come out. Of 
 course I followed her. She went into a sta- 
 tioner's sliop, and I needn't say to you that I 
 looked in at the window. She bought some 
 writing-paper and envelopes, and a pen. I 
 think to myself, ' That'll do !' — watch her home 
 again — and don't go away, you may be sure, 
 knowing that Mrs. Thompson was writing her 
 letter to Tally-ho, and that the letter would be 
 posted presently. In about an hour or so, out 
 came the little girl again, with the letter in her 
 hand. I went up, and said something to the 
 child, whatever it might have been; but I 
 couldn't see the direction of the letter, because 
 she held it with the seal upwards. However, I 
 observed that on the back of the letter there 
 was what we call a kiss — a drop of wax by the 
 side of the seal — and again, you understand, that 
 was enough for me. I saw her post the letter, 
 waited till she w^as gone, then went into the 
 shop, and asked to see the master. When he 
 came out, I told him, ' Now, I'm an Officer in 
 the Detective Force ; there's a letter witli a kiss 
 been posted here just now, for a man that I'm 
 in search of; and what I have to ask of you is, 
 that you will let me look at the direction of that 
 letter.' He was very civil — took a lot of letters 
 from the box in the window — shook 'em out on 
 the counter with the faces downwards — and 
 there among 'em was the identical letter with 
 the kiss. It was directed, Mr. Thomas Pigeon, 
 
 Post Office, B , to be left till called for. 
 
 Down I went to B (a hundred and twenty 
 
 miles or so) that night. Early next morning I 
 went to the post-office ; saw the gentleman in 
 charge of that department ; told him who I was ; 
 and that my object was to see, and track, the 
 l)arty that should come for the letter for 
 Mr. Thomas Pigeon. He was very polite, 
 and said, ' You shall have every assistance we 
 can give you; you can wait inside the office; 
 
STICKING TO THE LETTER. 
 
 193 
 
 and we'll take care to let you know when any- 
 body comes for the letter.' Well, I waited 
 there days and began to think that nobody ever 
 would come. At last the clerk whispered to me, 
 ' Here ! Detective ! Somebody's come for the 
 letter ! ' ' Keep him a minute,' said I, and I 
 ran round to the outside of the office. There 
 I saw a young chap, with the appearance of an 
 hostler, holding a horse by the bridle — stretch- 
 ing the bridle across the pavement, while he 
 waited at the post-office window for the letter. 
 I began to pat the horse, and that ; and I said 
 to the boy, ' Why, this is Mr. Jones's mare ! ' 
 ' No, it an't.' * No ? ' said I. ' She's very like 
 Mr. Jones's mare ! ' 'She an't Mr. Jones's mare, 
 anyhow,' says he. ' It's Mr. So-and-so's, of the 
 Warwick Arms.' And up he jumped, and off 
 he went — letter and all. I got a cab, followed 
 on the box, and was so quick after him that I 
 came into the stable-yard of the Warwick Arms 
 by one gate, just as he came in by another. I 
 went into the bar, where there was a young 
 woman serving, and called for a glass of brandy- 
 and-water. He came in directly, and handed 
 her the letter. She casually looked at it, with- 
 out saying anything, and stuck it up behind the 
 glass over the chimney-piece. What was to be 
 done next ? 
 
 " I turned it over in my mind while I drank 
 my brandy-and-water (looking pretty sharp at 
 the letter the while), but I couldn't see my way 
 out of it at all. I tried to get lodgings in the 
 house, but there had been a horse-fair, or some- 
 thing of that sort, and it was full. I was obliged 
 to put up somewhere else, but I came backwards 
 and forwards to the bar for a couple of days, and 
 there was the letter always behind the glass. At 
 last I thought I'd write a letter to Mr. Pigeon 
 myself, and see what that would do. So I 
 wrote one, and posted it, but I purposely ad- 
 dressed it, Mr. John Pigeon, instead of ]\Ir. 
 Thomas Pigeon, to see what tfiat would do. In 
 the morning (a very wet morning it was) I 
 watched the postman down the street, and cut 
 into the bar just before he reached the Warwick 
 Arms. In he came presently with my letter. 
 ' Is there a Mr. John Pigeon staying here ? ' 
 * No ! — stop a bit though,' says the barmaid ; 
 and she took down the letter behind the glass. 
 ' No,' says she, ' it's Thomas, and he is not stay- 
 ing here. Would you do me a favour, and post 
 this for me, as it is so wet ? ' The postman said 
 Yes ; she folded it in another envelope, directed 
 it, and gave it him. He put it in his hat, and 
 away he went. 
 
 " I had no difficulty in finding out the di- 
 rection of that letter. It was addressed Mr. 
 Edwin Drood, Etc, 13. 
 
 Thomas Pigeon, Post Office, R , Northamp- 
 tonshire, to be left till called for. Off I started 
 directly for R ; I said the same at the post- 
 office there as I had said at B ; and again 
 
 I waited three days before anybody came. At 
 last another chap on horseback came. ' Any 
 letters for Mr. Thomas Pigeon?' 'Where do 
 
 you come from ? ' ' New Inn, near R .' He 
 
 got the letter, and away he went at a canter, 
 
 " I made my inquiries about the New Inn, 
 
 near R , and hearing it was a solitary sort 
 
 of house, a little in the horse line, about a couple 
 of miles from the station, I thought I'd go and 
 have a look at it. I found it what it had been 
 described, and sauntered in to look about me. 
 The landlady was in the bar, and I was trying 
 to get into conversation with her ; asked her 
 how business was, and spoke about the wet 
 weather, and so on ; when I saw, through an 
 open door, three men sitting by the fire in a 
 sort of parlour, or kitchen ; and one of those 
 men, according to the description I had of him, 
 was Tally-ho Thompson ! 
 
 " I went and sat down among 'em, and tried 
 to make things agreeable ; but they were very 
 shy — wouldn't talk at all — looked at me, and at 
 one another, in a way quite the reverse of so- 
 ciable. I reckoned 'em up, and finding that they 
 were all three bigger men than me, and con- 
 sidering that their looks were ugly — that it was 
 a lonely place — railroad station two miles off — 
 and night coming on — thought I couldn't do 
 better than have a drop of brandy-and-water to 
 keep my courage up. So I called for my 
 brandy-and-water; and as I was sitting drinking 
 it by the fire, Thompson got up and went out. 
 
 " Now the difficulty of it was, that I wasn't 
 sure it was Thompson, because I had never set 
 eyes on him before; and what I had wanted was 
 to be quite certain of him. However, there was 
 nothing for it now but to follow, and put a bold 
 face upon it. I found him talking, outside in 
 the yard, with the landlady. It turned out 
 at"terwards that he was wanted by a Northamp- 
 ton officer for something else, and that, knowing 
 that officer to be pock-marked (as I am myself), 
 he mistook me for him. As I have observed, I 
 found him talking to the landlady outside. I 
 put my hand upon his shoulder — this way — and 
 said, ' Tally-ho Thompson, it's no use. I know 
 you. I'm an officer from London, and I take 
 you into custody for felony ! ' ' That be d — d,' 
 says Tally-ho Thompson. 
 
 " We went back into the house, and the two 
 friends began to cut up rough, and their looks 
 didn't please me at all, I assure you. ' Let the 
 man go. What are you going to do with him ? ' 
 
194 
 
 THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 
 
 ' I'll tell you what I am going to do with him. 
 I'm going to take him to London to-night, as 
 sure as I'm alive. I'm not alone here, whatever 
 you may think. You mind your own business, 
 and keep yourselves to yourselves. It'll be better 
 for you, for I know you both very well.' I'd 
 never seen or heard of 'em in all my life, but my 
 bouncing cowed 'em a bit, and they kept off 
 while Thompson was making ready to go. I 
 thought to myself, however, that they might be 
 coming after m.e on the dark road, to rescue 
 Thompson ; so I said to the landlady, ' What 
 men have you got in the house, missis ? ' ' We 
 haven't got no men here,' she says sulkily. 
 ' You have got an hostler, I suppose ? ' ' Yes, 
 we've got an hostler.' ' Let me see him.' 
 Presently he came, and a shaggy-headed young 
 fellow he was. ' Now attend to me, young 
 man,' says I; 'I'm a Detective . Officer from 
 London. This man's name is Thompson. I 
 have taken him into custody for felony. I'm 
 going to take him to the railroad station. I call 
 upon you in the Queen's name to assist me ; 
 and mind you, my friend, you'll get yourself into 
 more trouble than you know of, if you don't ! ' 
 You never saw a person open his eyes so wide. 
 ^ Now, Thompson, come along ! ' says I. But 
 when I took out the handcuffs, Thompson cries, 
 " No ! None of that ! I won't stand them ! 
 I'll go along with you quiet, but I won't bear 
 none of that ! ' ' Tally-ho Thompson,' I said, 
 
 * I'm willing to behave as a man to you, if you 
 are willing to behave as a man to me. Give me 
 your word that you'll come peaceably along, and 
 I don't want to handcuff you.' ' I will,' says 
 Thompson, ' but I'll have a glass of brandy first.' 
 
 * I don't care if I've another,' said I. ' We'll 
 have two more, missis,' said the friends, ' and 
 confound you, constable, you'll give your man 
 a drop, won't you ? ' I was agreeable to that, 
 so we had it all round, and then my man and I 
 took Tally-ho Thompson safe to the railroad, and 
 I carried him to London that night. He was 
 afterwards acquitted, on account of a defect in 
 the evidence ; and I understand he always 
 praises me up to the skies, and says I'm one of 
 the best of men." 
 
 This story coming to a termination amidst 
 general applause. Inspector Wield, after a little 
 grave smoking, fixes his eye on his host, and 
 thus delivers himself: 
 
 " It wasn't a bad plant that of mine on Fikey, 
 the man accused of forging the Sou'-Western 
 Railway debentures — it was only t'other day — 
 because the reason why? I'll tell you. 
 
 " I had information that Fikey and his brother 
 kept a factory over yonder there," — indicating any 
 
 region on the Surrey side of the river, — " where 
 he bought second-hand carriages ; so after I'd 
 tried in vain to get hold of him by other means, 
 I wrote him a letter in an assumed name, saying 
 that I'd got a horse and shay to dispose of, and 
 would drive down next day that he might view 
 the lot, and make an offer — very reasonable it 
 was, I said — a reg'lar bargain. Straw and me 
 then went off to a friend of mine that's in the 
 livery and job business, and hired a turn-out for 
 the day — a precious smart turn-out it w'as — 
 quite a slap-up thing ! Down we drove ac- 
 cordingly, with a friend (who's not in the Force 
 himself) ; and leaving my friend in the shay 
 near a public-house, to take care of the horse, 
 we went to the factory, which was some little 
 way off. In the factory, there was a number of 
 strong fellows at work, and after reckoning 'em 
 up it was clear to me that it wouldn't do to try 
 it on there. They were too many for us. We 
 must get our man out of doors. ' Mr. Fikey at 
 home?' 'No, he ain't' 'Expected home 
 soon ? ' ' Why, no, not soon.' ' Ah ! is his 
 brother here ? ' ' /'m his brother.' ' Oh ! well, 
 this is an ill-conwenience, this is. I wrote him 
 a letter yesterday, saying I'd got a little turn-out 
 to dispose of, and I've took the trouble to bring 
 the turn-out down a purpose, and now he ain't 
 in the way.' ' No, he ain't in the way. You 
 couldn't make it convenient to call again, could 
 you ? ' ' Why, no, I couldn't. I want to sell ; 
 that's the fact ; and I can't put it off. Could 
 you find him anywheres ? ' At first he said No, 
 he couldn't, and then he wasn't sure about it, 
 and then he'd go and try. So at last he went 
 up-stairs, where there was a sort of loft, and 
 presently down comes my man himself, in his 
 shirt-sleeves. 
 
 " ' Well,' he says, ' this seems to be rayther a 
 pressing matter of yours.' ' Yes,' I says, ' it is 
 rayther a pressing matter, and you'll find it a bar- 
 gain — dirt-cheap'.' ' I ain't in partickler want 
 of a bargain just now/ he says, ' but where is 
 it ? ' ' Why,' I says, ' the turn-out's just outside. 
 Come and look at it.' He hasn't any suspi- 
 cions, and away we go. And the first thing 
 that happens is that the horse runs away with 
 my friend (who knows no more of driving than 
 a child) when he takes a little trot along the 
 road to show his paces. You never saw such a 
 game in your life ! 
 
 " When the bolt is over, and the turn-out has 
 come to a stand-still again, Fikey walks round 
 and round it as grave as a judge — me too. 
 'There, sir!' I says. 'There's a neat thing!' 
 ' It ain't a bad style of thing,' he says. * I 
 believe you,' says I. ' And there's a horse 1' — 
 
THE YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY. 
 
 195 
 
 for I saw him looking at it. ' Rising eight ! ' I 
 says, rul)bing his fore-legs. (Bless you, there 
 ain't a man in the world knows less of horses 
 than I do, but I'd heard my friend at the livery 
 stables say he was eight year old, so I says, as 
 knowing as possible, ' Rising Eight.') * Rising 
 eight, is he ? ' says he. ' Rising eight,' says I. 
 'Well,' he says, 'what do you want for it?' 
 ' Why, the first and last figure for the whole 
 concern is five-and-twenty pound ! ' ' That's 
 very cheap ! ' he says, looking at me. ' Ain't 
 it ? ' I says. ' I told you it was a bargain ! 
 Now, without any higgling and haggling about 
 it, what I want is to sell, and that's my price. 
 Further, I'll make it easy to you, and take half 
 the money down, and you cau do a bit of stift"* 
 for the balance.' ' Well,' he says again, ' that's 
 very cheap.' ' I believe you,' says I ; ' get in 
 and try it, and you'll buy it. Come ! take a 
 trial ! ' 
 
 " Ecod, he gets in, and we get in, and we 
 drive along the road, to show him to one of the 
 railway clerks that was hid in the public-house 
 window to identify him. But the clerk was 
 bothered, and didn't know whether it was him 
 or wasn't — because the reason why ? I'll tell 
 you, — on account of his having shaved his 
 whiskers. 'It's a clever little horse,' he says, 
 ' and trots well ; and the shay runs light.' ' Not 
 a doubt about it,' I says. ' And now, Mr. 
 Fikey, I may as well make it all right, without 
 wasting any more of your time. The fact is, 
 I'm Inspector Wield, and you're my prisoner.' 
 'You don't mean that?' he says. 'I do, in- 
 deed.' ' Then burn my body,' says Eikey, ' if 
 this ain't too bad ! ' 
 
 " Perhaps you never saw a man so knocked 
 over with surprise. ' I hope you'll let me have 
 my coat ? ' he says. ' By all means.' ' Well, 
 then, let's drive to the factory.' ' Why, not 
 exactly that, I think,' said I ; ' I've been there 
 once before to-day. Suppose we send for it.' 
 He saw it was no go, so he sent for it, and put 
 it on, and we drove him up to London, com- 
 fortable." / 
 
 This reminiscence is in the height of its suc- 
 cess, when a general proposal is made to the 
 fresh-complexioned, smooth-faced ofticer, with 
 the strange air of simplicity, to tell the 
 " Butcher's Story." 
 
 The fresh-complexioned, smooth-faced officer, 
 with the strange air of simplicity, began, with a 
 rustic smile, and in a soft, wheedling tone of 
 voice, to relate the Butcher's Story, thus : 
 
 " It's just about six years ago, now, since 
 information was given at Scotland Yard of there 
 * Give a bill, 
 
 being extensive robberies of lawns and silks 
 going on at some wholesale houses in the City. 
 Directions were given for the business being 
 looked into ; and Straw, and Fcndall, and me, 
 we were all in it." 
 
 " When you received your instructions," said 
 we, " you went away, and held a sort of Cabinet 
 Council together ? " 
 
 The smooth-faced 'officer coaxingly replied, 
 " Ye-es. Just so. We turned it over among 
 ourselves a good deal. It appeared, when we 
 went into it, that the goods were sold by the 
 receivers extraordinarily cheap — much cheaper 
 than they could have been if they had been 
 honestly come by. The receivers were in the 
 trade, and kept capital shops — establishments of 
 the first respectability — one of 'em at the West- 
 end, one down in Westminster. After a lot of 
 watching and inquiry, and this and that among 
 ourselves, we found that the job was managed, 
 and the purchases of the stolen goods made, at 
 a little public-house near Smithfield, down by 
 St, Bartholomew's ; where the warehouse por- 
 ters, who were the thieves, took 'em for that 
 purpose, don't you see ? and made appoint- 
 ments to meet the people that went between 
 themselves and the receivers. This public- 
 house was principally used by journeymen 
 butchers from the country out of place, and in 
 want of situations ; so, what did we do but — ha, 
 ha, ha ! — we agreed that I should be dressed 
 up like a butcher myself, and go and live 
 there ! " 
 
 Never, surely, was a faculty of observation 
 better brought to bear upon a purpose than that 
 which had picked out this officer for the part. 
 Nothing in all creation could have suited him 
 better. Even while he spoke, he became a 
 greasy, sleepy, shy, good-natured, chuckle- 
 headed, unsuspicious, and confiding young 
 butcher. His very hair seemed to have suet in 
 it, as he made it smooth upon his head, and his 
 fresh complexion to be lubricated by large 
 quantities of animal food. 
 
 " — So I — ha, ha, ha ! " (always with the con- 
 fiding snigger of the foolish young butcher) — 
 " so I dressed myself in the regular way, made 
 up a little bundle of clothes, and went to the 
 public-house, and asked if I could have a lodg- 
 ing there ? They says, ' Yes, you can have a 
 lodging here,' antl I got a bedroom, and settled 
 myself down in the tap. There was a number 
 of people about the place, and coming back- 
 wards and forwards to the house ; and first one 
 says, and then another says, ' Are you from the 
 country, young man ? ' ' Yes,' I says, ' I am. 
 I'm come out of Northamptonshire, and I'm 
 
196 
 
 'JIIE DETECTIVE POLICE. 
 
 quite lonely here, for I don't know London at 
 all, and it's such a mighty bii,' town.' ' It is a 
 big town,' they says. ' Oh, it's a very big 
 town!' I says. ' Really and truly I never was 
 in such a town. It (juite confuses of me!' — 
 and all that, you know. 
 
 " When some of the journeymen butchers 
 
 that used the house found that I wanted a 
 place, they says, ' Oh, we'll get you a place 1 ' 
 And they actually took me to a sight of places, 
 in Newgate Market, Newport Market, Clare, 
 Carnaby — I don't know where all. But the 
 wages was — ha, ha, ha ! — was not sufficient, and 
 I never could suit myself, don't you see ? Some 
 
 •'ARE YOU FROM THE COUNTRY, YOUNG MAN.?" "YES," I SAYS, "I AM." 
 
 of the queer frequenters of the house were a 
 little suspicious of me at first, and I was obliged 
 to be very cautious indeed how I communicated 
 with Straw or Fendall. Sometimes, when I 
 went out, pretending to stop and look into the 
 shop-windows, and just casting my eye round, I 
 
 used to see some of 'em following me ; but, 
 being perhaps better accustomed than they 
 thought for to that sort of thing, I used to leati 
 'em on as far as I thought necessary or con- 
 venient — sometimes a long way — and then turn 
 sharp round, and meet 'em, and say, ' Oh dear, 
 
THE CO U^ 2'ERFEIT B UTCIIER. 
 
 197 
 
 how glad I am to come upon you so fortunate ! 
 This London's such a place, I'm blowed if I 
 an't lost again ! ' And then we'd go back all 
 together to the public-house, and — ha, ha, ha ! 
 — and smoke our pipes, don't you see ? 
 
 " They were very attentive to me, I am sure. 
 It was a common thing, v.-hile I was living there, 
 for some of 'em to take me out, and show me 
 London. They showed me the Prisons — 
 showed me Newgate — and when they showed 
 me Newgate, I stops at the place where the 
 porters pitch their loads, and says, ' Oh dear, is 
 this where they hang the men ? Oh Lor ! ' 
 ' That ! ' they says. ' What a simple cove he 
 is ! That an't it ! ' And then they pointed out 
 which was it, and I says 'Lor !' and they says, 
 * Now you'll know it agen, won't you ?' And I 
 said I thought I should it" I tried hard — and I 
 assure you I kept a sharp look-out for the City 
 Police when we were out in this way, for if any 
 of 'em had happened to know me, and had 
 spoke to me, it would have been all up in a 
 minute. However, by good luck such a thing 
 never happened, and all went on quiet : though 
 the difficulties I had in communicating with my 
 brother officers were quite extraordinar)-. 
 
 " The stolen goods that were brought to the 
 public-house by the warehouse porters were 
 always disposed of in a back-parlour. For a 
 long time, I never could get into this parlour, 
 or see what was done there. As I sat smoking 
 my pipe, like an innocent young chap, by the 
 tap-room fire, I'd hear some of the parties to the 
 robbery, as they came in and out, say softly to 
 the landlord, 'Who's that? What does he do 
 here ? ' ' Bless your soul,' says the landlord, 
 ' he's only a ' — ha, ha, ha ! — ' he's only a green 
 young fellow from the country, as is looking for 
 a butchers sitiwation. Don't mind him! ' So, 
 in course of time, they were so convinced of my 
 being green, and got to be so accustomed to 
 me, that I was as free of the parlour as any of 
 'em, and I have seen as much as Seventy 
 Pounds' worth of fine lawn sold there, in one 
 night, that was stolen from a warehouse in 
 Friday Street. After the sale the buyers always 
 stood treat — hot supper, or dinner, or what not 
 — and they'd say on those occasions, ' Come 
 on. Butcher ! Put your best leg foremost, 
 young 'un, and walk into it ! ' Which I used 
 to do — and hear, at table, all manner of par- 
 ticulars that it was very important for us De- 
 tectives to know. 
 
 " This went on for ten weeks. I lived in the 
 public-house all the time, and never was out of 
 the butcher's dress — except in bed. At last, 
 when I had followed seven of the thieves, and 
 
 set 'em to rights — that's an expression of ours, 
 don't you see ? by which I mean to say that I 
 traced 'em, and found out where the robberies 
 were done, and all about 'em — Straw, and Ken- 
 dall, and I, gave one another the office, and at 
 a time agreed upon, a descent was made ui)on 
 the public-house, and the apprehensions effected. 
 One of the first things the officers did was to 
 collar me — for the parties to the robbery weren't 
 to suppose yet that I was anything but a butcher 
 — on which the landlord cries out, ' Don't take 
 him,' he sa3's, ' whatever you do ! He's only a 
 l)oor young chap from the country, and butter 
 wouldn't melt in his mouth!' However, they 
 — ha, ha, ha ! — they took me, and pretended to 
 search my bedroom, where nothing was found 
 but an old fiddle belonging to the landlord, that 
 had got there somehow or another. But, it 
 entirely changed the landlord's opinion, for when 
 it was produced, he says, ' My fiddle ! The 
 Butcher's a pur-loiner ! I give him into custody 
 for the robbery of a musical instrument ! ' 
 
 " The man that had stolen the goods in Fri- 
 day Street was not taken yet. He had told me, 
 in confidence, that he had his suspicions there 
 was something wrong (on account of the City 
 Police having captured one of the party), and 
 that he was going to make himself scarce. I 
 asked him, ' Where do you mean to go, Mr. 
 Shepherdson ? ' ' Why, Butcher,' says he, ' the 
 Setting Moon, in the Commercial Road, is a 
 snug house, and I shall hang out there for a 
 time. I shall call myself Simpson, which ap- 
 pears to me to be a modest sort of a name. 
 Perhaps you'll give us a look in. Butcher?' 
 ' Well,' says I, ' I think I 7C'i// give you a call' 
 — which I fully intended, don't you see ? be- 
 cause, of course, he was to be taken ! I went 
 over to the Setting Moon next day, with a 
 brother officer, and asked at the bar for Simpson. 
 They pointed out his room up-stairs. As we 
 were going up, he looks down over the banis- 
 ters, and calls out, ' Holloa, Butcher I is that 
 you ? ' ' Yes, it's me. How do you find your- 
 self? ' ' Bobbish,' he says ; ' but who's that with 
 you ?' ' It's only a young man, that's a friend 
 of mine,' I says. ' Come along, then,' says he, 
 ' any friend of the Butcher's is as welcome as 
 the Butcher ! ' So, I made my friend acquainted 
 with him, and we took him into custody. 
 
 " You have no idea, sir, what a sight it was, 
 in Court, when they first knew that I wasn't a 
 butcher, after all ! I wasn't produced at the 
 first examination, when there was a remand; 
 but I was at the second. And when I stepped 
 into the box, in full police uniform, and the 
 whole party saw how they had been done, actu- 
 
iqS 
 
 THE DETECTIVE POLICE. 
 
 ally a groan of horror and dismay proceeded 
 from 'em in the dock ! 
 
 " At the Old Bailey, ^vhen tlicir trials came 
 on, Mr. Clarkson was engaged for the defence, 
 and he couldiit make out how it was about the 
 Butcher. He thought, all along, it was a real 
 butcher. When the counsel for the prosecution 
 said, ' I will now call before you, gentlemen, 
 the Police-officer,' meaning myself, Mr. Clarkson 
 says, * Why Police-officer ? Why more Police- 
 officers? I don't want Police. We have had 
 a great deal too much of the Police. I want 
 the Butcher ! ' However, sir, he had the Butcher 
 and the Police-officer, both in one. Out of 
 Seven prisoners committed for trial, five were 
 found guilty, and some of 'em were transported. 
 The respectable firm at the West-end got a 
 term of imprisonment ; and that's the Butcher's 
 Story ! " 
 
 The story done, the chuckle-headed Butcher 
 again resolved himself into the smooth-faced 
 Detective. But, he was so extremely tickled by 
 their having taken him about, when he was that 
 Dragon in disguise, to show him London, that 
 he could not help reverting to that point in his 
 narrative ; and gently repeating with the Butcher 
 snigger, " ' Oh dear,' I says, ' is that where they 
 hang the men ? Oh Lor ! ' * That I ' says they. 
 ' What a simple cove he is ! ' " 
 
 It being now late, and the party very modest 
 in their fear of being too diffuse, there were 
 some tokens of separation ; when Sergeant Dorn- 
 ton, the soldierly- looking man, said, looking 
 round him with a smile : 
 
 " Before we break up, sir, perhaps you might 
 have some amusement in hearing of the adven- 
 tures of a Carpet Bag. They are very short ; 
 and, I think, curious.' 
 
 We welcomed the Carpet Bag as cordially as 
 Mr. Shepherdson welcomed the false Butcher 
 at the Setting Moon. Sergeant Dornton pro- 
 ceeded. 
 
 " In 1847, I "^^'^^ dispatched to Chatham, in 
 search of one Mesheck, a Jew. He had been 
 carrying on, pretty heavily, in the bill-stealing 
 way, getting acceptances from young men of 
 good connections (in the army chiefly) on pre- 
 tence of discount, and bolting with the same. 
 
 " Mesheck was off before I got to Chatham. 
 All I could learn about him was, that he had 
 gone, probably to London, and had with him — 
 a Carpet Bag. 
 
 " I came back to town by the last train from 
 Blackwall, and made inquiries concerning a Jew 
 passenger with — a Carpet Bag. 
 
 " The office was shut up, it being the last 
 train. There were only two or three porters 
 
 left. Looking after a Jew with a Carpet Bag, 
 on the Blackwall Railway, which was then the 
 high-road to a great Military Depot, was worse 
 than looking after a needle in a hayrick. But 
 it happened that one of these porters had carried, 
 for a certain Jew, to a certain public-house, a 
 certain — Carpet Bag. 
 
 " I went to the public-house, but the Jew had 
 only left his luggage there for a few hours, and 
 had called for it in a cab, and taken it away. I 
 put such questions there, and to the porter, as I 
 thought prudent, and got at this description of 
 — the Carpet Bag. 
 
 " It was a bag which had, on one side of it, 
 worked in worsted, a green parrot on a stand. 
 A green parrot on a stand was the means by 
 Avhich to identify that — Carpet Bag. 
 
 " I traced Mesheck, by means of this green 
 parrot on a stand, to Cheltenham, to Birming- 
 ham, to Liverpool, to the Atlantic Ocean. At 
 Liverpool he was too many for me. He had 
 gone to the United States, and I gave up all 
 thoughts of Mesheck, and likewise of his — Car- 
 pet Bag. 
 
 " Many months afterwards — near a year after- 
 wards — there was a bank in Ireland robbed of 
 seven thousand pounds, by a person of the name 
 of Dr. Dundey, who escaped to America ; from 
 which country some of the stolen notes came 
 home. He was supposed to have bought a farm 
 in New Jersey. Under proper management, that 
 estate could be seized and sold, for the benefit 
 of the parties he had defrauded. I was sent off 
 to America for this purpose. 
 
 " I landed at Boston. I went on to New 
 York. I found that he had lately changed New 
 York paper-money for New Jersey paper-money, 
 and had banked cash in New Brunswick. To 
 take this Dr. Dundey, it was necessary to entrap 
 him into the State of New York, which required 
 a deal of artifice and trouble. At one time, he 
 couldn't be drawn into an appointment. At 
 another time, he appointed to come to meet me, 
 and a New York officer, on a pretext I made ; 
 and then his children had the measles. At last 
 he came, per steamboat, and I took him, and 
 lodged him in a New York prison called the 
 Tombs, which I dare say you know, sir ? " 
 
 Editorial acknowledgment to that effect. 
 
 " I went to the Tombs, on the morning after 
 his capture, to attend the examination before 
 the magistrate. I was passing through the 
 magistrate's private room, when, happening to 
 look round me to take notice of the place, as we 
 generally have a habit of doing, I clapped my 
 eyes, in one corner, on a — Carpet Bag. 
 
 " What did I see upon that Carpet Bag, if 
 
THE PAIR OF GLOVES. 
 
 199 
 
 you'll believe me, but a green parrot on a stand, 
 as large as life ! 
 
 " ' That Carpet Bag, with the representation 
 of a green parrot on a stand,' said I, ' belongs 
 to an English Jew, named Aaron Mesheck, 
 and to no other man, alive or dead ! ' 
 
 " I give you my word the New York police- 
 ofiicers were doubled up with surprise. 
 
 " ' How do you ever come to know that ? ' 
 said they. 
 
 " ' I think I ought to know that green parrot 
 by this time,' said I ; ' for I have had as pretty 
 a dance after that bird, at home, as ever I had 
 in all my life ! ' " 
 
 " And was it Mesheck's ? " we submissively 
 inquired. 
 
 " Was it, sir? Of course it was ! He was in 
 custody for another offence, in that very identi- 
 cal Tombs, at that very identical time. And 
 more than that ! Some memoranda, relating to 
 the fraud for which I had vainly endeavoured to 
 take him, were found to be at that moment, 
 lying in that very same individual — Carpet 
 Bag ! " 
 
 Such are the curious coincidences, and such 
 is the peculiar ability, always sharpening and 
 being improved by practice, and always adapt- 
 ing itself to every variety of circumstances, and 
 opposing itself to every new device that per- 
 verted ingenuity can invent, for which this im- 
 portant social branch of the public service is 
 remarkable ! For ever on the watch, with their 
 wits stretched to the utmost, these officers have, 
 from day to day and year to year, to set them- 
 selves against every novelty of trickery and 
 dexterity that the combined imaginations of all 
 the lawless rascals in England can devise, and 
 to keep pace with every such invention that 
 comes out. In the Courts of Justice, the mate- 
 rials of thousands of such stories as we have 
 narrated — often elevated into the marvellous 
 and romantic by the circumstances of the case 
 — are drily compressed into the set phrase, " In 
 consequence of information I received, I did so 
 and so." Suspicion was to be directed, by 
 careful inference and deduction, upon the 
 right person ; the right person was to be taken, 
 wherever he had gone, or whatever he was 
 doing to avoid detection : he is taken ; there he 
 is at the bar ; that is enough. From informa- 
 tion I, the officer, received, I did it; and, 
 according to the custom in these cases, I say 
 no more. 
 
 These games of chess, played with live pieces, 
 are played before small audiences, and are 
 chronicled nowhere. The interest of the game 
 
 supports the player. Its results are enough for 
 Justice. To compare great things with small, 
 suppose Leverrier or Adams informing the 
 public that from information he had received 
 he had discovered a new planet ; or Columbus 
 informing the public of his day that, from in- 
 formation he had received, he had discovered a 
 new continent ; so the Detectives inform it that 
 they have discovered a new fraud or an old 
 offender, and the process is unknown. 
 
 Thus, at midnight, closed the proceedings of 
 our curious and interesting party. But one 
 other circumstance finally wound up the even- 
 ing, after our Detective guests had left us. One 
 of the sharpest among them, and the officer best 
 acquainted with the Swell Mob, had his pocket 
 picked going home ! 
 
 THREE " DETECTIVE " ' ANECDOTES. 
 
 I. — THE PAIR OF GLOVES. 
 
 T'S a singular story, sir," said In- 
 spector Wield, of the Detective 
 Police, who in company with Ser- 
 geants Dornton and Mith, paid us 
 another twilight visit one July even- 
 ing ; " and I've been thinking you 
 might like to know it. 
 
 " Ifs concerning the murder of the 
 young woman, Eliza Grimwood, some years ago, 
 over in the Waterloo Road. She was commonly 
 called The Countess, because of her handsome 
 appearance and her proud way of carrying her- 
 self; and when I saw the poor Countess (I had 
 known her well to speak to), lying dead with 
 her throat cut, on the floor of her bodroom, 
 you'll believe me that a variety of reflections 
 calculated to make a man rather low in his 
 spirits came into my head. 
 
 " That's neither here nor there. I went to 
 the house the morning after the murder, and 
 examined the body, and made a general obser- 
 vation of the bedroom where it was. Turning 
 down the pillow of the bed with my hand, I 
 found, underneath it, a pair of gloves. A pair 
 of gentleman's dress gloves, very dirty; and 
 inside the lining, the letters Tr, and a cross. 
 
 " Well, sir, I took them gloves away, and I 
 showed 'em to the magistrate, over at Union 
 Hall, before whom the case was. He says, 
 * Wield,' he says, ' there's no doubt this is a 
 discovery that may lead to something very im- 
 portant ; and what you have got to do, Wield^ 
 is, to find out the owner of these gloves.' 
 
THREE ''DETECTIVE" ANECDOTES. 
 
 " I was of the same opinion of course, and I 
 went at it immediately. I looked at the gloves 
 pretty narrowlj', and it was my opinion that they 
 had been cleaned. There was a smell of sulphur 
 and rosin about 'em, you know, which cleaned 
 gloves usually have, more or less. I took 'em 
 over to a friend of mine at Kennington, who 
 was in that line, and I put it to him. ' What 
 do you say now ? Have these gloves been 
 cleaned?' 'These gloves have been cleaned,' 
 says he. ' Have you any idea who cleaned 
 them ? ' says I. ' Not at all,' says he ; ' I've a 
 very distinct idea who didn't clean 'em, and 
 that's myself. But I'll tell you what, ^Vield, 
 there ain't above eight or nine reg'lar glove- 
 cleaners in London,' — there were not at that 
 time, it seems, — 'and I think I can give you 
 their addresses, and you may find out, by that 
 means, who did clean 'em.' Accordingly, he 
 gave me the directions, and I went here, and I 
 went there, and I looked up this man, and I 
 looked up that man ; but, though they all agreed 
 that the gloves had been cleaned, I couldn't find 
 the man, woman, or child, that had cleaned that 
 aforesaid pair of gloves. 
 
 " What with this person not being at home, 
 and that person being expected home in the 
 afternoon, and so forth, the inquiry took me 
 three days. On the evening of the third day, 
 coming over Waterloo Bridge from the Surrey 
 side of the river, quite beat, and very much 
 vexed and disappointed, I thought I'd have a 
 shilling's worth of entertainment at the Lyceum 
 Theatre to freshen myself up. So I went into 
 the pit at half-price, and I sat myself down next 
 to a very quiet, modest sort of young man. See- 
 ing I was a stranger (which I thought it just as 
 well to appear to be), he told me the names of 
 the actors on the stage, and we got into conver- 
 sation. When the play was over, we came out 
 together, and I said, ' We've been very com- 
 panionable and agreeable, and perhaps you 
 wouldn't object to a drain ? ' ' Well, you're 
 very good,' says he ; 'I shouldn't object to a 
 drain.' Accordingly, we went to a public- 
 house near the theatre, sat ourselves down in 
 a quiet room up-stairs on the first floor, and 
 called for a pint of half-and-half apiece, and a 
 pipe. 
 
 " Well, sir, we put our pipes aboard, and we 
 drank our half-and-half, and sat a talking very 
 sociably, when the young man says, ' You must 
 excuse me stopping very long,' he says, ' because 
 I'm forced to go home in good time. I must 
 be at work all night.' ' At work all night ? ' 
 says I. 'You ain't a baker?' 'No,' he says, 
 laughing, ' I ain't a baker.' ' I thought not,' 
 
 says I, ' you haven't the looks of a baker.' ' No,' 
 says he, ' I'm a glove-cleaner.' 
 
 " I never was more astonished in my life than 
 when I heard them words come out of his lips. 
 ' You're a glove-cleaner, are you ? ' says I. 
 ' Yes,' he says, ' I am.' 'Then perhaps,' says 1, 
 taking the gloves out of my pocket, ' you can 
 tell me who cleaned this pair of gloves ? It's a 
 rum story,' I says. ' I was dining over at Lam- 
 beth the other day, at a free-and easy — quite 
 promiscuous — with a public company — when 
 some gentleman he left these gloves behind him. 
 Another gentleman and me, you see, we laid a 
 wager of a sovereign that I wouldn't find out 
 who they belonged to. I've spent as much as 
 seven shillings already, in trying to discover; 
 but if you could help me, I'd stand another 
 seven and welcome. You see there's Tr and a 
 cross inside.' ' / see,' he says. ' Bless you, / 
 know these gloves very well. I've seen dozens 
 of pairs belonging to the same party.' 'No?' 
 says I. ' Yes,' says he. ' Then you know who 
 cleaned 'em ? ' says I. ' Rather so,' says he. 
 ' My father cleaned 'em.' 
 
 " ' Where does your father live ? ' says I. ' Just 
 round the corner,' says the young man, ' near 
 Exeter Street, here. He'll tell you who they 
 belong to directly.' ' Would you come round 
 with me now ? ' says I. ' Certainly,' says he, 
 ' but you needn't tell my father that you found 
 me at the play, you know, because he mightn't 
 like it.' ' All right ! ' We went round to the 
 place, and there we found an old man in a white 
 apron, with two or three daughters, all rubbing 
 and cleaning away at lots of gloves, in a front 
 parlour. 'Oh, father!' says the young man, 
 ' here's a person been and made a bet about the 
 ownership of a pair of gloves, and I've told him 
 you can settle it.' ' Good evening,' sir,' says I to 
 the old gentleman. ' Here's the gloves your son 
 speaks of. Letters Tr, you see, and a cross.' 
 ' Oh yes,' he says, ' I know these gloves very 
 well ; I've cleaned dozens of pairs of 'em. They 
 belong to Mr. Trinkle, the great upholsterer in 
 Cheapside.' ' Did you get 'em from Mr. Trinkle 
 direct,' says I, ' if you'll excuse my asking the 
 question ? ' ' No,' says he ; ' Mr. Trinkle always 
 sends 'em to Mr. Phibbs's, the haberdasher's, 
 opposite his shop, and the haberdasher sends 
 'em to me.' ' Perhaps yoti wouldn't object to a 
 drain?' says I. 'Not in the least!' says he. 
 So I took the old gentleman out, and had a little 
 more talk with him and his son over a glass, and 
 we parted ex-cellent friends. 
 
 " This was late on a Saturday night. First 
 thing on the Monday morning I went to the 
 haberdasher's shop, opposite Mr. Trinkle's, the 
 
THE ARTFUL TOUCH. 
 
 201 
 
 great upholsterer's in Cheapside. * Mr. Phibbs 
 in the way?' ' My name is Phibbs.' * Oh ! I 
 beheve you sent this pair of gloves to be 
 cleaned ?' ' Yes, I did, for young Mr. Trinkle 
 over the way. There he is, in the shop ! ' ' Oh ! 
 that's him in the shop, is it ? Him in the green 
 coat?' 'The same individual.' 'Well, Mr. 
 Phibbs, this is an unpleasant affair; but the fact 
 is, I am Inspector Wield of the Detective Police, 
 and I found these gloves under the pillow of the 
 young woman that was murdered the other day, 
 over in the Waterloo Road.' ' Good Heaven ! ' 
 says he. ' He's a most respectable young man, 
 and if his father was to hear of it, it would be 
 the ruin of him ! ' ' I'm very sorry for it,' says I, 
 'but I must take him into custody.' 'Good 
 Heaven ! ' says Mr. Phibbs again ; ' can nothing 
 be done?' ' Nothing,' says I. ' Will you allow 
 me to call him over here,' says he, ' that his 
 father may not see it done ? ' 'I don't object 
 to that,' says I ; ' but unfortunately, Mr. Phibbs, 
 I can't allow of any communication between 
 you. If any was attempted, I should have to 
 interfere directly. Perhaps you'll beckon him 
 over here ? ' Mr. Phibbs went to the door and 
 beckoned, and the young fellow came across the 
 street directly ; a smart, brisk young fellow. 
 
 " ' Good morning, sir,' says I. ' Good morn- 
 ing, sir,' says he. • Would you allow me to in- 
 quire, sir,' says I, ' if you ever had any acquaint- 
 ance with a party of the name of Grimwood ? ' 
 ' Grimwood ! Grimwood ! ' says he. ' No ! ' 
 ' You know the Waterloo Road ? ' ' Oh ! of 
 course I know the Waterloo Road ! ' ' Happen 
 to have heard of a young woman being murdered 
 there ? ' ' Yes, I read it in the paper, and very 
 sorry I was to read it.' ' Here's a pair of gloves 
 belonging to you.' that I found under her pillow 
 the morning afterwards ! ' 
 
 " He was in a dreadful state, sir ; a dreadful 
 state ! ' Mr. Wield,' he says, ' upon my solemn 
 oath I never was there. I never so much as saw 
 her, to my knowledge, in my life ! ' 'I am very 
 sorry,' says I. 'To tell you the truth, I don't 
 think you ai-e the murderer, but I must take you 
 to Union Hall in a cab. However, I think it's 
 a case of that sort, that, at present, at all events, 
 the magistrate will hear it in private.' 
 
 " A private examination took place, and then 
 it came out that this young man was acquainted 
 with a cousin of the unfortunate Eliza Grim- 
 wood, and that, calling to see this cousin a day 
 or two before the murder, he left these gloves 
 upon the table. Who should come in, shortly 
 afterwards, but Eliza Grimwood ! ' Whose gloves 
 are these ? ' she says, taking 'em up. ' Those are 
 Mr. Trinkle's gloves,' says her cousin. ' Oh ! ' 
 
 says she, ' they are very dirty, and of no use to 
 him, I am sure. I shall take 'em away for my 
 girl to clean the stoves with.' And she put 'em 
 in her pocket. The girl had used 'em to clean 
 the stoves, and, I have no doubt, had left 'em 
 lying on the bedroom mantel-piece, or on the 
 drawers, or somewhere ; and her mistress, look- 
 ing round to see that the room was tidy, had 
 caught 'em up and put 'em under the pillow 
 where I found 'em. 
 
 " That's the story, sir." 
 
 ir. — THE ARTFUL TOUCH. 
 
 " One of the most beautiful things that ever was 
 done, perhaps," said Inspector Wield, empha- 
 sising the adjective, as preparing us to expect 
 dexterity or ingenuity rather than strong interest, 
 " was a move of Sergeant Witchem's. It was a 
 lovely idea ! 
 
 "Witchem and me were down at Epsom one 
 Derby Day, waiting at the station for the Swell 
 Mob. As I mentioned, when we were talking 
 about these things before, we are ready at thu 
 station when there's races, or an Agricultural 
 Show, or a Chancellor sworn in for an university, 
 or Jenny Lind, or anything of that sort ; and as 
 the Swell Mob come down, we send 'em back 
 again by the next train. But some of the Swell 
 Mob, on the occasion of this Derby that I refer 
 to, so far kiddied us as to hire a horse and shay ; 
 start away from London by Whitechapel, and 
 miles round ; come into Epsom from the oppo- 
 site direction ; and go to work, right and left, on 
 the course, while we were waiting for 'em at the 
 Rail. That, however, ain't the point of what 
 I'm going to tell you. 
 
 "While Witchem and me were waiting at the 
 station, there comes up one Mr. Tatt ; a gentle- 
 man formerly in the public line, quite an amateur 
 Detective in his way, and very much respected. 
 ' Halloa, Charley Wield ! ' he says. ' What are 
 you doing here ? On the look out for some of 
 your old friends?' 'Yes, the old move, Mr. 
 Tatt.' ' Come along,' he says, ' you antl 
 Witchem, and have a glass of sherry.' ' We 
 can't stir from the place,' says I, ' till the next 
 train comes in ; but after that we will with plea- 
 sure.' Mr. Tatt waits, and the train comes in, 
 and then Witchem and me go off with him to 
 the Hotel. Mr. Tatt he's got up, quite regard- 
 less of expense, for the occasion ; and in his 
 shirt-front there's a beautiful diamond prop, cost 
 him fifteen or twenty i)Ound — a very handsome 
 pin indeed. We drink our sherry at the bar, 
 and have had our three or four glasses, when 
 Witchem cries suddenly, ' Look out, Mr. Wield • 
 
THREE ''DETECTIVE'' ANECDOTES. 
 
 stand fast ! ' and a dash is made into the place 
 by the swell mob — four of 'em — that have come 
 down as I tell you, and in a moment Mr. Tatt's 
 prop is gone ! Witchem he cuts 'em off at the 
 door. I lay about me as hard as I can, Mr. Tatt 
 shows fight like a good 'un, and there we are, 
 all down together, heads and heels, knocking 
 about on the floor of the bar — perhaps you 
 never see such a scene of confusion ! However, 
 we stick to our men (Mr. Tatt being as good as 
 any officer), and we take 'em all, and carry 'em 
 off to the station. The station's full of people, 
 who have been took onShe course ; and it's a 
 precious piece of work to get 'em secured. How- 
 ever, we do it at last, and we search 'em ; but 
 nothing's found upon 'em, and they're locked 
 up ; and a pretty state of heat we are in by that 
 time, I assure you ! 
 
 " I was very blank over it myself, to think 
 that the prop had been passed away ; and I said 
 to Witchem, when we had set 'em to rights, and 
 w^re cooling ourselves along with Mr. Tatt, 
 ' We don't take much by tJiis move, anyway, for 
 nothing's found upon 'em, and it's only the brag- 
 gadocia * after all.' ' What do you mean, Mr. 
 Wield ? ' says Witchem. ' Here's the diamond 
 pin !' and in the palm of his hand there it was, 
 safe and sound ! ' Why, in the name of wonder,' 
 says me and Mr. Tatt in astonishment, ' how did 
 you come by that ? ' ' I'll tell you how I come 
 by it,' says he. ' I saw which of 'em took it ; 
 and when we were all down on the floor together, 
 knocking about, I just gave him a little touch on 
 the back of his hand, as I knew his pal would ; 
 and he thought it was his pal ; and gave it me ! ' 
 It w-as beautiful, beau-ti-ful ! 
 
 " Even that was hardly the best of the case, 
 for that chap was tried at the Quarter Sessions 
 at Guildford. You know what Quarter Sessions 
 are, sir. "Well, if you'll believe me, while them 
 slow justices were looking over the Acts of Par- 
 liament to see what they could do to him, I'm 
 blowed if he didn't cut out of the dock before 
 their faces ! He cut out of the dock, sir, then 
 and there ; swam across a river ; and got up into 
 a tree to dry himself. In the tree he was took — 
 an old woman having seen him climb up — and 
 Witchem's artful touch transported him ! " 
 
 III. — THE SOFA. 
 
 " What young men will do, sometimes, to ruin 
 themselves and break their friends' hearts," said 
 Sergeant Domton, " it's surprising ! I had a 
 case at St. Blank's Hospital which was of this 
 sort. A bad case, indeed, with a bad end ! 
 
 * Three months' imprisonment as reputed thieves. 
 
 " The Secretary, and the House .Surgeon, and 
 the Treasurer of St. Blank's Hospital came to 
 Scotland Yard to give information of numerous 
 robberies having been committed on the students. 
 The students could leave nothing in the pockets 
 of their great-coats, while the great-coats were 
 hanging at the hospital, but it was almost cer- 
 tain to be stolen. Property of various descriptions 
 was constantly being lost; and the gentlemen 
 were naturally uneasy about it, and an.xious, for 
 the credit of the institution, that the thief or 
 thieves should be discovered. The case was 
 intrusted to me, and I went to the hospital. 
 
 " ' Now, gentlemen,' said I, after we had talked 
 it over; 'I understand this property is usually 
 lost from one room.' 
 
 " Yes, they said. It was. 
 
 " ' I should wish, if you please,' said I, ' to see 
 the room.' 
 
 " It was a good-sized bare room down-stairs, 
 with a few tables and forms in it, and a row of 
 pegs all round for hats and coats. 
 
 " ' Next, gentlemen,' said I, ' do you suspect 
 anybody ? ' 
 
 " Yes, they said. They did suspect somebody. 
 They were sorry to say, they suspected one of 
 the porters. 
 
 " ' I should like,' said I, ' to have that man 
 pointed out to me, and to have a litde time to 
 look after him.' 
 
 " He was pointed out, and I looked after him, 
 and then I went back to the hospital, and said, 
 ' Now, gentlemen, it's not the porter. He's, 
 unfortunately for himself, a little too fond of 
 drink, but he's nothing worse. ]\Iy suspicion is, 
 that these robberies are committed by one of 
 the students ; and if you'll put me a sofa into that 
 room where the pegs are — as there's no closet — 
 I think I shall be able to detect the thief. I 
 wish the sofa, if you please, to be covered with 
 chintz, or something of that sort, so that I may 
 lie on my chest, underneath it, without being 
 seen.' 
 
 "The sofa was provided, and next day at 
 eleven o'clock, before any of the students came, 
 I went there, with those gentlemen, to get under- 
 neath it. It turned out to be one of those old- 
 fashioned sofas with a great cross-beam at the bot- 
 tom, that would have broken my back in no 
 time if I could ever have got below it. We had 
 quite a job to break all this away in the time; 
 however, I fell to work, and they fell to work, 
 and we broke it out, and made a clear place for 
 me. I got under the sofa, lay down on my 
 chest, took out my knife, and made a convenient 
 hole in the chintz to look through. It was then 
 settled between me and tlie gentlemen that 
 
UNDER THE SOFA. 
 
 203 
 
 when the students were all up in the wards, one 
 of the gentlemen should come in, and hang up a 
 great-coat on one of the pegs \ and that tliat 
 great-coat should have, in one of the pockets, a 
 pocket-book containing marked money. 
 
 " After I had been there some time, the 
 students began to drop into the room by ones, 
 and twos, and threes, and to talk about all sorts 
 of things, little thinking there was anybody under 
 the sofa — and then to go up-stairs. At last there 
 came in one who remained until he was alone in 
 the room by himself. A tallish, good-looking 
 young man of one or two and twenty, with a 
 light whisker. He went to a particular hat-peg, 
 took off a good hat that was hanging there, tried 
 it on, hung his own hat in its place, and hung 
 that hat on another peg, nearly opposite to me. 
 I then felt quite certain that he was the thief, and 
 would come back by-and-by. 
 
 " When they were all up-stairs, the gentleman 
 came in with the great-coat. I showed him where 
 to hang it, so that I might have a good view of 
 it ; and he went away ; and I lay under the 
 sofa on my chest, for a couple of hours or so, 
 waiting. 
 
 "At last, the same young man came down. 
 He walked across the room, whistling — stopped 
 and listened— took another walk and whistled — 
 stopped again, and listened — then began to go 
 regularly round the pegs, feeling in the pockets of 
 all the coats. When he came to the great-coat, 
 and felt the pocket-book, he was so eager and 
 so hurried that he broke the strap in tearing it 
 open. As he began to put the money in his 
 pocket, I crawled out from under the sofa, and 
 his eyes met mine. 
 
 " j\Iy face, as you may perceive, is brown now, 
 but it was pale at that time, my health not being 
 good ; and looked as long as a horse's. Besides 
 which, there was a great draught of air from the 
 door, underneath the sofa, and I had tied a hand- 
 kerchief round my head ; so what I looked like, 
 altogether, I don't know. He turned blue — 
 literally blue — when he saw me crawling out, 
 and I couldn't feel surprised at it. 
 
 " ' I am an ofiicer of the Detective Police,' said 
 I, ' and have been lying here since you first came 
 in this morning. I regret, for the sake of your- 
 self and your friends, that you should have done 
 what you have ; but this case is complete. You 
 have the pocket-book in your hand and the money 
 upon you ; and I must take you into custody.' 
 
 " It was impossible to make out any case in 
 his behalf, and on his trial he pleaded guilty. 
 How or when he got the means I don't know ; 
 but while he was awaiting his sentence, he 
 poisoned himself in Newgate." 
 
 We inquired of this officer, on the conclusion 
 
 of the foregoing anecdote, whether the time ap- 
 peared long, or short, when he lay in that con- 
 strained position under the sofa ? 
 
 "Why, you see, sir," he replied, "if he hadn't 
 come in the first time, and I had not been quite 
 sure he was the thief, and would return, the time 
 Avould have seemed long. But, as it was, I 
 being dead certain of my man, the time seemed 
 pretty short." 
 
 ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 
 
 OW goes the night? St. Giles's 
 clock is striking nine. The weather 
 is dull and wet, and the long lines 
 of street lamps are blurred, as if we 
 saw them through tears. A damp 
 wind blows, and rakes the pieman's fire 
 out when he opens the door of his little 
 furnace, carrying away an eddy of 
 sparks. 
 
 St. Giles's clock strikes nine. We are punc- 
 tual. Where is Inspector Field ? Assistant 
 Commissioner of Police is already here, en- 
 wrapped in oil-skin cloak, and standing in the 
 shadow of St. Giles's steeple. Detective Ser- 
 geant, weary of speaking French all day to 
 foreigners unpacking at the Great Exhibition, 
 is already here. Where is Inspector Field ? 
 
 Inspector Field is, to-night, the guardian 
 genius of the British Museum. He is bringing 
 his shrewd eye to bear on every corner of its 
 solitary galleries, before he reports " all right." 
 Suspicious of the Elgin marbles, and not to be 
 done by cat-faced Egyptian giants with their 
 hands upon their knees, Inspector Field, saga- 
 cious, vigilant, lamp in hand, throwing mon- 
 strous shadows on the walls and ceilings, passes 
 through the spacious rooms. If a mummy 
 trembled in an atom of its dusty covering, 
 Inspector Field would say, " Come out of that, 
 Tom Green. I know you!" If the smallest 
 " Gonoph '' about town were crouching at the 
 bottom of a classic bath. Inspector Field would 
 nose him with a finer scent than the ogre's, 
 when adventurous Jack lay trembling in his 
 kitchen copper. But all is quiet, and Inspector 
 Field goes warily on, making little outward 
 show of attending to anything in particular, 
 just recognising the Ichthyosaurus as a familiar 
 acquaintance, and wondering, ])erhaps, how the 
 detectives did it in the days before the Flood. 
 
 Will Inspector Field be long about this work ? 
 He may be half an hour longer. He sends his 
 
204 
 
 O.V DUTY WITH IiMSPTlCTOR FIELD. 
 
 compliments by police constable, and proposes 
 that we meet at St. Giles's Station-house, across 
 the road. Good. It were as well to stand by 
 the fire there, as in the shadow of St. Giles's 
 steeple. 
 
 Anything doing here to-night? Not much. 
 We are very quiet. A lost boy, extremely calm 
 and small, sitting by the fire, whom we now 
 confide to a constable to take home, for the 
 child says that if you show him Newgate Street, 
 he can show you where he lives — a raving 
 drunken woman in the cells, who has screeched 
 her voice away, and has hardly i:)ower enough 
 left to declare, even with the passionate help of 
 her feet and arms, that she is the daughter of a 
 British officer, and, strike her blind and dead, 
 but she'll write a letter to the Queen ! but who 
 is soothed with a drink of water — in another 
 cell, a quiet woman with a child at her breast, 
 for begging — in another, her husband in a 
 smock-frock, with a basket of water-cresses — 
 in another a pickpocket — in another, a meek 
 tremulous old pauper man who has been out 
 for a holiday, "and has took but a little drop, 
 but it has overcome him arter so many months 
 in the house " — and that's all as yet. Presently, 
 a sensation at the Station-house door. Mr. 
 Field, gentlemen. 
 
 Inspector Field comes in, wiping his fore- 
 head, for he is of a burly figure, and has come 
 fast from the ores and metals of the deep mines 
 of the earth, and from the Parrot Gods of the 
 South Sea Islands, and from the birds and 
 beetles of the tropics, and from the Arts of 
 Greece and Rome, and from the Sculptures of 
 Nineveh, and from the traces of an elder world, 
 when these Avere not. Is Rogers ready ? Rogers 
 is ready, strapped and great-coated, with a 
 flaming eye in the middle of his waist, like a 
 deformed Cyclops. Lead on, Rogers, to Rats' 
 Castle. 
 
 How many people may there be in London, 
 who, if we had brought them deviously and 
 blindfold to this street, fifty paces from the 
 Station-house, and within call of St. Giles's 
 Church, would know it for a not remote part of 
 the city in which their lives are passed ? How 
 many who, amidst this compound of sickening 
 smells, these heaps of filth, these tumbling 
 houses, with all their vile contents, animate and 
 inanimate, slimily overflowing into the black 
 road, would believe that they breathe t/iis air ? 
 How much Red Tape may there be that could 
 look round on the faces which now hem us in — 
 for our appearance here has caused a rush from 
 all points to a common centre — the lowering 
 foreheads,_ the sallow cheeks, the brutal eyes, 
 
 the matted hair, the infected, vermin-haunted 
 heaps of rags — and say, " I have thought of 
 this ; I have not dismissed the thing ; I have 
 neither blustered it away, nor frozen it away, 
 nor tied it up and put it away, nor smoothly 
 said pooh, pooh ! to it, when it has been shown 
 to me ? " 
 
 This is not what Rogers wants to know, how- 
 ever. What Rogers wants to know is, whether 
 you will clear the way here, some of you, or 
 whether you won't ; because if you don't do it 
 right on end, he'll lock you up ! What ! You 
 are there, are you, Bob Miles ? You haven't 
 had enough of it yet, haven't you ? You want 
 three months more, do you ? Come away from 
 that gentleman ! What are you creeping round 
 there for ? 
 
 "What am I a doing, thinn, Mr. Rogers?" 
 says Bob Miles, appearing, villainous, at the end 
 of a lane of light made by the lantern. 
 
 " I'll let you know pretty quick, if you don't 
 hook it. Will you hook it ? " 
 
 A sycophantic murmur rises from the crowd. 
 " Hook it, Bob, when Mr. Rogers and Mr. 
 Field tells you ! Why don't you hook it when 
 you are told to ?" 
 
 The most importunate of the voices strikes 
 familiarly on Mr. Rogers's ear. He suddenly 
 turns his lantern on the owner. 
 
 "What! You are there, are you, INIister 
 Click? You hook it too — come!" 
 
 " What for ?" says Mr. Click, discomfited. 
 
 " You hook it, will you ? " says Mr. Rogers 
 with stern emphasis. 
 
 Both Click and Miles do ''■ hook it," without 
 another word, or, in plainer English, sneak 
 away. 
 
 " Close up there, my men ! " says Inspector 
 Field to two constables on duty who have 
 followed. " Keep together, gentlemen ; we are 
 going down here. Heads ! " 
 
 St. Giles's Church strikes half-past ten. We 
 stoop low, and creep down a precipitous flight 
 of steps into a dark close cellar. There is a 
 fire. There is a long deal table. There are 
 benches. The cellar is full of company-, 
 chiefly very young men in various conditions of 
 dirt and raggedness. Some are eating supper. 
 There are no girls or women present. Welcome 
 to Rats' Castle, gentlemen, and to this company 
 of noted thieves ! 
 
 " Well, my lads ! How are you, my lads ? 
 What have you been doing to-day ? Here's 
 some company come to see you, my lads ! 
 There's a plate of beef-steak, sir, for the supper 
 of a fine young man ! And Uiere's a mouth for 
 a steak, sir ! Why, I should be too proud of 
 
RATS' CASTLE. 
 
 205 
 
 such a mouth as that, if I had it myself! Stand 
 up and show it, sir ! Take off your cap. 
 There's a fine young man for a nice httle party, 
 sir ! An't he ?" 
 
 Inspector Field is the busthng speaker. In- 
 spector Field's eye is the roving eye that searches 
 every corner of the cellar as he talks. Inspector 
 Field's hand is the well-known hand that has 
 collared half the people here, and motioned 
 their brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, male 
 and female friends, inexorably to Ncav South 
 Wales. Yet Inspector Field stands in this den, 
 the Sultan of the place. Every thief here cowers 
 before him, like a school-boy before his school- 
 master. All watch him, all answer him when 
 addressed, all laugh at his jokes, all seek to pro- 
 pitiate him. This cellar-company alone — to say 
 nothing of the crowd surrounding the entrance 
 from the street above, and making the steps 
 shine with eyes — is strong enough to murder us 
 all, and willing enough to do it ; but, let In- 
 spector Field have a mind to pick out one thief 
 here, and take him ; let him produce that ghostly 
 truncheon from his pocket, and say, with his 
 business air, " My lad, I want you ! " and all 
 Rats' Castle shall be stricken with paralysis, 
 and not a finger moved against him, as he fits 
 the handcuffs on ! 
 
 Where's the Earl of Warwick ? — Here he is, 
 Mr. Field ! Here's the Earl of Warwick, Mr. 
 Field ! — Oh, there you are, my Lord. Come 
 for'ard. There's a chest, sir, not to have a clean 
 shirt on. An't it ? Take your hat off, my Lord. 
 Why, I should be ashamed if I was you — and an 
 Earl, too — to show myself to a gentleman with 
 my hat on ! — The Earl of Warwick laughs and 
 uncovers. All the company laugh. One pick- 
 pocket, especially, laughs wnth great enthusiasm. 
 Oh, what a jolly game it is when Mr. Field comes 
 down — and don't want nobody ! 
 
 So, you are here, too, are you, you tall, grey, 
 soldierly-looking, grave man, standing by the 
 fire? — Yes, sir. Good evening, Mr. Field! — 
 Let us see. You lived servant to a nobleman 
 once ? — Yes, Mr. Field. — And what is it you do 
 now; I forget? — ^Vell, Mr. Field, I job about as 
 well as I can. I left my employment on account 
 of delicate health. The family is still kind to 
 me. Mr. Wix of Piccadilly is also very kind to 
 me when I am hard up. Likewise Mr. Nix of 
 Oxford Street. I get a trifle from them occa- 
 sionally, and rub on as well as I can, Mr. Field. 
 Mr. Field's eye rolls enjoyingly, for this man is 
 a notorious begging-letter writer. — Good night, 
 my lads ! — Good night, Mr. Field, and thankee, 
 sir ! 
 
 Clear the street here, half a thousand of you ! 
 
 Cut it, Mrs. Stalker — none of that — we don't 
 want you ! Rogers of the flaming eye, lead on 
 to the tramps' lodging-house. 
 
 A dream of baleful faces attends to the door. 
 Now, stand back all of you ! In the rear De- 
 tective Sergeant plants himself, composedly 
 whistling, with his strong right arm across the 
 narrow passage. Mrs. Stalker, I am something'd 
 that need not be written here, if you won't get 
 yourself into trouble in about half a minute, if 
 I see that face of yours again ! 
 
 St. Giles's Church clock, striking eleven, hums 
 through our hand from the dilapidated door of 
 a dark out-house as we open it, and are stricken 
 back by the pestilent breath that issues from 
 within. Rogers, to the front with the light, and 
 let us look ! 
 
 Ten, twenty, thirty — who can count them ? 
 Men, women, children, for the most part naked, 
 heaped upon the floor like maggots in a cheese ! 
 Ho ! In that dark corner yonder ! Does any- 
 body lie there ? Me, sir, Irish me, a widder, 
 with six children. And yonder? Me, sir, Irish 
 me, with me wife and eight poor babes. And 
 to the left there ? Me, sir, Irish me, along with 
 two more Irish boys as is me friends. And to 
 the right there ? Me, sir, and the Murphy fam'ly, 
 numbering five blessed souls. And what's this, 
 coiling, now, about my foot? Another Irish 
 me, pitifully in want of shaving, Avhom I have 
 awakened from sleep — and across my other foot 
 lies his wife — and by the shoes of Inspector 
 Field lie their three eldest — and their three 
 youngest are at present squeezed between the 
 open door and the wall. And why is there no 
 one on that little mat before the sullen fire? 
 Because O'Donovan, with his wife and daughter, 
 is not come in from selling Lucifers ! Nor on 
 the bit of sacking in the nearest corner ? Bad 
 luck ! Because that Irish family is late to-night, 
 a cadging in the streets ! 
 
 They are all awake now, the children excepted, 
 and most of them sit up to stare. Wheresoever 
 Mr. Rogers turns the flaming eye, there is a 
 spectral figure rising, unshrouded, from a grave 
 of rags. ^Vho is the landlord here ? — I am, Mr, 
 Field ! says a bundle of ribs and parchment 
 against the wall, scratching itself. — Will you 
 spend this money fairly, in the morning, to buy 
 coffee for 'em all ? — Yes, sir, I will ! — Oh, he'll 
 do it, sir, he'll do it fair. He's honest ! cry the 
 spectres. And with thanks and Good Night sink 
 into their graves again. 
 
 Thus, we make our New Oxford Streets, and 
 our other new streets, never heeding, never ask- 
 ing, where the wretches whom we clear out 
 crowd. With such scenes at our doors, with aK 
 
2o6 
 
 ON DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 
 
 the plagues of Egypt tied up with bits of cob- 
 web in kennels so near our homes, we timorously 
 make our Nuisance Bills and Boards of Health 
 nonentities, and think to keep away the Wolves 
 of Crime and Filih by our electioneering duck- 
 ing to little vestrymen and our gentlemanly 
 handling of Red Tape ! 
 
 Intelligence of the coffee money has got 
 abroad. The yard is full, and Rogers of the 
 flaming eye is beleaguered with entreaties to 
 show other lodging-houses. Mine next ! Mine ! 
 Mine 1 Rogers, military, obdurate, stiff-necked, 
 immovable, replies not, but leads away ; all fall- 
 ing back before him. Inspector Field follows. 
 Detective Sergeant, with his barrier of arm 
 across the little passage, deliberately waits to 
 close the procession. He sees behind him, 
 without any eftbrt, and exceedingly disturbs 
 one individual far in the rear by coolly call- 
 ing out, " It won't do, Mr. Michael ! Don't 
 try it ! " 
 
 After council holden in the street, we enter 
 other lodging-houses, pubhc-houses, many lairs 
 and holes ; all noisome and offensive ; none so 
 filthy and so crowded as where Irish are. In 
 one, the Ethiopian party are expected home 
 presently — were in Oxford Street when last 
 heard of — shall be fetched, for our delight, 
 within ten minutes. In another, one of the two 
 or three Professors who draw Napoleon Buona- 
 parte and a couple of mackerel on the pavement, 
 and then let the work of art out to a speculator, 
 is refreshing after his labours. In another, the 
 vested interest of the profitable nuisance has 
 been in one family for a hundred years, and the 
 landlord drives in comfortably from the country 
 to his snug little stew in town. In all, Inspector 
 Field is received with warmth. Coiners and 
 smashers droop before him ; pickpockets defer 
 to him ; the gentle sex (not very gentle here) 
 smile upon him. Half-drunken hags check 
 themselves in the midst of pots of beer, or pints 
 of gin, to drink to Mr. Field, and pressingly to 
 ask the honour of his finishing the draught. One 
 beldame in rusty black has such admiration for 
 him, that she runs a whole street's length to 
 shake him by the hand ; tumbling into a heap of 
 mud by the way, and still pressing her attentions 
 when her very form has ceased to be distin- 
 guishable through it. Before the power of the 
 law, the power of superior sense — for common 
 thieves are fools beside these men — and the 
 power of a perfect mastery of their character, 
 the garrison of Rats' Castle and the adjacent 
 Fortresses make but a skulking show indeed 
 when reviewed by Inspector Field. 
 
 St. Giles's clock says it will be midnight in 
 
 half an hour, and Inspector Field says we must 
 hurry to the Old Mint in the Borough. The 
 cab-driver is low-spirited, and has a solemn sense 
 of his responsibility. Now, what's your fare, my 
 lad ? — Oh, you know. Inspector Field : wliat's 
 the good of asking me ? 
 
 Say, Parker, strapped and great-coated, and 
 waiting in dim Borough doorway by appoint- 
 ment, to replace the trusty Rogers Avhom we left 
 deep in St. Giles's, are you ready? Ready, 
 Inspector Field, and at a motion of my wrist 
 behold my flaming eye. 
 
 This narrow street, sir, is the chief part of the 
 Old Mint, full of low lodging-houses, as you see 
 by the transparent canvas lamps and blinds, 
 announcing beds for travellers ! But it is greatly 
 changed, friend Field, from my former know- 
 ledge of it; it is infinitely quieter and more sub- 
 dued than when I was here last, some seven 
 years ago ? Oh yes ! Inspector Haynes, a first- 
 rate man, is on this station now, and plays the 
 devil with them ! 
 
 Well, my lads ! How are you to-night, my 
 lads ? Playing cards here, eh ? Who wins ? — 
 Why, Mr. Field, I, the sulky gentleman with the 
 damp flat side-curls, rubbing my bleared eye with 
 the end of my neckerchief, which is like a dirty 
 eelskin, am losing just at present, but I suppose 
 I must take my pipe out of my mouth, and be 
 submissive to you. I hope I see you well, Mr. 
 Field ? — Ay, all right, my lad. Deputy, who 
 have you got up-stairs? Be pleased to show 
 the rooms ! 
 
 Why Deputy, Inspector Field can't say. He 
 only knows that the man who takes care of the 
 beds and lodgers is always called so. Steady, 
 O Deputy, with the flaring candle in the black- 
 ing bottle, for this is a slushy back-yard, and the 
 wooden staircase outside the house creaks and 
 has holes in it. 
 
 Again, in these confined intolerable rooms, 
 burrowed out like the holes of rats or the nests 
 of insect vermin, but fuller of intolerable smells, 
 are crowds of sleepers, each on his foul truckle- 
 bed coiled up beneath a rug. Halloa here ! 
 Come ! Let us see you ! Show your face ! 
 Pilot Parker goes from bed to bed, and turns 
 their slumbering heads towards us, as a sales- 
 man might turn sheep. Some wake up with an 
 execration and a threat. — What ! Who spoke } 
 Oh ! If it's the accursed glaring eye that fixes 
 me, go where I will, I am helpless. Here ! I 
 sit up to be looked at. Is it me you want ? — 
 Not you, lie down again ! — and I lie down, with 
 a woeful growl. 
 
 Wlierever the turning lane of light becomes 
 stationary for a moment, some sleeper appears 
 
THE OLD MINT. 
 
 '.07 
 
 at the end of it, submits himself to be scru- 
 tinised, and fodes away into the darkness. 
 
 There should be strange dreams here, 
 Deputy. They sleep sound enough, says 
 Deputy, taking the candle out of the blacking 
 bottle, snuffing it with his fingers, throwing the 
 snuff into the bottle, and corking it up with the 
 candle : that's all / know. What is the inscrip- 
 tion, Deputy, on all the discoloured sheets ? A 
 precaution against loss of linen. Deputy turns 
 down the rug of an unoccupied bed and dis- 
 closes it. Stop Thief ! 
 
 To lie at night, wrapped in the legend of my 
 slinking life ; to take the cry that pursues me, 
 waking, to my breast in sleep ; to have it staring 
 at me, and clamouring for me, as soon as con- 
 sciousness returns ; to have it for my first-foot 
 on New Year's day, my Valentine, my Birthday 
 salute, my Christmas greeting, my parting with 
 the old year. Stop Thief ! 
 
 And to know that I 7?iusf be stopped, come 
 what will. To know that I am no match for 
 this individual energy and keenness, or this 
 organised and steady system ! Come across 
 the street here, and, entering by a little shop 
 and yard, examine these intricate passages and 
 doors, contrived for escape, flapping and counter- 
 flapping, like the lids of the conjurer's boxes. 
 But what avail they ? Who gets in by a nod, 
 and shows their secret working to us ? In- 
 spector Field. 
 
 Don't forget the old Farm House, Parker ! 
 Parker is not the man to forget it. We are 
 going there now. It is the old Manor House 
 of these parts, and stood in the country once. 
 Then, perhaps, there was something, which was 
 not the beastly street, to see from the shattered 
 low fronts of the overhanging wooden houses 
 we are passing under — shut up now, pasted 
 over with bills about the literature and drama 
 of the Mint, and mouldering away. This long 
 paved yard was a paddock or a garden once, or 
 a court in front of the Farm House. Perchance, 
 with a dovecot in the centre, and fowls pecking 
 about — with fair elm-trees then, where dis- 
 coloured chimney-stacks and gables are now — 
 noisy, then, with rooks which have yielded to a 
 different sort of rookery. It's likelier than not, 
 Inspector Field thinks, as we turn into the 
 common kitchen, which is in the yard, and 
 many paces from the house. 
 
 Well, my lads and lasses, how are you all ? 
 Where's Blackey, who has stood near London 
 Bridge these five-and-twenty years, with a 
 painted skin to represent disease ? — Here he 
 is, Mr. Field ! — How are you, Blackey ? — Jolly, 
 sa ! — Not playing the fiddle to-night, Blackey? 
 
 — Not a night, sa ! — A sharp, smiling youth, 
 the wit of the kitchen, interposes. He an't 
 musical to-night, sir. I've been giving him a 
 moral lecture ; I've been a talking to him about 
 his latter end, you see. A good many of these 
 are my pupils, sir. This here young man 
 (smoothing down the hair of one near him, 
 reading a Sunday paper) is a pupil of mine, 
 I'm a teaching of him to read, sir. He's a pro- 
 mising cove, sir. He's a smith, he is, and gets 
 his living by the sweat of the brow, sir. So do 
 I myself, sir. This young woman is my sister, 
 Mr. Field. S/ie's getting on very well too. I've 
 a deal of trouble with 'em, sir, but I'm richly 
 rewarded, now I see 'em all a doing so well, 
 and growing up so creditable. That's a great 
 comfort, that is, an't it, sir? — In the midst of 
 the kitchen (the whole kitchen is in ecstasies 
 with this impromptu "chaft'") sits a young, 
 modest, gentle-looking creature, with a beautiful 
 child in her lap. She seems to belong to the 
 company, but is so strangely unlike it. She has 
 such a pretty, quiet face and voice, and is so 
 proud to hear the child admired — thinks you 
 would hardly believe that he is only nine 
 months old ! Is she as bad as the rest, I 
 wonder? Inspectorial experience does not 
 engender a belief contrariwise, but prompts the 
 answer. Not a ha'porth of dift'erence ! 
 
 There is a piano going in the old Farni 
 House as we approach. It stops. Landlady 
 appears. Has no objections, Mr. Field, to 
 gentlemen being brought, but wishes it were at 
 earlier hours, the lodgers complaining of ill- 
 con wenience. Inspector Field is polite and 
 soothing — knows his woman and the sex. De- 
 puty (a girl in this case) shows the way up a 
 heavy broad old staircase, kept very clean, into 
 clean rooms where many sleepers are, and 
 where painted panels of an older time look 
 strangely on the truckle-beds. The sight of 
 whitewash and the smell of soap — two things 
 we seem by this time to have parted from in 
 infancy — make the old Farm House a phe- 
 nomenon, and connect themselves with the so 
 curiously misplaced picture of the pretty mother 
 and child long after we have left it, — long after 
 we have left, besides, the neighbouring nook, 
 with something of a rustic flavour in it yet, where 
 once, beneath a low wooden colonnade still 
 standing as of yore, the eminent Jack Sheppard 
 condescended to regale himself, and where, now, 
 two old bachelor brothers in broad hats (who 
 are whispered in the Mint to have made a com- 
 pact long ago that if either should ever marry, 
 he must forfeit his share of the joint property) 
 still keep a sequestered tavern, and sit o' nights 
 
20S 
 
 aV DUTY WITH INSPECTOR FIELD. 
 
 smoking pipes in the bar among ancient bottles 
 and glasses, as our eyes behold them. 
 
 How goes the night now? St. George of 
 Southwark answers with twelve blows upon his 
 bell. Parker, good night, for Williams is 
 already waiting over in the region of Ratcliff 
 Highway, to show the houses where the sailors 
 dance. 
 
 I should like to know where Inspector Field 
 was born. In Ratcliff Highway, I would have 
 answered Avith confidence, but for his being 
 equally at home wherever we go. He does not 
 trouble his head, as I do, about the river at 
 night. He does not care for its creeping, black 
 and silent, on our right there, rushing through 
 sluice-gates, lapping at piles and posts and iron 
 lings, hiding strange things in its mud, running 
 away with suicides and accidentally drowned 
 bodies faster than midnight funeral should, and 
 acquiring such various experience between its 
 cradle and its grave. It has no mystery for 
 him. Is there not the Thames Police? 
 
 Accordingly, Williams, lead the way. We 
 are a little late, for some of the houses are 
 already closing. No matter. You show us 
 plenty. All the landlords know Inspector 
 Field. All pass him, freely and good- 
 humouredly, wheresoever he wants to go. So 
 thoroughly are all these houses open to him and 
 our local guide, that, granting that sailors must 
 be entertained in their own way — as I suppose 
 they must, and have a right to be — I hardly 
 know how such places could be better regu- 
 lated. Not that I call the company very select, 
 or the dancing very graceful — even so graceful 
 as that of the German Sugar Bakers, whose 
 assembly, by the Minories, we stopped to visit 
 — but there is watchful maintenance of order in 
 every house, and swift expulsion where need is. 
 Even in the midst of drunkenness, both of the 
 lethargic kind and the lively, there is sharp 
 landlord supervision, and pockets are in less 
 peril than out of doors. These houses show, 
 singularly, how much of the picturesque and 
 romantic there truly is in the sailor, requiring 
 to be especially addressed. All the songs (sung 
 in a hail-storm of halfpence, which are pitched 
 at the singer without the least tenderness for 
 the time or tune — mostly from great rolls of 
 copper carried for the purpose — and which he 
 occasionally dodges like shot as they fly near 
 his head) are of the sentimental sea sort. All 
 the rooms are decorated with nautical subjects. 
 Wrecks, engagements, ships on fire, ships pass- 
 ing lighthouses on iron-bound coasts, ships 
 blowing up, ships going down, ships running 
 asliore, men lying out upon the main-yard in a 
 
 gale of wind, sailors and ships in every variety 
 of peril, constitute the illustrations of fact. 
 Nothing can be done, in the fanciful way, 
 without a thumping boy upon a scaly dolphin. 
 
 How goes the night now? Past one. Black 
 and Green are waiting in Whitechapel to unveil 
 the mysteries of Wentworth Street. Williams, 
 the best of friends must part. Adieu ! 
 
 Are not Black and Green ready at the ap- 
 pointed place? Oh yes! They glide out of 
 shadow as we stop. Imperturbable Black opens 
 the cab door; Imperturbable Green takes a men- 
 tal note of the driver. Both Green and Black 
 then open each his flaming eye, and marshal us 
 the way that we are going. 
 
 The lodging-house we want is hidden in a 
 maze of streets and courts. It is fast shut. We 
 knock at the door, and stand hushed, looking up 
 for a light at one or other of the begrimed old 
 lattice windows in its ugly front, when another 
 constable comes up — supposes that we want " to 
 see the school." Detective Sergeant meanwhile 
 has got over a rail, opened a gate, dropped 
 down an area, overcome some other little ob- 
 stacles, and tapped at a window. Now returns. 
 The landlord will send a deputy immediately. 
 
 Deputy is heard to stumble out of bed. De- 
 puty lights a candle, draws back a bolt or two, 
 and appears at the door. Deputy is a shivering 
 shirt and trousers by no means clean, a yawning 
 face, a shock head much confused externally 
 and internally. We want to look for some one. 
 You may go up with the light, and take 'em all, 
 if you like, says Deputy, resigning it, and sitting 
 down upon a bench in the kitchen with his ten 
 fingers sleepily twisting in his hair. 
 
 Halloa here ! Now then ! Show yourselves. 
 That'll do. It's not you. Don't disturb yourself 
 any more ! So on, through a labyrinth of airless 
 rooms, each man responding, like a wild beast, 
 to the keeper who has tamed him, and who goes 
 into his cage. What, you haven't found him, 
 then ? says Deputy, when we come down. A 
 woman, mysteriously sitting up all night in the 
 dark by the smouldering ashes of the kitchen 
 fire, says it's only tramps and cadgers here : it's 
 gonoj)hs over the way. A man, mysteriously 
 walking about the kitchen all night in the dark, 
 bids her hold her tongue. We come out. De- 
 I'uty fastens the door and goes to bed again. 
 
 Black and Green, you know Bark, lodging- 
 house keeper and receiver of stolen goods ? — Oh 
 yes. Inspector Field. — Go to Bark's next. 
 
 Bark sleeps in an inner wooden hutch, near 
 his street-door. As we parley on the step with 
 Bark's Deputy, Bark growls in his bed. We 
 enter, and Bark flies out of bed. Bark is a red 
 
AT BULLY BARK'S. 
 
 209 
 
 villain and a wrathful, with a sanguine throat 
 that looks very much as it' it were expressly made 
 for hanging, as he stretches it out, in pale de- 
 fiance, over the half-door of his hutch. Bark's 
 parts of speech are of an awful sort — princi- 
 pally adjectives. I won't, says Bark, have no 
 adjective police and adjective strangers in my 
 adjective premises ! I won't, by adjective and 
 substantive ! Give me my trousers, and I'll 
 send the whole aiijective police to adjective and 
 substantive 1 Give me, says Bark, my adjective 
 
 trousers ! I'll put an adjective knife in the whole 
 biicing of 'em. I'll punch their adjective heads. 
 I'll rip up their adjective substantives. Give me 
 my adjective trousers ! says Bark, and I'll spile 
 the bileing of 'em ! 
 
 Now, Bark, what's the use of this? Here's 
 Black and Green, Detective Sergeant, and In- 
 spector Field. You know we will come in. — I 
 know you won't ! says Bark. Somebody give 
 me my adjective trousers ! Bark's trousers seem 
 difficult to find. He calls for them, as Her- 
 
 "IN THE MIDST OF THE KITCHEN 
 
 SITS A YOUNG, MODEST, GENTLE-LOOKING CREATURE, WITH 
 
 A BEAUTIFUL CHILD IN HER LAP." 
 
 cules might for his club. Give me my adjective 
 trousers ! says Bark, and I'll spile the bileing 
 of 'em ! 
 
 Inspector Field holds that it's all one whether 
 Bark likes the visit or don't like it. He, Inspec- 
 tor Field, is an Inspector of the Detective Police, 
 Detective Sergeant is Detective Sergeant, Black 
 and Green are constables in uniform. Don't 
 you be a fool, Bark, or you know it will be the 
 worse for you. — I don't care, says Bark, Give 
 me my adjective trousers ! 
 Edwin Drood, Etc., 14. 
 
 At two o'clock in the morning we descend 
 into Bark's low kitchen, leaving Bark to foam at 
 the mouth above, and Imperturbable Black and 
 Green to look at him. Bark's kitchen is crammed 
 full of thieves, holding a conversazione there by 
 lamp-light. It is by far the most dangerous 
 assembly we have seen yet. Stimulated by the 
 ravings of Bark above, their looks are sullen, 
 but not a man speaks. We ascend again. Bark 
 has got his trousers, and is in a state of madnesf^ 
 in tiie passage, with his back against a door that 
 
DOWN WITH THE TIDE. 
 
 shuts off the upper staircase. We observe, in 
 other respects, a ferocious individuality in Bark. 
 Instead of " Stop Thief ! " on his Hnen, he 
 prints " Stolen from Bark's ! " 
 
 Now, Bark, we are going up-stairs. — No, you 
 ain't ! — You refuse admission to the Pohce, do 
 you. Bark ? — Yes, I do. I refuse it to all the 
 adjective police, and to all the adjective sub- 
 stantives. If the adjective coves in the kitchen 
 was men, they'd come up now, and do for you ! 
 Shut me that there door ! says Bark, and sud- 
 denly we are enclosed in the passage. They'd 
 come up and do for you ! cries Bark, and waits. 
 Not a sound in the kitchen ! They'd come up 
 and do for you ! cries Bark again, and waits. 
 Not a sound in the kitchen ! We are shut up, 
 half-a-dozen of us, in Bark's house, in the inner- 
 most recesses of the worst part of London, in 
 the dead of the night — the house is crammed 
 with notorious robbers and ruffians — and not a 
 man stirs. No, Bark. They know the weight of 
 the law, and they know Inspector Field and Co. 
 too well. 
 
 We leave bully Bark to subside at leisure out 
 of his passion and his trousers, and, I dare say, 
 to be inconveniently reminded of this little brush 
 before long. Black and Green do ordinary duty 
 here, and look serious. 
 
 As to White, who waits on Holborn Hill to 
 show the courts that are eaten out of Rotten 
 Gray's Inn Lane, where other lodging-houses are, 
 and where (in one blind alley) the Thieves' 
 Kitchen and Seminary for the teaching of the 
 art to children is, the night has so worn away, 
 being now 
 
 Almost at odds with morning, which is which, 
 
 that they are quiet, and no light shines through 
 the chinks in the shutters. As undistinctive 
 Death will come here one day, sleep comes now. 
 The wicked cease from troubling sometimes, 
 even in this life. 
 
 don 
 Tem 
 
 DOWN WITH THE TIDE. 
 
 VERY dark night it was, and bitter 
 cold; the east wind blowing bleak, 
 and bringing with it stinging par- 
 ticles from marsh, and moor, and 
 fen — from the Great Desert and Old 
 Egypt maybe. Some of the com- 
 ponent parts of the sharp-edged vapoar 
 that came flying up the Thames at Lon- 
 might be mummy dust, dry atoms from the 
 pie at Jerusalem, camels' footprints, cro- 
 
 codiles' hatching-places, loosened grains of ex- 
 pression from the visages of blunt-nosed sphinxes, 
 waifs and strays from caravans of turbaned mer- 
 chants, vegetation from jungles, frozen snow 
 from the Himalayas. Oh ! it was very very 
 dark upo''i the Thames, and it was bitter bitter 
 cold. 
 
 " And yet," said the voice within the great 
 pea-coat at my side, " you'll have seen a good 
 many rivers too, I dare say ? " 
 
 " Truly," said I, " when I come to think of it, 
 not a few. From the Niagara, downward to the 
 mountain rivers of Italy, which are like the 
 national spirit — very tame, or chafing suddenly 
 and bursting bounds, only to dwindle away 
 again. The IMoselle, and the Rhine, and the 
 Rhone ; and the Seine, and the Saone ; and the 
 St. Lawrence, Mississippi, and Ohio ; and the 
 Tiber, the Po, and the Arno ; and the " 
 
 Pea-coat coughing, as if he had had enough of 
 that, I said no more. I could have carried the 
 catalogue on to a teasing length, though, if I had 
 been in the cruel mind. 
 
 "And after all," said he, "this looks so dismal.?" 
 
 " So awful," I returned, " at night. The Seine 
 at Paris is very gloomy, too, at such a time, and 
 is probably the scene of far more crime and 
 greater wickedness ; but this river looks so broad 
 and vast, so murky and silent, seems such an 
 image of death in the midst of the great city's 
 life, that " 
 
 That Pea-coat coughed again. He could not 
 stand my holding forth. 
 
 We were in a four-oared Thames Police Gal- 
 ley, lying on our oars in the deep shadow of 
 Southwark Bridge — under the corner arch on 
 the Surrey side — having come down with the 
 tide from Vauxhall. We were fain to hold on 
 pretty tight, though close in shore, for the river 
 was swollen and the tide running down very 
 strong. We were watching certain water-rats of 
 human growth, and lay in the deep shade as 
 quiet as mice; our light hidden, and our scraps 
 of conversation carried on in whispers. Above 
 us, the massive iron girders of the arch were 
 faintly visible, and below us its ponderous sha- 
 dow seemed to sink down to the bottom of the 
 stream. 
 
 We had been lying here some half an hour. 
 With our backs to the wind, it is true ; but the 
 wind, being in a determined temper, blew straight 
 through us, and would not take the trouble to go 
 round. I would have boarded a fire-ship to get 
 into action, and mildly suggested as much to my 
 friend Pea. 
 
 " No doubt," says he as patiently as possible; 
 "but shore-going tactics wouldn't do with us. 
 
ROMANCE OF WATERLOO BRIDGE. 
 
 2H 
 
 River thieves can always get rid of stolen pro- 
 perty in a moment by dropping it overboard. 
 We want to take them icith the property, so we 
 lurk about and come out upon 'em sharp. If 
 they see us or hear us, over it goes." 
 
 Pea's wisdom being indisputable, there was 
 nothing for it but to sit there and be blown 
 through for another half-hour. The water-rats 
 thinking it wise to abscond at the end of that 
 time without commission of felony, we shot out, 
 disappointed, with the tide. 
 
 " Grim they look, don't they ? " said Pea, see- 
 ing me glance over my shoulder at the lights 
 upon the bridge, and downward at their long 
 crooked reflections in the river. 
 
 " Very," said I, " and make one think with a 
 shudder of Suicides. What a night for a dread- 
 ful leap from that parapet ! " 
 
 " Ay, but Waterloo's the favourite bridge for 
 making holes in the water from," returned Pea. 
 " By-the-bye — avast pulling, lads ! — would you 
 like to speak to Waterloo on the subject?" 
 
 My face confessing a surprised desire to have 
 some friendly conversation with Waterloo Bridge, 
 and my friend Pea being the most obliging 
 of men, we put about, pulled out of the force 
 of the stream, and in place of going at great 
 speed with the tide, began to strive against it, 
 close in shore again. Every colour but black 
 seemed to have departed from the world. The 
 air was black, the water was black, the barges 
 and hulks were black, the piles were black, the 
 buildings were black, the shadows were only a 
 deeper shade of black upon a black ground. 
 Here and there, a coal fire in an iron cresset 
 blazed upon a wharf ; but, one knew that it too 
 had been black a little while ago, and would be 
 black again soon. Uncomfortable rushes of 
 water suggestive of gurgling and drowning, 
 ghostly rattlings of iron chains, dismal clank- 
 ings of discordant engines, formed the music 
 that accompanied the dip of our oars and their 
 rattling in the rullocks. Even the noises had a 
 black sound to me — as the trumpet sounded red 
 to the blind man. 
 
 Our dexterous boat's crew made nothing of 
 the tide, and pulled us gallantly up to Waterloo 
 Bridge. Here Pea and I disembarked, passed 
 under the black stone archway, and climbed the 
 steep stone steps. Within a few feet of their 
 summit, Pea presented me to Waterloo (or an 
 eminent toll-taker representing that structure), 
 muffled up to the eyes in a thick shawl, and 
 amply great-coated and fur-capped. 
 
 Waterloo received us with cordiality, and ob- 
 served of the night that it was " a Searcher." 
 He had been originally called the Strand Bridge, 
 
 he informed us, but had received his present name 
 at the suggestion of the proprietors, when Parlia- 
 ment had resolved to vote three hundred thousand 
 pound for the erection of a monument in honour 
 of tlie victory. Parliament took the hint (said 
 Waterloo, with the least flavour of misanthropy) 
 and saved the money. Of course the late Duke 
 of Wellington was the first passenger, and of 
 course he paid his penny, and of course a noble 
 lord preserved it evermore. The treadle and 
 index at the toll-house (a most ingenious con- 
 trivance for rendering fraud impossible) were 
 invented by Mr. Lethbridge, then property-man 
 at Drury-Lane Theatre. 
 
 Was it suicide we wanted to know about? said 
 Waterloo. Ha ! Well, he had seen a good deal 
 of that work, he did assure us. He had pre- 
 vented some. Why, one day a woman, poorish- 
 looking, came in between the hatch, slapped 
 down a penny, and wanted to go on without the 
 change ! Waterloo suspected this, and says to 
 his mate, " Give an eye to the gate," and bolted 
 after her. She had got to the third seat between 
 the piers, and was on the parapet just a-going 
 over, when he caught her and gave her in charge. 
 At the police-office next morning, she said it was 
 along of trouble and a bad husband. 
 
 " Likely enough," observed Waterloo to Pea 
 and myself, as he adjusted his chin in his shawl. 
 " There's a deal of trouble about, you see — and 
 bad husbands too ! " 
 
 Another time, a young woman, at twelve 
 o'clock in the open day, got through, darted 
 along; and, before Waterloo could come near 
 her, jumped upon the parapet, and shot herself 
 over sideways. Alarm given, waterman put oft', 
 lucky escape. — Clothes buoyed her up. 
 
 " This is where it is," said Waterloo. " If 
 people jump off straight forwards from the middle 
 of the parapet of the bays of the bridge, they are 
 seldom killed by drowning, but are smashed, 
 poor things ; that's what they are ; they dash 
 themselves upon the buttress of the bridge. But, 
 you jump off," said Waterloo to me, jDutting his 
 forefinger in a button-hole of my great-coat; 
 " you jump oft" from the side of the bay, and 
 you'll tumble, true, into the stream under the 
 arch. What you have got to do is to mind how 
 you jump in ! There was poor Tom Steele 
 from Dublin. Didn't dive ! Bless you, didn't 
 dive at all ! Fell down so flat into the water, 
 that he broke his breast-bone, and lived two 
 days ! " 
 
 I asked Waterloo if there were a favourite side 
 of his bridge for this dreadful purpose ? He re- 
 flected, and thought yes, there was. He should 
 say the Surrey side. 
 
DOWN WITH THE TJDE. 
 
 Three decent-looking men went through one 
 day, soberly and quietly, and went on abreast 
 for about a dozen yards ; when the middle one, 
 he sung out, all of a sudden, " Here goes, Jack ! " 
 and was over in a minute. 
 
 Body found ? Well. Waterloo didn't rightly 
 recollect about that. They were compositors, 
 they were. 
 
 He considered it astonishing how quick people 
 were ! ^^'hy, there was a cab came up one 
 Boxing-night, with a young woman in it, who 
 looked, according to Waterloo's opinion of her, 
 a little the worse for liquor ; very handsome she 
 was too — very handsome. She stopped the cab 
 at the gate, and said she'd pay the cabman then : 
 which she did, though there was a little hanker- 
 ing about the fare, because at first she didn't 
 seem quite to know where she wanted to be 
 drove to. However, slie paid the man, and the 
 toll too, and looking Waterloo in the face (he 
 thought she knew him, don't you see !) said, " I'll 
 finish it somehow ! " Well, the cab went off, 
 leaving Waterloo a little doubtful in his mind, 
 and while it was going on at full speed the young 
 woman jumped out, never fell, hardly staggered, 
 ran along the bridge pavement a little way, pass- 
 ing several people, and jumped over from the 
 second opening. At the inquest it was giv' in 
 evidence that she had been quarrelling at the 
 Hero of Waterloo, and it was brought in jealousy. 
 (One of the results of Waterloo's experience was, 
 that there was a deal of jealousy about.) 
 
 " Do we ever get madmen ? ' said Waterloo, 
 in answer to an inquiry of mine. " Well, we do 
 get madmen. Yes, we have had one or two ; 
 escaped from 'Sylums, I suppose. One hadn't 
 a halfpenny ; and because I wouldn't let him 
 through, he went back a little way, stooped 
 down, took a run, and butted at the hatch like a 
 ram. He smashed his hat rarely, but his head 
 didn't seem no worse — in my opinion on account 
 of his being wrong in it afore. Sometimes people 
 haven't got a halfpenny. If they are really tired 
 and poor, we give 'em one and let 'em through. 
 Other people will leave things — pocket-handker- 
 chiefs mostly. I have taken cravats and gloves, 
 pocket-knives, toothpicks, studs, shirt -pins, 
 rings (generally from young gents, early in the 
 morning), but handkerchiefs is the general thing." 
 
 " Regular customers ? " said Waterloo. " Lord, 
 yes ! '\\'e have regular customers. One, such a 
 worn-out, used-up old file as you can scarcely 
 picter, comes from the Surrey side as regular as 
 ten o'clock at night comes ; and goes over, / 
 think, to some flash house on the Middlesex 
 side. He comes back, he does, as reg'lar as the 
 clock strikes three in the morning, and then can 
 
 hardly drag one of his old legs after the other. 
 He always turns down the water-stairs, comes 
 up again, and then goes on down the Waterloo 
 Road. He always does the same thing, and 
 never varies a minute. Does it every night — 
 even Sundays." 
 
 I asked Waterloo if he had given his mind to 
 the possibility of this particular customer going 
 down the water-stairs at three o'clock some 
 morning, and never coming up again ? He 
 didn't think iliat of him, he replied. In fact, it 
 was Waterloo's opinion, founded on his observa- 
 tion of that file, that he know'd a trick worth 
 tv.-o of it. 
 
 " There's another queer old customer," said 
 Waterloo, " comes over, as punctual as the alma- 
 nac, at eleven o'clock on the sixth of January, 
 at eleven o'clock on the fifth of April, at eleven 
 o'clock on the sixth of July, at eleven o'clock on 
 the tenth of October. Drives a shaggy little, 
 rough pony, in a sort of a rattle-trap arm-chair sort 
 of a thing. White hair he has, and white whiskers, 
 and muffles himself up with all manner of shawls. 
 He comes back again the same afternoon, and 
 we never see more of him for three months. He 
 is a captain in the navy — retired — wery old — 
 wery old — and served with Lord Nelson. He is 
 particular about drawing his pension at Somer- 
 set House afore the clock strikes twelve every 
 quarter. I have heerd say that he thinks it 
 wouldn't be according to the Act of Parliament, 
 if he didn't draw it afore twelve." 
 
 Having related these anecdotes in a natural 
 manner, which was the best warranty in the 
 world for their genuine nature, our friend Water- 
 loo was sinking deep into his shawl again, as 
 having exhausted his communicative powers and 
 taken in enough east wind, when my other friend 
 Pea in a moment brought him to the surface by 
 asking whether he had not been occasionally the 
 subject of assault and battery in the execution 
 of his duty? Waterloo, recovering his spirits, 
 instantly dashed into a new branch of his sub- 
 ject. We learnt how "boUi these teeth" — here 
 he pointed to the places where two front teeth 
 were not — were knocked out by an ugly cus- 
 tomer who one night made a dash at him 
 (Waterloo), while his (the ugly customer's) pal 
 and coadjutor made a dash at the toll-taking 
 apron where the money-pockets were ; hov/ 
 Waterloo, letting the teeth go (to Blazes, he 
 observed indefinitely), grappled with the apron- 
 seizer, permitting the ugly one to run away ; and 
 how he saved the bank, and captured his man, 
 and consigned him to fine and imprisonment. 
 Also how, on another night, "a Cove " laid hold 
 of Waterloo, then presiding at the horse gate oi' 
 
TOLL-TAKER'S EXPERIENCE. 
 
 213 
 
 his bridge, and threw him unceremoniously over 
 his knee, having first cut his head open with his 
 whip. How Waterloo " got right," and started 
 after the Cove all down the Waterloo Road, 
 through Stamford Street, and round to the foot 
 of Blackfriars Bridge, where the Cove "cut into" 
 a public-house. How Waterloo cut in too ; but 
 how an aider and abettor of the Cove's, who 
 happened to be taking a promiscuous drain at the 
 bar, stopped Waterloo ; and the Cove cut out 
 again, ran across the road down Holland Street, 
 and where not, and into a beershop. How 
 Waterloo, breaking awaj' from his detainer, was 
 close upon the Cove's heels, attended by no end 
 of people, who, seeing him running with the 
 blood streaming down his face, thought some- 
 thing worse was " up," and roared Fire ! and 
 Murder ! on the hopeful chance of the matter in 
 hand being one or both. How the Cove was 
 ignominiously taken in a shed where he had 
 run to hide, and how at the police-court they at 
 first wanted to make a sessions job of it; but 
 eventually Waterloo was allowed to be "spoke 
 to," and the Cove made it square Avith Waterloo 
 by paying his doctor's bill (W. was laid up for a 
 week) and giving him " Three, ten." Likewise 
 we learnt what we had faintly suspected before, 
 that your sporting amateur on the Derby day, 
 albeit a captain, can be — "if he be," as Captain 
 Bobadil observes, "so generously minded" — 
 anything but a man of honour and a gentleman ; 
 not sufficiently gratifying his nice sense of humour 
 by the witty scattering of flour and rotten eggs 
 on obtuse civilians, but requiring the further ex- 
 citement of "bilking the toll," and "pitching 
 into " Waterloo, and " cutting him about the 
 head with his whip;" finally being, when called 
 upon to answer for the assault, what Waterloo 
 described as " Minus," or, as I humbly conceived 
 it, not to be found. Likewise did Waterloo 
 inform us, in reply to my inquiries, admiringly 
 and deferentially preferred tlirough my friend 
 Pea, that the takings at the Bridge had more 
 tlian doubled in amount since the reduction of 
 the toll one-half. And being asked if the afore- 
 said takings included much bad money, Waterloo 
 responded, with a look far deeper than the 
 deepest part of the river, he should think not ! — 
 and so retired into his shawl for the rest of the 
 night. 
 
 Then did Pea and I once more embark in our 
 four-oared galley, and glide swiftly down the 
 river with the tide. And while the shrewd East 
 rasped and notched us, as with jagged razors, 
 did my friend Pea impart to me confidences of 
 interest relating to the Thames Police ; we be- 
 tween-whiles finding "duty boats" hanging in 
 
 dark corners under banks, like weeds — our own 
 was a " supervision boat " — and they, as they 
 reported " all riglit ! " flashing their hidden light 
 on us, and we flashing ours on them. These 
 duty boats had one sitter in each : an Inspector : 
 and were rowed " Ran-dan" — which, for the infor- 
 mation of those who never graduated, as I was 
 once proud to do, under a fireman-waterman and 
 winner of Kean's Prize W^herry : who, in the 
 course of his tuition, took hundreds of gallons of 
 rum-and-egg (at my expense) at the various 
 houses of note above and below bridge ; not by 
 any means because he liked it, but to cure a 
 weakness in his liver, for which the faculty had 
 particularly recommended it — may be explained 
 as rowed by three men, two pulling an oar each, 
 and one a pair of sculls. 
 
 Thus, floating down our black highway, sul- 
 lenly frowned upon by the knitted brows oi 
 Blackfriars, Southwark, and London, each in his 
 lowering turn, I was shown by my friend Pea 
 that there are, in the Thames Police Force, 
 whose district extends from Battersea to Bark- 
 ing Creek, ninety-eight men, eight duty boats, 
 and two supervision boats ; and that these go 
 about so silently, and lie in wait in such dark 
 places, and so seem to be nowhere, and so may 
 be anywhere, that they have gradually become 
 a police of prevention, keeping the river almost 
 clear of any great crimes, even while the in- 
 creased vigilance on shore has made it much 
 harder than of yore to live by " thieving " in the 
 streets. And as to the various kinds of water 
 thieves, said my friend Pea, there were the 
 Tier-rangers, who silently dropped alongside the 
 tiers of shipping in the Pool by night, and who, 
 going to the companion-head, listened for two 
 snores — snore number one., the skipper's ; snore 
 number two, the mate's — mates and skippers 
 always snoring great guns, and being dead sure 
 to be hard at it if they had turned in and were 
 asleep. Hearing the double fire, down went 
 the Rangers into the skippers' cabins ; groped 
 for the skippers' inexpressibles, which it was 
 the custom of those gentlemen to shake off, 
 watch, money, braces, boots, and all together, 
 on the floor ; and therewith make oft' as silently 
 as might be. Then there were the Lumpers, or 
 labourers employed to unload vessels. They 
 wore loose canvas jackets with a broad hem in 
 the bottom, turned inside, so as to form a large 
 circular pocket in which they could conceal, 
 like clowns in pantomimes, packages of sur- 
 prising sizes. A great deal of property was 
 stolen in this manner (Pea confided to me) from 
 steamers ; first, because steamers carry a larger 
 number of small packages than other ships ; 
 
214 
 
 A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE. 
 
 next, because of the extreme rapidity with 
 which they are obhged to be unladen for their 
 return voyages. The Lumpers dispose of their 
 booty easily to marine-store dealers, and the 
 only remedy to be suggested is that marine- 
 store shops should be licensed, and thus 
 brought under the eye of the police as rigidly 
 as public-houses. Lumpers also smuggle goods 
 ashore for the crews of vessels. The smuggling 
 of tobacco is so considerable, that it is well 
 Avorth the while of the sellers of smuggled to- 
 bacco to use hydraulic presses, to squeeze a 
 single pound into a package small enough to be 
 contained in an ordinary pocket. Next, said 
 my friend Pea, there were the Truckers — less 
 thieves than smugglers, whose business it was 
 to land more considerable parcels of goods than 
 the Lumpers could manage. They sometimes 
 sold articles of grocery, and so forth, to the 
 crews, in order to cloak their real calling, and 
 get aboard without suspicion. Many of them 
 had boats of their own, and made money. Be- 
 sides these, there were the Dredgermen, who, 
 under pretence of dredging up coals and such- 
 like from the bottom of the river, hung about 
 barges and other undecked craft, and when they 
 saw an opportunity, threw any property they 
 could lay their hands on overboard, in order 
 slily to dredge it up when the vessel was gone. 
 Sometimes they dexterously used their dredges 
 to whip away anything that might lie within 
 reach. Some of them were mighty neat at this, 
 and the accomplishment was called dry dredg- 
 ing. Then, there was a vast deal of property, 
 such as copper nails, sheathing, hard wood, &c., 
 habitually brought away by shipwrights and 
 other workmen from their employers' yards, 
 and disposed of to marine-store dealers, many 
 of whom escaped detection through hard swear- 
 ing, and their extraordinary artful ways of ac- 
 counting for the possession of stolen property. 
 Likewise, there were special-pleading practi- 
 tioners, for whom barges " drifted away of their 
 own selves " — they having no hand in it, except 
 first cutting them loose, and afterwards plunder- 
 ing them — innocents, meaning no harm, who 
 had the misfortune to observe those foundlings 
 wandering about the Thames. 
 
 We were now going in and out, with little 
 noise and great nicety, among the tiers of ship- 
 ping, whose many hulls, lying close together, 
 rose out of the water like black streets. Here 
 and there, a Scotch, an Irish, or a foreign 
 steamer, getting up her steam as the tide made, 
 looked, with her great chimney and high sides, 
 like a quiet factory among the common build- 
 ings. Now, the streets opened into clearer 
 
 spaces, now contracted into alleys ; but the 
 tiers were so like houses in the dark, that I 
 could almost have believed myself in the nar- 
 rower by-ways of Venice. Everything was 
 wonderfully still ; for it wanted full three hours 
 of flood, and nothing seemed awake but a dog 
 here and there. s 
 
 So we took no Tier-rangers captive, nor any 
 Lumpers, nor Truckers, nor Dredgermen, nor 
 other evil-disposed person or persons ; but 
 went ashore at ^Vapping, where the old Thames 
 police-oflice is now a station-house, and where 
 the old Court, with its cabin windows looking 
 on the river, is a quaint charge-room : with 
 nothing worse in it usually than a stuffed cat in 
 a glass case, and a portrait, pleasant to behold, 
 of a rare old Thames Police-ofiftcer, Mr. Super- 
 intendent Evans, now succeeded by his son. 
 We looked over the charge books, admirably 
 kept, and found the prevention so good, that 
 there were not five hundred entries (including 
 drunken and disorderly) in a whole year. Then 
 we looked into the store-room ; where there 
 was an oakum smell, and a nautical seasoning 
 of dreadnought clothing, rope yarn, boat-hooks, 
 sculls and oars, spare stretchers, rudders, pistols, 
 cutlasses, and the like. Then, into the cell, 
 aired high up in the wooden wall through an 
 opening like a kitchen plate-rack ; wherein 
 there was a drunken man, not at all warm, and 
 very wishful to know if it were morning yet. 
 Then, into a better sort of watch and ward 
 room, where there was a squadron of stone 
 bottles drawn up, ready to be filled with hot 
 water, and applied to any unfortunate creature 
 who might be brought in apparently drowned. 
 Einally, we shook hands with our worthy friend 
 Pea, and ran all the way to Tower Hill, under 
 strong Police suspicion occasionally, before we 
 got warm. 
 
 A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE. 
 
 N a certain Sunday, I formed one oi 
 the congregation assembled in the 
 chapel of a large metropolitan Work- 
 house. With the exception of the 
 
 \"^X\\^ clergyman and clerk, and a very few 
 
 ^^^/ officials, there were no 
 
 none but paupers 
 present. The children sat in the galleries ; 
 '? the women in the body of the chapel, and 
 in one of the side-aisles ; the men in the remain- 
 ing aisle. The service was decorously performed, 
 though the sermon might have been much better 
 adapted to the comprehension and to the cir- 
 
< « 
 
 K > 
 
 P ^ 
 
 - a 
 
 ? X 
 
 H 
 
 2s 
 
 o ^ 
 
 C H 
 
 O ^ 
 
INMATES. 
 
 215 
 
 cumstances of the hearers. The usual suppHca- 
 tions were oftered, with more than the usual signifi- 
 cancy in such a place, for the fatherless children 
 and widows, for all sick persons and young 
 children, for all that were desolate and oppressed, 
 for the comforting and helping of the weak- 
 hearted, for the raising up of them that had 
 fallen ; for all that were in danger, necessity, and 
 tribulation. The prayers of the congregation 
 were desired " for several persons in the various 
 wards dangerously ill ; " and others who were 
 recovering returned their thanks to Heaven. 
 
 Among this congregation were some evil- 
 looking young women and beetle-browed young 
 men ; but not many — perhaps that kind of cha- 
 racters kept away. Generally, the faces (those 
 of the children excepted) were depressed and 
 subdued, and wanted colour. Aged people were 
 there, in every variety. Mumbling, blear-eyed, 
 spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame ; vacantly winking 
 in the gleams of sun that now and then crept in 
 through the open doors from the paved yard ; 
 shading their listening ears or blinking eyes 
 with their withered hands ; poring over their 
 books, leering at nothing, going to sleep, crouch- 
 ing and drooping in corners. There were weird 
 old women, all skeleton within, all bonnet and 
 cloak without, continually wiping their eyes with 
 dirty dusters of pocket-handkerchiefs ; and there 
 were ugly old crones, both male and female, with 
 a ghastly kind of contentment upon them which 
 was not at all comforting to see. Upon the 
 whole, it was the dragon. Pauperism, in a very 
 weak and impotent condition ; toothless, fang- 
 less, drawing his breath heavily enough, and 
 hardly worth chaining up. 
 
 When the service was over, I walked with 
 the humane and conscientious gentleman whose 
 duty it was to take that walk that Sunday morn- 
 ing, through the little world of poverty enclosed 
 within the workhouse walls. It was inhabited 
 by a population of some fifteen hundred or two 
 thousand paupers, ranging from the infant newly 
 born or not yet come into the pauper world, to 
 the old man dying on his bed. 
 
 In a room opening from a squalid yard, where 
 a number of listless women were lounging to 
 and fro, trying to get warm in the ineffectual 
 sunshine of the tardy May morning — in the 
 " Itch Ward," not to compromise the truth — a 
 woman such as Hogarth has often drawn, was 
 hurriedly getting on her gown before a dusty 
 fire. She was the nurse, or wardswoman, of 
 that insalubrious department — herself a pauper 
 — flabby, raw-boned, untidy — unpromising and 
 coarse of aspect as need be. But, on being 
 spoken to about the patients whom she had in 
 
 charge, she turned round, with her shabby gown 
 half on, lialf off, and fell a crying with all her 
 might. Not for show, not querulously, not in 
 any mawkish sentiment, but in the deep grief 
 and affliction of her heart; turning away her di- 
 shevelled head ; sobbing most bitterly, wringing 
 her hands, and letting fall abundance of great 
 tears, that choked her utterance. What was the 
 matter with the nurse of the itch-ward? Oh, 
 " the dropped child " was dead ! Oh, the child 
 that was found in the street, and she had brought 
 up ever since, had died an hour ago, and see 
 where the little creature lay, beneath this cloth 1 
 The dear, the pretty dear ! 
 
 The dropped child seemed too small and 
 poor a thing for Death to be in earnest with, 
 but Death had taken it ; and already its diminu- 
 tive form was neatly washed, composed, and 
 stretched as if in sleep upon a box. I thought 
 I heard a voice from Heaven saying, It shall be 
 well for thee, O nurse of the itch-ward, when 
 some less gentle pauper does those offices to 
 thy cold form, that such as the dropped child 
 are the angels who behold my Father's face ! 
 
 In another room were several ugly old women 
 crouching, witch-like, round a hearth, and chat- 
 tering and nodding, after the manner of the 
 monkeys. '! All well here ? And enough to 
 eat ? " A general chattering and chuckling ; at 
 last an answer from a volunteer. " Oh yes, gen- 
 tleman ! Bless you, gentleman ! Lord bless the 
 parish of St. So-and-so ! It feed the hungry, sir, 
 and give drink to the thusty, and it warm them 
 which is cold, so it do, and good luck to the 
 parish of St. So-and-so, and thankee, gentleman!" 
 Elsewhere, a party of pauper nurses were at 
 dinner. " How do you get on ? " " Oh, pretty 
 well, sir ! We works hard, and we lives hard — 
 like the sodgers ! " 
 
 In another room, a kind of purgatory or place 
 of transition, six or eight noisy madwomen were 
 gathered together, under the superintendence of 
 one sane attendant. Among them was a girl of 
 two or three and twenty, very prettily dressed, 
 of most respectable appearance, and good man- 
 ners, who had been brought in from the house 
 where she had lived as domestic servant (having, 
 I suppose, no friends), on account of being sub- 
 ject to epileiDtic fits, and requiring to be re- 
 moved under the influence of a very bad one. 
 She was by no means of the same stuff", or the 
 same breeding, or the same experience, or in 
 the same state of mind, as those by whom she 
 was surrounded ; and she pathetically com- 
 plained that the daily association and the nightly 
 noise made her worse, and was driving her mad 
 — which was perfectly evident. The case was 
 
2l6 
 
 A WALK IN A WORKHOUSE. 
 
 noted for inquiry and redress, but she said she 
 had already been there for some weeks. 
 
 If this girl had stolen her mistress's watch, I 
 do not hesitate to say she would have been 
 infinitely better off. We have come to this 
 absurd, this dangerous, this monstrous pass, that 
 the dishonest felon is, in respect of cleanliness, 
 order, diet, and accommodation, better provided 
 for, and taken care of, than the honest pauper. 
 
 And this conveys no special imputation on 
 the workhouse of the parish of St. So-and-so, 
 where, on the contrary, I saw many things to 
 commend. It was very agreeable, recollecting 
 that most infamous and atrocious enormity com- 
 mitted at Tooting — an enormity which, a hun- 
 dred years hence, will still be vividly remem- 
 bered in the by-ways of English life, and which 
 has done more to engender a gloomy discontent 
 and suspicion among many thousands of the 
 people than all the Chartisi leaders could have 
 done in all their lives — to find the pauper chil- 
 dren in this workhouse looking robust and 
 well, and apparently the objects of very great 
 care. In the infant school — a large, light, airy 
 room at the top of the building — the little crea- 
 tures, being at dinner, and eating their potatoes 
 heartily, were not cowed by the presence of 
 strange visitors, but stretched out their small 
 hands to be shaken, with a very pleasant confi- 
 dence. And it was comfortable to see two 
 mangey pauper rocking-horses rampant in a 
 corner. In the girls' school, where the dinner 
 was also in progress, everything bore a cheerful 
 and healthy aspect. The meal was over in the 
 boys' school by the time of our arrival theie, and 
 the room was not yet quite rearranged ; but the 
 boys were roaming unrestrained about a large 
 and airy yard, as any other school-boys might 
 have done. Some of them had been drawmg 
 large ships upon the schoolroom wall ; and if 
 they had a mast with shrouds and stays set up 
 for practice (as they have in the Middlesex 
 House of Correction), it would be so much the 
 better. At present, if a boy should feel a strong 
 impulse upon him to learn the art of going aloft, 
 he could only gratify it, I presume, as the men 
 and women paupers gratify their aspirations after 
 better board and lodging, by smashing as many 
 workhouse windows as possible, and being pro- 
 moted to prison. 
 
 In one place, the Newgate of the Workhouse, 
 a company of boys and youths were locked up 
 in a yard alone ; their day-room being a kind of 
 kennel where the casual poor used formerly to 
 be littered down at night. Divers of them had 
 been there some long time. "Are they never 
 going away?" was the natural inquiry. "Most 
 
 of them are crippled, in some form or other," 
 said the Wardsman, " and not fit for anything." 
 They slunk about, like dispirited wolves or 
 hyaenas : and made a pounce at their food when 
 it was served out, much as those animals do. 
 The big-headed idiot shuffling his feet along the 
 pavement, in the sun-light outside, was a more 
 agreeable object every way. 
 
 Groves of babies in arms ; groves of mothers 
 and other sick women in bed ; groves of luna- 
 tics ; jungles of men in stone-paved down-stairs 
 day-rooms, waiting for their dinners ; longer and 
 longer groves of old people, in up-stairs In- 
 firmary wards, wearing out life, God knows how 
 — this was the scenery through which the walk 
 lay for two hours. In some of these latter 
 chambers there were pictures stuck against the 
 wall, and a neat display of crockery and pewter 
 on a kind of sideboard ; now and then it was a 
 treat to see a plant or two; in almost every 
 ward there was a cat. 
 
 In all of these Long Walks of aged and in- 
 firm, some old people were bedridden, and had 
 been for a long time ; some were sitting on their 
 beds half naked; some dying in their beds; 
 some out of bed, and sitting at a table near the 
 fire. A sullen or lethargic indifl'erence to what 
 was asked, a blunted sensibility to everything 
 but warmth and food, a moody absence of com- 
 plaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and 
 resentful desire to be left alone again, I thought 
 were generally apparent. On our walking into 
 the midst of one of these dreary perspectives of 
 old men, neaily the following little dialogue 
 took place, the nurse not being immediately at 
 hand : 
 
 "All well here?" 
 
 No answer. An old man in a Scotch cap 
 sitting among others on a form at the table, 
 eating out of a tin porringer, pushes back his 
 cap a little to look at us, claps it down on his 
 forehead again with the palm of his hand, and 
 goes on eatmg. 
 
 " All well here? " (repeated.) 
 
 No answer. Another old man sitting on his 
 bed, paralytically peeling a boiled potato, lifts 
 his head, and stares. 
 
 " Enough to eat ?" 
 
 No answer. Another old man, in bed, turns 
 himself and coughs. 
 
 "How are you to-day?" To the last old 
 man. 
 
 That old man says nothing; but another old 
 man, a tall old man of very good address, 
 speaking with perfect correctness, comes for- 
 ward from somewhere, and volunteers an an^ 
 swer. The reply almost always proceeds from 
 
AMONG THE OLD MEN. 
 
 217 
 
 a volunteer, and not from the person looked at 
 or spoken to. 
 
 " We are very old, sir," in a mild distinct 
 voice. " We can't expect to be well, most of 
 us." 
 
 " Are you comfortable ? " 
 
 " I have no complaint to make, sir." With 
 a half-shake of his head, a half-shrug of his 
 shoulders, and a kind of apologetic smile. 
 
 " Enough to eat ? ' 
 
 " Why, sir, I have but a poor appetite," with 
 the same air as before ; *' and yet I get through 
 my allowance very easily." 
 
 '• But," showing a porringer with a Sunday 
 dinner in it ; " here is a portion of mutton, and 
 three potatoes. You can't starve on that ? " 
 
 " Oh dear no, sir," with the same apologetic 
 air. '• Not starve." 
 
 " What do you want ? " 
 
 " We have very little bread, sir. It's an ex- 
 ceedingly small quantity of bread." 
 
 The nurse, who is now rubbing her hands at 
 the questioner's elbow, interferes with, " It ain't 
 much raly, sir. You see they've only six 
 ounces a day, and when they've took their 
 breakfast, there can only be a little left for 
 night, sir." 
 
 Another old man, hitherto invisible, rises out 
 of his bedclothes, as out of a grave, and looks 
 on. 
 
 "You have tea at night?" The questioner 
 is still addressing the well-spoken old man. 
 
 "Yes, sir, w-e have tea at night." 
 
 "And you save what bread you can from the 
 morning, to eat with it?" 
 
 '• Yes, sir — if we can save any." 
 
 " And you want more to eat with it ? " 
 
 '• Yes, sir." With a very anxious face. 
 
 The questioner, in the kindness of his heart, 
 appears a little discomposed, and changes the 
 subject. 
 
 " What has become of the old man who used 
 to lie in that bed in the corner?" 
 
 The nurse don't remember what old man is 
 referred to. There has been such a many old 
 men. The well-spoken old man is doubtful. 
 The spectral old man, who has come to life in 
 bed, says, " Billy Stevens." Another old man, 
 who has previously had his head in the fire- 
 place, pipes out, 
 
 " Charley Walters." 
 
 Something like a feeble interest is awakened. 
 I suppose Charley Walters had conversation in 
 n;m. 
 
 " He's dead," says the piping old man. 
 
 Another ol^I man, with one eye screwed up, 
 hastily displaces the piping old man, and says : 
 
 Charley Walters died in that bed, 
 J) 
 
 the spectral old 
 
 " Yes ! 
 and — and- 
 
 " Billy Stevens," persists 
 man. 
 
 " No, no ! and Johnny Rogers died in that 
 bed, and — and — they're both on 'em dead — 
 and Sam'l Bowyer ; " this seems very extraordi- 
 nary to him ; " he went out !" 
 
 With this he subsides, and all the old men 
 {having had quite enough of it) subside, and the 
 spectral old man goes into his grave again, and 
 takes the shade of Billy Stevens with him. 
 
 As we turn to go out at the door, another 
 previously invisible old man, a hoarse old man 
 in a flannel gown, is standing there, as if he had 
 just come up through the floor. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir, could I take the 
 liberty of saying a word ? " 
 
 " Yes ; what is it ? " 
 
 " I am greatly better in my health, sir ; but 
 what I want, to get me quite round," with his 
 hand on his throat, " is a little fresh air, sir. It 
 has always done my complaint so much good, 
 sir. The regular leave for going out comes 
 round so seldom, that if the gentlemen, next 
 Friday, would give me leave to go out walking 
 now and then — for only an hour or so, sir " 
 
 Who could wonder, looking through those 
 weary vistas of bed and infirmity, that it should 
 do him good to meet Avith some other scenes, 
 and assure himself that there was something else 
 on earth ? Who could help wondering why the 
 old men lived on as they did ; what grasp they 
 had on life ; what crumbs of interest or occupa- 
 tion they could pick up from its bare board ; 
 whether Charley Walters had ever described to 
 them the days when he kept company with some 
 old pauper woman in the bud, or Billy Stevens 
 ever told them of the time when he was a 
 dweller in the far-off foreign land called Home ? 
 
 The morsel of burnt chiki, lying in another 
 room, so patiently, in bed, wrapped in lint, and 
 looking steadfastly at us with his bright quiet 
 eyes when we spoke to him kindly, looked as if 
 the knowledge of these things, and of all the 
 tender things there are to think about, might 
 have been in his mind — as if he thought, with 
 us, that there was a fellow-feeling in the paupei 
 nurses which appeared to make them more kind 
 to their charges than the race of common nurses 
 in the hospitals — as if he mused upon the 
 Future of some older children lying around him 
 in the same place, and thought it best, perhaps, 
 all things considered, that he should die — as if 
 he knew, without fear, of those many coftins, 
 made and unmade, piled up in the store below 
 — and of his unknown friend, "the dropped 
 
2l8 
 
 PRINCE BULL. A FAIRY TALE. 
 
 child," calm upon the box-lid covered with a 
 cloth. But there was something wistful and 
 appealing, too, in his tiny face, as if, in the 
 midst of all the hard necessities and incongrui- 
 ties he i)ondered on, he pleaded, in behalf of 
 the helpless and the aged poor, for a little more 
 liberty — and a little more bread. 
 
 PRINCE BULL. A FAIRY TALE. 
 
 NCE upon a time, and of course it 
 was in the Golden Age, and I hope 
 you may know when that was, for I 
 am sure I don't, though I have tried 
 hard to find out, there lived, in a rich 
 and fertile country, a powerful Prince 
 whose name was Bull. He had gone 
 through a great deal of fighting, in his 
 time, about all sorts of things, including nothing ; 
 but, had gradually settled down to be a steady, 
 peaceable, good-natured, corpulent, rather sleepy 
 Prince. 
 
 This Puissant Prince was married to a lovely 
 Princess whose name was Fair Freedom. She 
 had brought him a large fortune, and had borne 
 him an immense number of children, and had 
 set them to spinning, and farming, and engineer- 
 ing, and soldiering, and sailoring, and doctoring, 
 and lawyering, and preaching, and all kinds of 
 trades. The cofters of Prince Bull were full of 
 treasure, his cellars were crammed with delicious 
 wines from all parts of the world, the richest 
 gold and silver plate that ever was seen adorned 
 his sideboards, his sons were strong, his daugh- 
 ters were handsome, and, in short, you might 
 have supposed that if there ever lived upon 
 earth a fortunate and happy Prince, the name of 
 that Prince, take him for all in all, was assuredly 
 Prince Bull. 
 
 But appearances, as we all know, are not 
 always to be trusted — far from it ; and if they 
 had led you to this conclusion respecting Prince 
 Bull, they would have led you wrong, as they 
 often have led me. 
 
 For, this good Prince had two sharp thorns in 
 his pillow, two hard knobs in his crown, two 
 heavy loads on his mind, two unbridled night- 
 mares in his sleep, two rocks ahead in his course. 
 He could not by any means get servants to suit 
 him, and he had a tyrannical old godmother 
 whose name was Tape. 
 
 She was a Fairy, this Tape, and was a bright 
 red all over. She was disgustingly prim and 
 formal, and could never bend herself a hair's 
 
 breadth this way or that way out of her naturally 
 crooked shajje. But, she was very potent in 
 her wicked art. She could stop the fastest thing 
 in the world, change the strongest thing into the 
 weakest, and the most useful into the most use- 
 less. To do this she had only to put her cold 
 hand upon it, and repeat her own name, Tape, 
 Then it withered away. 
 
 At the Court of Prince Bull — at least I don't 
 mean literally at his court, because he was a very 
 genteel Prince, and readily yielded to his god- 
 mother when she always reserved that for his 
 hereditary Lords and Ladies — in the dominions 
 of Prince Bull, among the great mass of the 
 community who were called in the language of 
 that polite country the Mobs and the Snobs, 
 were a number of very ingenious men, who were 
 always busy with some invention or other, for 
 promoting the prosperity of the Prince's sub- 
 jects, and augmenting the Prince's power. But, 
 whenever they submitted their models for the 
 Prince's approval, his godmother stepped for- 
 ward, laid her hand upon them, and said " Tape." 
 Hence it came to pass, that when any particu- 
 larly good discovery was made, the discoverer 
 usually carried it oft" to some other Prince, in 
 foreign parts, who had no old godmother who 
 said Tape. This was not, on the whole, an 
 advantageous state of things for Prince Bull, to 
 the best of my understanding. 
 
 The worst of it was, that Prince Bull had in 
 course of years lapsed into such a state of sub- 
 jection to this unlucky godmother, that he never 
 made any serious eftbrt to rid himself of her 
 tyranny. I have said this was the worst of it, 
 but there I was wrong, because there is a worse 
 consequence still behind. The Prince's nume- 
 rous family became so downright sick and tired 
 of Tape, that when they should have helped the 
 Prince out of the difticulties into which that evil 
 creature led him, they fell into a dangerous 
 habit of moodily keeping away from him in an 
 impassive and indifferent manner, as though 
 they had quite forgotten that no harm could 
 happen to the Prince their father, without its 
 inevitably affecting themselves. 
 
 Such was the aspect of affairs at the court of 
 Prince Bull, when this great Prince found it 
 necessary to go to war with Prince Bear. He 
 had been for some time very doubtful of his 
 servants, who, besides being indolent and ad- 
 dicted to enriching their families at his expense, 
 domineered over him dreadfully ; threatening to 
 discharge themselves if they were found the least 
 fault with, pretending that they had done a won- 
 derful amount of work when they had done 
 nothing, making the most unmeaning speeches 
 
TAPE. 
 
 219 
 
 that ever were heard in the Prince's name, and 
 uniformly showing themselves to be very ineffi- 
 cient indeed. Though, that some of them iiad 
 excellent characters from previous situations is 
 not to be denied. Well ; Prince Bull called his 
 servants together, and said to them one and all, 
 " Send out my army against Prince Bear. Clothe 
 it, arm it, feed it, provide it with all necessaries 
 and contingencies, and I will pay the piper ! Do 
 your d^ity by my brave troops," said the Prince, 
 "and do it well, and I will pour my treasure 
 out like water, to defray the cost. Who ever 
 heard me complain of money well laid out ? " 
 ^^'hich indeed he had reason for saying, inas- 
 much as he was well known to be a truly gene- 
 rous and munificent Prince. 
 
 When the servants heard those words, they 
 sent out the army against Prince Bear, and they 
 set the army tailors to work, and the army pro- 
 vision merchants, and the makers of guns both 
 great and small, and the gunpowder makers, 
 and the makers of ball, shell, and shot ; and 
 they bought up all manner of stores and ships, 
 without troubling their heads about the price, 
 and appeared to be so busy that the good Prince 
 rubbed his hands, and (using a favourite expres- 
 sion of his), said, " It's all right !" But, while 
 they were thus employed, the Prince's god- 
 mother, who was a great favourite with those 
 servants, looked in upon them continually all 
 day long, and whenever she popped in her head 
 at the door, said, " How do you do, my chil- 
 dren ? What are you doing here ?" — " Official 
 business, godmother." — "Oho ! " says this wicked 
 Fairy. " — Tape ! " And then the business 
 all went wrong, whatever it was, and the ser- 
 vants' heads became so addled and muddled 
 that they thought they were doing wonders. 
 
 Now, this was very bad conduct on the part 
 of the vicious old nuisance, and she ought to 
 have been strangled, even if she had stopped 
 here ; but, she didn't stop here, as you shall 
 learn.' For, a number of the Prince's subjects, 
 being very fond of the Prince's army, who were 
 the bravest of men, assembled together and pro- 
 vided all manner of eatables and drinkables, 
 and books to read, and clothes to wear, and 
 tobacco to smoke, and candles to burn, and 
 nailed them up in great packing-cases, and put 
 them aboard a great many ships, to be carried 
 out to that brave army in the cold and in- 
 clement country where they were fighting Prince 
 Bear. Then, up comes this wicked Fairy as 
 the ships were weighing anchor, and says, 
 " How do you do, my children ? What are 
 you doing here?" — "We are going with all 
 these comforts to the army, godmother." — 
 
 "Oho!" says she. "A pleasant voyage, my 
 darlings. — Tape ! " And from that time 
 forth, those enchanted ships went sailing, 
 against wind and tide and rhyme and reason, 
 round and round the world, and whenever they 
 touched at any port were ordered off imme- 
 diately, and could never deliver their cargoes 
 anywhere. 
 
 This, again, was very bad conduct on the 
 part of the vicious old nuisance, and she ought 
 to have been strangled for it, if she had done 
 nothing worse ; but, she did sometliing worse 
 still, as you shall learn. For, she got astride of 
 an official broomstick, and muttered as a spell 
 these two sentences, "On her Majesty's ser- 
 vice," and " I have the honour to be, sir, your 
 most obedient servant," and presently alighted 
 in the cold and inclement country where the 
 army of Prince Bull were encamped to fight the 
 army of Prince Bear. On the seashore of that 
 country, she found piled together a number of 
 houses for the army to live in, and a quantity 
 of provisions for the army to live upon, and a 
 quantity of clothes for the army to wear : while, 
 sitting in the mud, gazing at them, were a group 
 of officers as red to look at as the wicked old 
 woman herself. So, she said to one of them, 
 " Who are you, my darling, and how do you 
 do ? " — '' I am the Quartermaster General's 
 Department, godmother, and I am pretty well." 
 Then she said to another, " Who are yoii^ my 
 darling, and how do yott do ? " — " I am the 
 Commissariat Department, godmother, and / 
 am pretty well." Then she said to another, 
 " Who are yoii, my darling, and how do yoic 
 do ? " — " I am the Head of the Medical De- 
 partment, godmother, and I am pretty well." 
 Then, she said to some gentlemen scented 
 with lavender, who kept themselves at a great 
 distance from the rest, " And who are you, my 
 pretty pets, and how do yoii do ? " And they 
 answered, " We-aw-are-the-aw-Staft-aw-Depart- 
 ment, godmother, and we are very well in- 
 deed." — " I am delighted to see you all, my 
 beauties," says this wicked old Fairy. 
 " — Tape ! " Upon that, the houses, clothes, 
 and provisions, all mouldered away; and the 
 soldiers who were sound, fell sick ; and the sol- 
 diers who were sick, died miserably ; and the 
 noble army of Prince Bull perished. 
 
 ' When the dismal news of his great loss was 
 carried to the Prince, he suspected his god- 
 mother very much indeed ; but, he knew that 
 his servants must have kept company with the 
 malicious beldame, and must have given way to 
 her, and therefore he resolved to turn those ser- 
 vants out of their places. So, he called to hiua 
 
A PLATED ARTICLE. 
 
 a Roebuck who had the gift of speech, and he 
 said, " Good Roebuck, tell them they must go." 
 So, the good Roebuck delivered his message, 
 so like a man that you might have supposed 
 him to be nothing but a man, and they were 
 turned out — but, not without warning, for that 
 they had had a long time. 
 
 And now comes the most extraordinary part 
 of the history of this Prince. When he had 
 turned out those servants, of course he wanted 
 others. What was his astonishment to find that 
 in all his dominions, which contained no less 
 than twenty-seven millions of people, there were 
 not above five-and-twenty servants altogether ! 
 They were so lofty about it, too, that instead of 
 discussing whether they should hire themselves 
 as servants to Prince Bull, they turned things 
 topsy-turvy, and considered whether as a favour 
 they should hire Prince Bull to be their master ! 
 While they were arguing this point among them- 
 selves quite at their leisure, the wicked old red 
 Fairy was incessantly going up and down, 
 knocking at the doors of twelve of the oldest of 
 the five-and-twenty, who were the oldest inha- 
 bitants in all that country, and whose united 
 ages amounted to one thousand, saying, " Will 
 you hire Prince Bull for your master? — \^\\\ you 
 hire Prince Bull for your master?" To which 
 one answered, " I will if next door will ; " and 
 another, " I won't if over the way does ; " and 
 another, " I can't if he, she, or they, might, 
 could, would, or should." And all this time 
 Prince Bull's affairs were going to rack and 
 ruin. 
 
 At last. Prince Bull, in the height of his per- 
 plexity, assumed a thoughtful face, as if he 
 were struck by an entirely new idea. The 
 wicked old Fairy, seeing this, was at his elbow 
 directly, and said, " How do you do, my Prince, 
 and what are you thinking of? " — " I am think- 
 ing, godmother," says he, " that among all the 
 seven-and-twenty millions of my subjects who 
 have never been in service, there are men of 
 intellect and business who have made me 
 very famous both among my friends and 
 enemies." — " Ay, truly ! " says the Fairy. — 
 " Ay, truly," says the Prince. — " And what 
 then?" says the Fairy. — "Why, then," says he, 
 " since the regular old class of servants do so 
 ill, are so hard to get, and carry it with so high 
 a hand, perhaps I might try to make good ser- 
 vants of some of these." The words had no 
 sooner passed his lips than she returned, chuck- 
 ling, *' You think so, do you ? Indeed, my 
 Prince ? — Tape ! " Thereupon he directly 
 forgot what he was thinking of, and cried out 
 lamentably to the old servants, " Oh, do come 
 
 and hire your poor old master ! Pray do ! On 
 any terms ! " 
 
 And this, for the present, finishes the story of 
 Prince Bull. I wish I could wind it up by say- 
 ing that he lived happy ever afterwards, but I 
 cannot in my conscience do so ; for, with Tape 
 at his elbow, and his estranged children fatallv 
 repelled by her from coming near him, I dc 
 not, to tell you the plain truth, believe in the 
 possibility of such an end to it. 
 
 A PLATED ARTICLE. 
 
 TJTTING up for the night in one of 
 the chiefest towns of Staffordshire, 1 
 find it to be by no means a lively 
 town. In fact, it is as dull and dead 
 a town as any one could desire not 
 to see. It seems as if its whole population 
 might be imprisoned in its Railway Sta- 
 tion. The Refreshment Room at that 
 Station is a vortex of dissipation compared with 
 the extinct town inn, the Dodo, in the dull High 
 Street. ■ 
 
 Why High Street ? Why not rather Low 
 Street, Flat Street, Low-spirited Street, Used- 
 up Street ? Where are the people who belong 
 to the High Street ? Can they all be dispersed 
 over the face of the country, seeking the unfor- 
 tunate Strolling Manager who decamped from 
 the mouldy little Theatre last week, in the be- 
 ginning of his season (as his playbills testify), 
 repentantly resolved to bring him back, and feed 
 him and be entertained ? Or, can they all be 
 gathered to their fathers in the two old church- 
 yards near to the High Street — retirement into 
 which churchyards ajipears to be a mere cere- 
 mony, there is so very little life outside their 
 confines, and such small discernible difierence 
 between being buried alive in the town, and 
 buried dead in the town tombs ? Over the way, 
 opposite to the staring blank bow-windows of 
 the Dodo, are a little ironmonger's shop, a little 
 tailor's shop (with a picture of the Fashions in 
 the small window, and a bandy-legged baby on 
 the pavement staring at it) — a watchmaker's 
 shop, where all the clocks and watches must be 
 stopped, I am sure, for they could never have 
 the courage to go, with the town in general, and 
 the Dodo in particular, looking at them. Shade 
 of Miss Linwood, erst of Leicester Square, Lon- 
 don, thou art welcome here, and thy retreat is 
 fitly chosen ! I myself was one of the last 
 visitors to that awful storehouse of thy life's 
 
THE DODO. 
 
 221 
 
 work, where an anchorite old man and woman 
 took my shilUng with a solemn wonder, and, 
 conducting me to a gloomy sepulchre of needle- 
 work dropping to jjieces with dust and age, and 
 shrouded in twiliglit at high noon, left me there, 
 chilled, frightened, and alone. And now, in 
 ghostly letters on all the dead walls of this dead 
 town, I read thy honoured name, and find that 
 thy Last Supper, worked in Berlin Wool, invites 
 inspection as a powerful excitement ! 
 
 Where are the people who are bidden with so 
 much cry to this feast of little wool? Where 
 are they ? \M"io are they ? They are not the 
 bandy-legged baby studying the fashions in the 
 tailor's window. They are not the two earthy 
 ploughmen lounging outside the saddler's shop, 
 in the stiff square where the Town-hall stands, 
 like a brick-and-mortar private on parade. They 
 are not the landlady of the Dodo in the empty 
 bar, whose eye had trouble in it, and no wel- 
 come, when I asked for dinner. They are not 
 the turnkeys of the Town Gaol, looking out of 
 the gateway in their uniforms, as if they had 
 locked up all the balance (as my American 
 friends would say) of the inhabitants, and could 
 now rest a little. They are not the two dusty 
 millers in the white mill down by the river, 
 where the great water-wheel goes heavily round 
 anil round, like the monotonous days and nights 
 in this forgotten place. Then who are they, for 
 there is no one else ? No ; this deponent maketh 
 oath and saith that there is no one else, save and 
 except the waiter at the Dodo, now laying the 
 cloth. I have paced the streets, and stared at 
 the houses, and am come back to the blank 
 bow-window of the Dodo ; and the town clocks 
 strike seven, and the reluctant echoes seem to 
 cry, "Don't wake us;" and the bandy-legged 
 baby has gone home to bed. 
 
 If the Dodo were only a gregarious bird — if it 
 had only some confused idea of making a com- 
 fortable nest — I could hope to get through the 
 hours between this and bedtime, without being 
 consumed by devouring melancholy. But, the 
 Dodo's habits are all wrong. It provides me 
 with a trackless desert of sitting-room, with a 
 chair for every day in the year, a table for every 
 month, and a waste of sideboard where a lonely 
 china vase pines in a corner for its mate long 
 departed, and will never make a match with the 
 candlestick in the opposite corner if it live till 
 Doomsday. The Dodo has nothing in the larder. 
 Even now, I behold the boots returning with 
 my sole in a piece of paper ; and with that por- 
 tion of my dinner, the boots, perceiving me at 
 the blank bow-window, slaps his leg as he comes 
 across the road, pretending it is something else. 
 
 The Dodo excludes the outer air. When I 
 mount up to my bedroom, a smell of closeness 
 and flue gets lazily up my nose like sleepy snuff. 
 The loose little bits of carpet writhe under my 
 tread, and take wormy shapes. I don't know 
 the ridiculous man in the looking-glass, beyond 
 having met him once or twice in a dish-cover — 
 and I can never shave /lim to-morrow morning ' 
 The Dodo is narrow-minded as to towels ; ex- 
 pects me to wash on a freemason's apron with- 
 out the trimming ; when I ask for soap, gives 
 me a stony-hearted something white, with no 
 more lather in it than the Elgin marbles. The 
 Dodo has seen better days, and possesses inter- 
 minable stables at the back — silent, grass-grown, 
 broken-windowed, horseless. 
 
 This mournful bird can fry a sole, however, 
 which is much. Can cook a steak, too, which 
 is more. I wonder where it gets its sherry ! If 
 I were to send my pint of wine to some famous 
 chemist to be analysed, what would it turn out 
 to be made of? It tastes of pepper, sugar, bitter 
 almonds, vinegar, warm knives, any flat drink, 
 and a little brandy. Would it unman a Spanish 
 exile by reminding him of his native land at all ? 
 I think not. If there really be any townspeople 
 out of the churchyards, and if a caravan of them 
 ever do dine, with a bottle of wine per man, in 
 this desert of the Dodo, it must make good for 
 the doctor next day ! 
 
 Where was the waiter born? How did he 
 come here ? Has he any hope of getting away 
 from here? Does he ever receive a letter, or 
 take a ride upon the railway, or see anything but 
 the Dodo? Perhaps he has seen the Berlin 
 Wool. He appears to have a silent sorrow on 
 him, and it may be that. He clears the table ; 
 draws the dingy curtains of the great bow- 
 window, which so unwillingly consent to meet, 
 that they must be pinned together; leaves me 
 by the fire with my pint decanter, and a little 
 thin funnel-shaped wine-glass, and a plate of 
 pale biscuits — in themselves engendering des- 
 peration. 
 
 No book, no newspaper ! I left the Arabian 
 Nights in the railway carriage, and have nothing 
 to read but Bradshaw, and " that way madness 
 lies." Remembering what prisoners and ship- 
 wTCcked mariners have done to exercise their 
 minds in solitude, I repeat the multiplication 
 table, the pence table, and the shilling table : 
 which are all the tables I happen to know. 
 What if I write something ? The Dodo keeps 
 no pens but steel pens ; and those I always stick 
 through the paper, and can turn to no other 
 account. 
 
 What am I to do ? Even if I could have the 
 
222 
 
 A PLATED ARTICLE. 
 
 bandy-legged baby knocked up and brought 
 here, I could oft'er him nothing but sherry, and 
 that would be the death of him. He would 
 never hold up his head again if he touched it. 
 I can't go to bed, because I have conceived a 
 mortal hatred for my bedroom ; and I can't go 
 away, because there is no train for my place of 
 destination until morning. To burn the biscuits 
 will be but a fleeting joy; still it is a temporary 
 relief, and here they go on the fire ! Shall I 
 break the plate ? First let me look at the back, 
 and see who made it. Copeland. 
 
 Copeland ! Stop a moment. Was it yester- 
 day I visited Copeland's works, and saw them 
 making plates ? In the confusion of travelling 
 about, it miglit be yesterday or it might be yes- 
 terday month ; but I think it was yesterday. I 
 appeal to the plate. The plate says, decidedly, 
 yesterday. I find the plate, as I look at it, 
 growing into a companion. 
 
 " Don't you remember (says the plate) how 
 you steamed away, yesterday morning, in the 
 bright sun and the east wind, along the valley 
 of the sparkling Trent? Don't 3'ou recollect 
 how many kilns you flew past, looking like the 
 bowls of gigantic tobacco-pipes, cut short off 
 from the stem and turned upside down? And 
 the fires — and the smoke — and the roads made 
 with bits of crockery, as if all the plates and 
 dishes in the civilised world had been Mac- 
 adamised, expressly for the laming of all the 
 horses ? Of course I do ! 
 
 And don't you remember (says the plate) 
 how you alighted at Stoke — a picturesque heap 
 of houses, kilns, smoke, wharfs, canals, and river, 
 lying (as was most appropriate) in a basin — and 
 how, after climbing up the sides of the basin to 
 look at the prospect, you trundled down again 
 at a walking-match pace, and straight proceeded 
 to my father's, Copeland's, where the Avhole of 
 my family, high and low, rich and poor, are 
 turned out upon the world from our nursery 
 and seminary, covering some fourteen acres of 
 ground? And don't you remember what we 
 spring from : — heaps of lumps of clay, partially 
 prepared and cleaned in Devonshire and Dor- 
 setshire, whence said clay principally comes — 
 and hills of flint, without which we should want 
 our ringing sound, and should never be musical? 
 And as to the flint, don't you recollect that it is 
 first burnt in kilns, and is then laid under the 
 four iron feet of a demon slave, subject to vio- 
 lent stamping fits, who, when they come on, 
 stamps away insanely with his four iron legs, 
 and would crush all the flint in the Isle of 
 Thanet to powder, without leaving off? And as 
 to the clay, don't you recollect how it is put 
 
 into mills or teasers, and is sliced, and dug, and 
 cut at, by endless knives, clogged and sticky, 
 but persistent — and is pressed out of that machine 
 through a square trough, whose form it takes — 
 and is cut off in square lumps and thrown into 
 a vat, and there mixed with water, and beaten 
 to a pulp by paddle-wheels — and is then run 
 into a rough house, all rugged beams and lad- 
 ders s])lashed with white, — superintended by 
 Grindoff the Miller in his working clothes, all 
 splashed with white, — where it passes through 
 no end of machinery-moved sieves all splashed 
 A\dth white, arranged in an ascending scale of 
 fineness (some so fine, that three hundred silk 
 threads cross each other in a single square inch 
 of their surface), and all in a violent state of 
 ague with their teeth for ever chattering, and 
 their bodies for ever shivering ? And as to the 
 flint again, isn't it mashed and mollified, and 
 troubled and soothed, exactly as rags are in a 
 paper-mill, until it is reduced to a pap so fine 
 that it contains no atom of "grit" perceptible 
 to the nicest taste? And as to the flint and 
 the clay together, are they not, after all this, 
 mixed in the proportion of five of clay to one of 
 flint, and isn't the compound — known as " slip" 
 — run into oblong troughs, where its superfluous 
 moisture may evaporate ; and finally, isn't it 
 slapped and banged and beaten and patted and 
 kneaded and wedged and knocked about like 
 butter, until it becomes a beautiful grey dough, 
 ready for the potter's use ? 
 
 In regard to the potter, popularly so called 
 (says the plate), you don't mean to say you 
 have forgotten that a workman called a Thrower 
 is the man under whose hand this grey dough 
 takes the shapes of the simpler household vessels 
 as quickly as the eye can follow? You don't 
 mean to say you cannot call him up before you, 
 sitting, with his attendant woman, at his potter's 
 wheel — a disc about the size of a dinner plate, 
 revolving on two drums slowly or quickly as he 
 wills — who made you a complete breakfast set 
 for a bachelor, as a good-humoured little off- 
 hand joke ? You remember how he took up as 
 much dough as he wanted, and, throwing it on 
 his wheel, in a moment fashioned it into a tea- 
 cup — caught up more clay, and made a saucer 
 — a larger dab, and whirled it into a teapot — 
 winked at a smaller dab, and converted it into 
 the lid of the teapot, accurately fitting by the 
 measurement of his eye alone — coaxed a middle- 
 sized dab for two seconds, broke it, turned it 
 over at the rim, and made a milkpot — laughed, 
 and tinned out a slop-basin — coughed, and pro- 
 vided for the sugar? Neither, 1 think, are jou 
 oblivious of the newer mode of making various 
 
THE PLATE DISCOURSES. 
 
 223 
 
 articles, but especially basins, according to which 
 
 improvement a mould revolves instead of a disc ? 
 For you must remember (says the plate) how you 
 saw the mould of a little basin spinning round 
 and round, and how the workman smoothed and 
 pressed a handful of dough upon it, and how 
 with an instrument called a profile (a piece of 
 wood representing the profile of a basin's foot) 
 he cleverly scraped and carved the ring which 
 makes the base of any such basin, and then took 
 the basin off the lathe like a doughey skull-cap 
 to be dried, and afterwards (in what is called a 
 green state) to be put into a second lathe, there 
 to be finished and burnished with a steel bur- 
 nisher? And as to moulding in general (says 
 the plate), it can't be necessary for me to remind 
 you that all ornamental articles, and indeed all 
 articles not quite circular, are made in moulds. 
 For you must remember how you saAv the vege- 
 table dishes, for example, being made in moulds ; 
 and how the handles of teacups, and the spouts 
 of teapots, and the feet of tureens, and so forth, 
 are all made in little separate moulds, and are 
 each stuck on to the body corporate, of which 
 it is destined to form a part, with a stuff called 
 " slag," as quickly as you can recollect it. Fur- 
 ther, you learnt — you know you did — in the 
 same visit, how the beautiful sculptures in the 
 delicate new material called Parian, are all con- 
 structed in moulds ; how, into that material, 
 animal bones are ground up, because the phos- 
 phate of lime contained in bones makes it trans- 
 lucent ; how everything is moulded, before going 
 into the fire, one-fourth larger than it is intended 
 to come out of the fire, because it shrinks in that 
 proportion in the intense heat ; how, when a 
 figure shrinks unequally, it is spoiled — emerging 
 from the furnace a misshapen birth ; a big head 
 and a little body, or a little head and a big body, 
 or a Quasimodo with long arms and short legs, 
 or a ]Miss Biffin with neither legs nor arms worth 
 mentioning. 
 
 And as to the Kilns, in Avhich the firing takes 
 place, and in which some of the more precious 
 articles are burnt repeatedly, in various stages 
 of their process towards completion, — as to the 
 Kilns (says the plate, warming with the recol- 
 lection), if you don't remember them with a 
 horrible interest, what did you ever go to Cope- 
 land's for? When you stood inside of one of 
 those inverted bowls of a Pre-Adamite tobacco- 
 pipe, looking up at the blue sky through the 
 open top far off, as you might have looked up 
 from a well, sunk under the centre of the pave- 
 ment of the Pantheon at Rome, had you the 
 least idea where you were ? And when you 
 found yourself surrounded, in that dome-shaped 
 
 cavern, by innumerable columns of an unearthly 
 order of architecture, supporting nothing, and 
 squeezed close together as if a Pre-Adamite 
 Samson had taken a vast Hall in his arms, and 
 crushed it into the smallest possible space, had 
 you the least idea what they were ? No (says 
 the plate), of course not ! And when you found 
 that each of those pillars was a pile of ingeniously 
 made vessels of coarse clay — called Saggers — 
 looking, when separate, like raised pies lor the 
 table of the mighty Giant Blunderbore, and now 
 all full of various articles of pottery ranged in 
 them in baking order, the bottom of each vessel 
 serving for the cover of the one below, and the 
 whole Kiln rapidly filling with these, tier upon 
 tier, until the last workman should have barely 
 room to crawl out, before the closing of the 
 jagged aperture in the Avail and the kindling of 
 the gradual fire ; did you not stand amazed to 
 think that all the year round these dread cham- 
 bers are heating, white hot — and cooling — and 
 filling — and emptying — and being bricked up — 
 and broken open — humanly speaking, for ever 
 and ever ? To be sure you did ! And standing 
 in one of those Kilns nearly full, and seeing a 
 free crow shoot across the aperture atop, and 
 learning how the fire would wax hotter and 
 hotter by slow degrees, and would cool simi- 
 larly through a space of from forty to sixty 
 hours, did no remembrance of the days when 
 human clay was burnt oppress you ? Yes, I 
 think so ! I suspect that some fancy of a fiery 
 haze and a shortening breath, and a growing 
 heat, and a gasping prayer; and a figure in 
 black interposing between you and the sky (as 
 figures in black are very apt to do), and looking 
 down, before it grew too hot to look and live, 
 upon the Heretic in his edifying agony — I say, 
 I suspect (says the plate) that some such fancy 
 was pretty strong upon you Avhen you went out 
 into the air, and blessed God for the bright 
 spring day and the degenerate times ! 
 
 After that, I needn't remind you what a relief 
 it was to see the simplest process of ornament- 
 ing this " biscuit " (as it is called when baked) 
 with brown circles and blue trees — converting 
 it into the common crockery-ware that is ex- 
 ported to Africa, and used in cottages at home. 
 For (says the plate) I am well persuaded that 
 you bear in mind how those particular jugs and 
 mugs were once more set upon a lathe and put 
 in motion ; and how a man blew the brown 
 colour (having a strong natural affinity with the 
 material in that condition) on them from a 
 blow-pipe as they twirled ; and how his daughter, 
 with a common brush, dropped blotches of blue 
 upon them in the right places ; and how, tilting 
 
224 
 
 OUR HONOURABLE FRIEND. 
 
 the blotches upside down, she made them run 
 into rude images of trees, and there an end. 
 
 And didn't you see (says the plate) planted 
 upon my own brother that astounding blue 
 willow, with knobbed and gnarled trunk, and 
 foliage of blue ostrich feathers, which gives our 
 family the title of " willow pattern ? " And 
 didn't you observe, transferred upon him at the 
 same time, that blue bridge which spans nothing, 
 growing out from the roots of the Avillow ; and 
 the three blue Chinese going over it into a blue 
 temple, which has a fine crop of blue bushes 
 sprouting out of the roof; and a blue boat 
 sailing above them, the mast of which is bur- 
 glariously sticking itself into the foundations of 
 a blue villa, suspended sky-high, surmounted by 
 a lump of blue rock, sky-higher, and a couple of 
 billing blue birds, sky-highest — together wit \ 
 the rest of that amusing blue landscape, which 
 has, in deference to our revered ancestors of the 
 Cerulean Empire, and in defiance of every known 
 law of perspective, adorned millions of our family 
 ever since the days of platters? Didn't you 
 inspect the copper-plate on which my pattern 
 was deeply engraved ? Didn't you perceive an 
 impression of it taken in cobalt colour at a 
 cylindrical press, upon a leaf of thin paper, 
 streaming from a plunge-bath of soap and 
 water? Wasn't the paper impression daintily 
 spread, by a light-fingered damsel (you hiow 
 you admired her !), over the surface of the plate, 
 and the back of the paper rubbed prodigiously 
 hard — with a long tight roll of flannel, tied up 
 like a round of hung beef — without so much as 
 ruffling the paper, wet as it was ? Then (says 
 the plate), was not the paper washed away with 
 a sponge, and didn't there appear, set ofl" upon 
 the plate, ihis identical piece of Pre-Raphaelite 
 blue distemper v/hich you now behold ? Not to 
 be denied ! I had seen all this — and more. I 
 had been shown, at Copeland's, patterns of 
 beautiful design, in faultless perspective, which 
 are causing the ugly old willow to wither out of 
 public favour ; and which, being quite as cheap, 
 insinuate good wholesome natural art into the 
 humblest households. When Mr. and Mrs. 
 Sprat have satisfied their material tastes by that 
 equal division of fat and lean which has made 
 their menage immortal ; and have, after the ele- 
 gant tradition, " licked the j^latter clean," they 
 can — thanks to modern artists in clay — feast 
 their intellectual tastes upon excellent delinea- 
 tions of natural objects. 
 
 This reflection prompts me to transfer my 
 attention from the blue plate to the forlorn but 
 cheerfully painted vase on the sideboard. And 
 surely (says the plate) you have not forgotten 
 
 how the outlines of such groups of flowers as 
 you see there are printed, just as I was printed, 
 and are afterwards shaded and filled in with 
 metallic colours by women and girls ? As to 
 the aristocracy of our order, made of the finer 
 clay — porcelain peers and peeresses ; — the slabs, 
 and i)anels, and table tops, and tazze ; the end- 
 less nobility and gentry of dessert, breakfast, 
 and tea services ; the gemmed perfume bottles, 
 and scarlet and gold salvers ; you saw that they 
 were painted by artists, with metallic colours 
 laid on with camel-hair pencils, and afterwards 
 burnt in. 
 
 And talking of burning in (says the plate), 
 didn't you find that every subject, from the willow 
 pattern to the landscape after Turner — having 
 been framed upon clay or porcelain biscuit — has 
 to be glazed? Of course you saw the glaze — 
 composed of various vitreous materials — laid 
 over every article ; and of course you witnessed 
 the close imprisonment of each piece in saggers 
 upon the separate system, rigidly enforced by 
 means of fine-pointed earthenware stilts placed 
 between the articles to prevent the slightest 
 communication or contact. We had in my 
 time — and I suppose it is the same now — four- 
 teen hours' firing to fix the glaze, and to make 
 it " run " all over us equally, so as to put a 
 good shiny and unscratchable surface upon us. 
 Doubtless, you observed that one sort of glaze 
 — called printing-body — is burnt into the better 
 sort of ware before it is printed. Upon this you 
 saw some of the finest steel engravings trans- 
 ferred, to be fixed by an after glazing — didn't 
 you ? Why, of course you did ! 
 
 Of course I did. I had seen and enjoyed 
 everything that the plate recalled to me, and 
 had beheld with admiration how the rotatory 
 motion which keeps this ball of ours in its place 
 in the great scheme, with all its busy mites upon 
 it, was necessary throughout the process, and 
 could only be dispensed with in the fire. So, 
 listening to the plate's reminders, and musing 
 upon them, I got through the evening after all, 
 and went to bed. I made but one sleep of it — 
 for which I have no doubt I am also indebted 
 to the plate — and left the lonely Dodo in the 
 morning, quite at peace with it, before the 
 bandy-legged baby was up. 
 
 OUR HONOURABLE FRIEND. 
 
 WE are delighted to find that he has got 
 in ■ Our honourable friend is triumph- 
 antly returned to serve in the next Parlia- 
 
THE MEMBER FOR VERBOSITY. 
 
 225 
 
 ment. He is the honourable member for 
 Verbosity — the best represented place in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 Our honourable friend has issued an" ad- 
 dress of congratulation to the Electors, which 
 is worthy of that noble constituency, and is a 
 very pretty piece of composition. In electing 
 him, he says, they have covered themselves with 
 glory, and England has been true to herself 
 (In his preliminary address he had remarked, in 
 a poetical quotation of great rarity, that nought 
 could make us rue, if England to herself did 
 prove but true.) 
 
 Our honourable friend delivers a prediction, 
 in the same document, that the feeble minions 
 of a faction will never hold up their heads any 
 more ; and that the finger of scorn will point at 
 them in their dejected state, through countless 
 ages of time. Further, that the hireling tools 
 that would destroy the sacred bulwarks of our 
 nationality are unworthy of the name of Eng- 
 lishmen ; and that so long as the sea shall roll 
 around our ocean-girded isle, so long his motto 
 shall be, No Surrender. Certain dogged persons 
 of low principles and no intellect have disputed 
 whether anybody knows who the minions are, 
 or what the faction is, or which are the hireling 
 tools and which the sacred bulwarks, or what it 
 is that is never to be surrendered, and if not, 
 why not? But, our honourable friend the 
 member for Verbosity knows all about it. 
 
 Our honourable friend has sat in several 
 Parliaments, and given bushels of votes. He 
 is a man of that profundity in the matter of 
 vote-giving, that you never know what he 
 means. When he seems to be voting pure 
 white, he may be in reality voting jet black. 
 When he says Yes, it is just as likely as not — 
 or rather more so — that he means No. This is 
 the statesmanship of our honourable friend. It is 
 in this that he differs from mere unparliamentary 
 men. You may not know what he meant then, 
 or what he means now ; but, our honourable 
 friend knows, and did from the first know, both 
 what he meant then, and what he means now ; 
 and when he said he didn't mean it then, he did 
 in fact say that he means it now. And if you 
 mean to say that you did not then, and do not 
 now, know what he did mean then, or does 
 mean now, our honourable friend will be glad 
 to receive an explicit declaration from you 
 whether you are prepared to destroy the sacred 
 bulwarks of our nationality. 
 
 Our honourable friend, the member for Ver- 
 bosity, has this great attribute, that he always 
 means something, and always means the same 
 thing. When he came down to that House and 
 Edwin Drood, Etc, 15. 
 
 mournfully boasted in his place, as an individual 
 member of the assembled Commons of this 
 "great and happy country, that he could lay his 
 hand upon his heart, and solemnly declare that 
 no consideration on earth should induce him, at 
 any time or under any circumstances, to go as 
 far north as Berwick-upon-Tweed ; and when he 
 nevertheless, next year, did go to Berwick-upon- 
 Tweed, and even beyond it, to Edinburgh ; he 
 had one single meaning, one and indivisible. 
 And God forbid (our honourable friend says) that 
 he should waste another argument upon thema-n 
 who professes that he cannot understand it ! "I 
 do NOT, gentlemen," said our honourable friend, 
 with indignant emphasis and amid great cheer- 
 ing, on one such public occasion ; '' I do not, 
 gentlemen, I am free to confess, envy the feel- 
 ings of that man whose mind is so constituted 
 as that he can hold such language to me, and 
 yet ky his head upon his pillow, claiming to be 
 a native of that land. 
 
 Whose march is o'er the mountain-wave, 
 Whose home is on the deep I " 
 
 (Vehement cheering, and man expelled.) 
 
 When our honourable friend issued his pre- 
 liminary address to the constituent body of 
 Verbosity on the occasion of one particular 
 glorious triumph, it was supposed by some of 
 his enemies, that even he would be placed in a 
 situation of difiiculty by the following compara- 
 tively trifling conjunction of circumstances. The 
 dozen noblemen and gentlemen whom our ho- 
 nourable friend supported had " come in " ex- 
 pressly to do a certain thing. Now, four of the 
 dozen said, at a certain place, that they didn't 
 mean to do that thing, and had never meant to 
 do it ; another four of the dozen said, at another 
 certain place, that they did mean to do that 
 thing, and had always meant to do it ; two of the 
 remaining four said, at two other certain places, 
 that they meant to do half of that thing (but 
 differed about which half), and to do a variety 
 of nameless wonders instead of the other half ; 
 and one of the remaining two declared that the 
 thing itself was dead and buried, while the other 
 as strenuously protested that it was alive and 
 kicking. It was admitted that the parliamentary 
 genius of our honourable friend would be quite 
 able to reconcile such small discrepancies as 
 these ; but, there remained the additional difii- 
 culty that each of the twelve made entirely dif- 
 ferent statements at different places, and that 
 all the twelve called everything visible and in- 
 visible, sacred and profane, to witness, that 
 they were a perfectly impregnable phalanx 
 of unanimity. This, it was apprehended, 
 
226 
 
 OUR HONOURABLE FRIEND. 
 
 would be a stumbling-block to our honourable 
 friend. 
 
 The difficulty came before our honourable 
 friend in this way. He went down to Verbosity 
 to meet his free and independent constituents, 
 and to render an account (as he informed them 
 in the local papers) of the trust they had con- 
 fided to his hands — that trust which it was one 
 of the proudest privileges of an Englishman to 
 possess — that trust which it was the proudest 
 privilege of an Englishman to hold. It may be 
 mentioned as a proof of the great general in- 
 terest attaching to the contest, that a Lunatic 
 whom nobody employed or knew, wont down to 
 Verbosity with several thousand pounds in gold, 
 determined to give the whole away — which he 
 actually did ; and that all the publicans opened 
 their houses for nothing. Likewise, several 
 fighting- men, and a patriotic group of burglars 
 sportively armed with life-preservers, proceeded 
 (in barouches and very drunk) to the scene 
 of action at their own expense ; these children 
 of nature having conceived a warm attach- 
 ment to our honourable friend, and intend- 
 ing, in their artless manner, to testify it by 
 knocking the voters in the ojDposite interest on 
 the head. 
 
 Our honourable friend being come into the 
 presence of his constituents, and having pro- 
 fessed with great suavity that he was delighted 
 to see his good friend Tipkisson there, in his 
 working dress — his good friend Tipkisson being 
 an inveterate saddler, who always opposes him, 
 and for whom he has a mortal hatred — made 
 them a brisk, ginger-beery sort of speech, in 
 which he showed them how the dozen noble- 
 men and gentlemen had (in exactly ten days 
 from their coming in) exercised a surprisingly 
 beneficial effect on the whole financial condition 
 of Europe, had altered the state of the ex[)orts 
 and imports for the current half-year, had pre- 
 vented the drain of gold, had made all that 
 matter right about the glut of the raw material, 
 and had restored all sorts of balances with 
 which the superseded noblemen and gentlemen 
 had played the deuce — and all this, with wheat 
 at so much a quarter, gold at so much an ounce, 
 and the pjank of England discounting good bills 
 at so much per cent. ! He might be asked, he 
 observed in a peroration of great power, what 
 were his principles ? His principles were what 
 they always had been. His principles were 
 written in the countenances of the lion and 
 unicorn ; were stamped indelibly upon the 
 royal shield which those grand animals sup- 
 ported, and upon the free words of fire which that 
 shield bore. His principles were, Britannia 
 
 and her sea-king trident ! His principles were- 
 commercial prosperity co-existently with perfect 
 and profound agricultural contentment \ but 
 short of this he would never stop. His prin- 
 ciples were these, — with the addition of his 
 colours nailed to the mast, every man's heart in 
 the right place, every man's eye open, every 
 man's hand ready, every man's mind on the 
 alert. His principles were these, concurrently 
 with a general revision of something — speaking 
 generally — and a possible readjustment of some- 
 thing else, not to be mentioned more particu- 
 larly. His principles, to sum up all in a word, 
 were. Hearths and Altars, Labour and Capital, 
 Crown and Sceptre, Elephant and Castle. And 
 now, if his good friend Tipkisson required any 
 further explanation from him, he (our honour- 
 able friend) was there, willing and ready to 
 give it. 
 
 Tipkisson, who all this time had stood con- 
 spicuous in the crowd, with his arms folded and 
 his eyes intently fastened on our honourable 
 friend ; Tipkisson, who throughout our honour- 
 able friend's address had not relaxed a muscle 
 of his visage, but had stood there wholly un- 
 affected by the torrent of eloquence : an object 
 of contempt and scorn to mankind (by which 
 we mean, of course, to the supporters of our 
 honourable friend) ; Tipkisson now said that he 
 was a plain man (cries of " You are indeed ! '') 
 and that what he wanted to know was, what our 
 honourable friend and the dozen noblemen and 
 gentlemen were driving at ? 
 
 Our honourable friend immediately replied, 
 " At the illimitable perspective." 
 
 It was considered by the whole assembly 
 that this happy statement of our honourable 
 friend's political views ought, immediately, to 
 have settled Tipkisson's business and covered 
 him with confusion ; but that implacable per- 
 son, regardless of the execrations that were 
 heaped upon him from all sides (by which we 
 mean, of course, from our honourable friend's 
 side), persisted in retaining an unmoved coun- 
 tenance, and obstinately retorted that if our 
 honourable friend meant that, he wished to know 
 Mhat that meant ? 
 
 It was in repelling this most objectionable 
 and indecent opposition, that our honourable 
 friend displayed his highest qualifications for 
 the representation of Verbosity. His warmest 
 supporters present, and those who were best 
 act^uainted with his generalship, supposed that 
 the moment was come when lie would fall back 
 upon the sacred bulwarks of our nationality. 
 No such thing. He replied thus : " My good 
 friend Tipkisson, gentlemen, wishes to know 
 
OUR HONOURABLE FRIEND EXPLAINS. 
 
 227 
 
 what I mean when he asks me what we are 
 driving at, and when I canchdly tell him, at the 
 inimitable persi)ective. He wishes (if I undei'- 
 stand him) to know what I mean ? " " I do ! " 
 says Tipkisson, amid cries of " Shame ! " and 
 ^'Down with him!" "Gentlemen," says our 
 honourable friend, " I will indulge my good 
 friend Tipkisson by telling him, both what I 
 mean and what I don't mean. (Cheers and 
 cries of " Give it him ! ") Be it known to him 
 then, and to all whom it may concern, that I 
 do mean altars, hearths, and homes, and that I 
 don't mean mosques and Mahommedanism ! " 
 The effect of this home-thrust was terrific. 
 Tipkisson (who is a Baptist) was hooted down 
 and hustled out, and has ever since been re- 
 garded as a Turkish Renegade who contem- 
 plates an early pilgrimage to Mecca. Nor was 
 he the only discomfited man. The charge, 
 while it stuck to him, was magically transferred 
 to our honourable friend's opponent, who was 
 represented in an immense variety of placards 
 as a firm believer in Mahomet ; and the men 
 of Verbosity were asked to choose between our 
 honourable friend and the Bible, and our ho- 
 nourable friend's opponent and the Koran. They 
 decided for our honourable friend, and rallied 
 round the illimitable i)erspective. 
 
 It has been claimed for our honourable 
 friend, with much appearance of reason, that he 
 was the first to bend sacred matters to elec- 
 tioneering tactics. However this may be, the 
 fine precedent was undoubtedly set in a Ver- 
 bosity election : and it is certain that our 
 honourable friend (who was a disciple of 
 Brahma in his youth, and was a Buddhist when 
 we had the honour of travelling with him a few 
 years ago) always professes in public more 
 anxiety than the whole Bench of Bishops, re- 
 garding the theological and doxological opinions 
 of every man, woman, and child in the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 As we began by saying that our honourable 
 friend has got in again at this last election, and 
 that we are dehghied to find that he has got in, 
 so we will conclude. Our honourable friend 
 cannot come in for Verbosity too often. It is a 
 good sign ; it is a great example. It is to men 
 like our honourable friend, and to contests like 
 those from which he comes triumphant, that we 
 are mainly indebted for that ready interest in 
 politics, that fresh enthusiasm in the discharge 
 of the duties of citizenship, that ardent desire to 
 rush to the poll, at present so manifest through- 
 out England. When the contest lies (as it 
 sometimes dees) between two such men as our 
 honourable friend, it stimulates the finest emo- 
 
 tions of our nature, and awakens the highest 
 admiration of which our heads and hearts are 
 capable. 
 
 It is not too much to predict that our honour- 
 able friend will be always at his post in the en- 
 suing session. Whatever the question be, or 
 whatever the form of its discussion ; address to 
 the crown, election petition, expenditure of the 
 public money, extension of the public suffrage, 
 education, crime ; in the whole House, in com- 
 mittee of the whole House, in select committee ; 
 in every parliamentary discussion of every sub- 
 ject, everywhere : the Honourable Member for 
 Verbosity will most certainly be found. 
 
 OUR SCHOOL. 
 
 jE went to look at it, only this last 
 Midsummer, and found that the 
 Railway had cut it up root and 
 branch. A great trunk-line had 
 swallowed the playground, sliced 
 away the schoolroom, and pared 
 ofif the corner of the house : which, thus 
 curtailed of its proportions, presented 
 in a green stage of stucco, profilewise, 
 towards the road, like a forlorn flat-iron without 
 a handfe, standing on end. 
 
 It seems as if our schools were doomed to be 
 the sport of change. We have faint recollec- 
 tions of a Preparatory Day School, which we 
 have sought in vain, and which must have been 
 pulled down to make a new street ages ago. 
 We have dim impressions, scarcely amounting 
 to a belief, that it was over a dyer's shop. We 
 know that you went up steps to it ; that you 
 frequently grazed your knees in doing so ; that 
 you generally got your leg over the scraper, in 
 trying to scrape the mud off a very unsteady 
 little shoe. The mistress of the Establishment 
 holds no place in our memory ; but, rampant 
 on one eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry 
 long and narrow, is a pufty pug-dog, with a per- 
 sonal animosity towards us, who triumphs over 
 Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain 
 radiating way he had of snapping at our unde- 
 fended legs, the ghastly grinning of his moist 
 black muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence 
 of his crisp tail curled like a pastoral crook, all 
 Hve and flourish. From an otherwise unaccount- 
 able association of him with a fiddle, we con- 
 clude that he was of French extraction, and his 
 name Fidclc. He belonged to some female, 
 chiefly inhabiting a back-parlour, whose life 
 appears to us to have been consumed in sniff- 
 
228 
 
 OUR SCHOOL. 
 
 ing, and in wearing a brown beaver bonnet. 
 For her, he would sit up and balance cake upon 
 his nose, and not eat it until twenty had been 
 counted. To the best of our belief, we were 
 once called in to witness this performance ; 
 when, unable, even in his milder moments, to 
 endure our presence, he instantly made at us, 
 cake and all. 
 
 Why a something in mourning, called "Miss 
 Frost," should still connect itself with our pre- 
 paratory school, we are unable to say. We 
 retain no impression of the beauty of Miss Frost 
 — if she were beautiful ; or of the mental fasci- 
 nations of Miss Frost — if she were accom- 
 plished ; yet her name and her black dress 
 hold an enduring place in our remembrance. 
 An equally imjjersonal boy, whose name has 
 long since shaped itself unalterably into " Mas- 
 ter Mawls," is not to be dislodged from our 
 brain. Retaining no vindictive feeling towards 
 Mawls — no feeling whatever, indeed — we infer 
 that neither he nor we can have loved Miss 
 Frost. Our first impression of Death and 
 Burial is associated with this formless pair. 
 We all three nestled awfully in a corner one 
 wintry day, when the wind was blowing shrill, 
 with Miss Frost's pinafore over our heads : and 
 Miss Frost told us in a whisper about some- 
 body being "screwed down." It is the only 
 distinct recollection we preserve of these impal- 
 pable creatures, except a suspicion that the 
 manners of Master Mawls were susceptible of 
 much improvement. Generally speaking, we 
 may observe that whenever we see a child in- 
 tently occupied with its nose, to the exclusion 
 of all other subjects of interest, our mind 
 reverts, in a flash, to Master Mawls. 
 
 But, the School that was Our School before 
 the Railroad came and overthrew it, was quite 
 another sort of place. We were old enough to 
 be put into Virgil when we went there, and to 
 get Prizes for a variety of polishing on which 
 the rust has long accumulated. It was a School 
 of some celebrity in its neighbourhood — nobody 
 could have said why — and we had the honour 
 to attain and hold the eminent position of first 
 boy. The master was supposed among us to 
 know nothing, and one of the ushers was sup- 
 posed to know everything. We are still in- 
 clined to think the first-named supposition 
 perfectly correct. 
 
 We have a general idea that its subject had 
 been in the leather trade, and had bought us — 
 meaning Our School — of another proprietor, 
 who was immensely learned. Whether this 
 belief had any real foundation, we are not likely 
 ever to know now. The only branches of edu- 
 
 cation with which he showed the least acquaint- 
 ance were, ruling and corporally punishing. 
 He was always ruling ciphering-books with a 
 bloated mahogany ruler, or smiting the palms of 
 oftenders with the same diabolical instrument, 
 or viciously drawing a pair of pantaloons tight 
 with one of his large hands, and caning the 
 wearer with the other. We have no doubt 
 whatever that this occupation was the principal 
 solace of his existence. 
 
 A profound respect for money pervaded Our 
 School, which was, of course, derived from its 
 Chief. We remember an idiotic goggle-eyed 
 boy, with a big head and half-crowns without 
 end, who suddenly appeared as a parlour 
 boarder, and was rumoured to have come by 
 sea from some mysterious part of the earth 
 where his parents rolled in gold. He was 
 usually called " Mr." by the Chief, and was said 
 to feed in the parlour on steaks and gravy; 
 likewise to drink currant wine. And he openly 
 stated that if rolls and coffee were ever denied 
 him at breakfast, he would write home to that 
 unknown part of the globe from which he had 
 come, and cause himself to be recalled to the 
 regions of gold. He was put into no form or 
 class, but learnt alone, as little as he liked — 
 and he liked very little — and there was a beUef 
 among us that this was because he was too 
 wealthy to be " taken down." His special 
 treatment^ and our vague association of him 
 with the sea, and with storms, and sharks, and 
 Coral Reefs, occasioned the wildest legends to 
 be circulated as his history. A tragedy in blank 
 verse was written on the subject — if our memory 
 does not deceive us, by the hand that now 
 chronicles these recollections — in which his 
 father figured as a Pirate, and was shot for a 
 voluminous catalogue of atrocities : first impart- 
 ing to his wife the secret of the cave in which 
 his wealth was stored, and from which his only 
 son's half-crowns now issued. Dumbledon (the 
 boy's name) was represented as " yet unborn " 
 when his brave father met his fate ; and the 
 despair and grief of Mrs. Dumbledon at that 
 calamity was movingly shadowed forth as hav- 
 ing weakened the parlour boarder's mind. This 
 production was received with great favour, and 
 was twice performed with closed doors in the 
 dining-room. But, it got wind, and was seized 
 as libellous, and brought the unlucky poet into 
 severe afifiiction. Some two years afterwards, 
 all of a sudden one day, Dumbledon vanished. 
 It was whispered that the Chief himself had 
 taken him down to the Docks, and re-shipped 
 him for the Spanish Main ; but nothing certain 
 was ever known about his disappearance. At 
 
MYSTERIOUS PUPILS. 
 
 229 
 
 this hour, we cannot thoroughly disconnect him 
 from Cahfornia. 
 
 Our School was rather flimous for mysterious 
 pupils. There was another — a heavy young 
 man, with a large double-cased silver watch, 
 and a ixX. knife, the handle of which was a per- 
 fect tool-box — who unaccountably appeared one 
 day at a special desk of his own, erected close 
 to that of the Chief, with whom he held familiar 
 converse. He lived in the parlour, and went 
 out for walks, and never took the least notice of 
 us — even of us, the first boy — unless to give us 
 a depreciatory kick, or grimly to take our hat 
 oft" and throw it away, when he encountered us 
 out of doors, which unpleasant ceremony he 
 always performed as he passed — not even con- 
 descending to stop for the purpose. Some of 
 us believed that the classical attainments of this 
 phenomenon were terrific, but that his penman- 
 ship and arithmetic were defective, and he had 
 come there to mend them ; others, that he was 
 going to set up a school, and had paid the 
 Chief " twenty-five pound down," for leave to 
 see Our School at work. The gloomier spirits 
 even said that he was going to buy us ; against 
 which contingency, conspiracies were set on 
 foot for a general defection and running away. 
 However, he never did that. After staying for 
 a quarter, during which period, though closely 
 observed, he was never seen to do anything but 
 make pens out of quills, write small-hand in a 
 secret portfolio, and punch the point of the 
 sharpest blade in his knife into his desk all over 
 it, he too disappeared, and his place knew him 
 no more. 
 
 There was another boy, a fair, meek boy, 
 with a delicate complexion and rich curling hair, 
 who, we found out, or thought we found out (we 
 have no idea now, and probably had none then, 
 on what grounds, but it was confidentially re- 
 vealed from mouth to mouth) was the son of a 
 Viscount who had deserted his lovely mother. 
 It was understood that if he had his rights, he 
 would be worth twenty thousand a year. And 
 that if his mother ever met his father, she would 
 shoot him with a silver pistol, which she carried, 
 always loaded to the muzzle, for that purpose. 
 He was a very suggestive topic. So was a young 
 Mulatto, who was always believed (though very 
 amiable) to have a dagger about him somewhere. 
 But, we think they were both outshone, upon 
 the whole, by another boy who claimed to have 
 been born on the twenty-ninth of February, and 
 to have only one birthday in four years. AVe 
 suspect this to have been a fiction — but he lived 
 upon it all the time he was at Our School. 
 
 The principal currency of Our School was 
 
 slate-pencil. It had some inexplicable value 
 that was never ascertained, never reduced to a 
 standard. To have a great hoard of it was 
 somehow to be rich. We used to bestow it in 
 charity, and confer it as a precious boon upon 
 our chosen friends. When the holidays were 
 coming, contributions were solicited for certain 
 boys whose relatives were in India, and who 
 were appealed for under the generic name of 
 " Holiday-stopijers," — appropriate marks of re- 
 membrance that should enliven and cheer them 
 in their homeless state. Personally, we always 
 contributed these tokens of sympathy in the form 
 of slate-pencil, and always felt that it would be 
 a comfort and a treasure to them. 
 
 Our School was remarkable for white mice. 
 Red-polls, linnets, and even canaries, were kept 
 in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other strange 
 refuges for birds; but white mice were the 
 favourite stock. The boys trained the mice 
 much better than the masters trained the boys. 
 We recall one white mouse, who lived in the 
 cover of a Latin dictionary, who ran up ladders, 
 drew Roman chariots, shouldered muskets, turned 
 wheels, and even made a very creditable appear- 
 ance on the stage as the Dog of Montargis. He 
 might have achieved greater things, but for hav- 
 ing the misfortune to mistake his way in a 
 triumphal procession to the Capitol, when he 
 fell into a deep inkstand, and was dyed black 
 and drowned. The mice were the occasion of 
 some most ingenious engineering, in the con- 
 struction of their houses and instruments of per- 
 formance. The famous one belonged to a 
 Company of proprietors, some of whom have 
 since made Railroads, Engines, and Telegraphs ; 
 the chairman has erected mills and bridges in 
 New Zealand. 
 
 The usher at Our School, who was considered 
 to know everything as opposed to the Chief, 
 who was considered to know nothing, was a 
 bony, gentle-faced, clerical-looking young man 
 in rusty black. It was whispered that he was 
 sweet upon one of Maxby's sisters (Maxby lived 
 close by, and was a day pupil), and further, that 
 he " favoured Maxby." As we remember, he 
 taught Italian to Maxby's sisters on half-holi- 
 days. He once went to the play with them, 
 and wore a white waistcoat and a rose ; which 
 was considered among us equivalent to a de- 
 claration. We were of opinion on that occa- 
 sion, that to the last moment he expected 
 Maxby's father to ask him to dinner at five 
 o'clock, and therefore neglected his own dinner 
 at half-past one, and finally got none. We 
 exaggerated in our imaginations the extent to 
 which he punished Maxby's father's cold meat 
 
230 
 
 OUR SCHOOL. 
 
 at supper; and we agreed to believe that he 
 was elevated with wine-and- water when he came 
 home. But, we all liked him : for he had a 
 good knowledge of boys, and would have made 
 it a much better school if he had had more 
 power. He was writing-master, mathematical 
 master, English master, made out the bills, 
 mended die pens, and did all sorts of things. 
 He divided the little boys with the Latin master 
 (they were smuggled through their rudimentary 
 books, at odd times when there was nothing else 
 to do), and he always called at parents' houses 
 to inquire after sick boys, because he had gen- 
 tlemanly manners. He was rather musical, and 
 on some remote quarter-day had bought an old 
 trombone ; but a bit of it was lost, and it made 
 the most extraordinary sounds when he some- 
 times tried to play it of an evening. His holi- 
 days never began (on account of the bills) until 
 long after ours ; but, in the summer vacations 
 he used to take pedestrian excursions with a 
 knapsack ; and at Christmas-time he went to 
 see his father at Chipping Norton, who we all 
 said (on no authority) was a dairy-fed pork- 
 butcher. Poor fellow ! He was very low all day 
 on Maxby's sister's wedding-day, and afterwards 
 was thought to favour Maxby more than ever, 
 though he had been expected to spite him. He 
 has been dead these twenty years. Poor fellow ! 
 Our remembrance of Our School presents the 
 Latin master as a colourless, doubled-up, near- 
 sighted man witli a crutch, who was always cold, 
 and always putting onions into his ears for deaf- 
 ness, and always disclosing ends of flannel under 
 all his garments, and almost always applying a 
 ball of pocket-handkerchief to some part of his 
 face with a screwing action round and round. 
 He was a very good scholar, and took great 
 pains where he saw intelligence and a desire to 
 learn : otherwise, perhaps not. Our memory 
 presents him (unless teased into a passion) with 
 as little energy as colour — as having been wor- 
 ried and tormented into monotonous feebleness 
 — as having had the bes*- part of his life ground 
 out of him in a Mill of boys. We remember 
 with terror how he fell asleep one sultry after- 
 noon with the little smuggled class before him, 
 and awoke not when the footstep of the Chief 
 fell heavily on the floor ; how the Chief aroused 
 him, in the midst of a dread silence, and 
 said, "Mr. Blinkins, are you ill, sir?" how he 
 blushingly replied, "Sir, rather so;" how the 
 Chief retorted with severity, " Mr. Blinkins, this 
 is no place to be ill in " (which was very, very 
 true), and walked back, solemn as the ghost in 
 Hamlet, until catching a wandering eye, he 
 caned that boy for inattention and happily ex- 
 
 pressed his feelings towards the Latin master 
 through the medium of a substitute. 
 
 There was a fat little dancing-master, who 
 used to come in a gig, and taught the more 
 advanced among us hornpii)es (as an accom- 
 plishment in great social demand in after life) ; 
 and there was a brisk little French master who 
 used to come, in the sunniest weather, with a 
 handleless umbrella, and to whom the Chief 
 was always polite, because (as we believed), if 
 the Chief offended him, he would instantly 
 address the Chief in French, and for ever con- 
 found him before the boys with his inability to 
 understand or repl)'. 
 
 There was, besides, a serving-man, whose 
 name was Phil. Our retrospective glance pre- 
 sents Phil as a shipwrecked carpenter, cast away 
 upon the desert island of a school, and carrying 
 into practice an ingenious inkling of many trades. 
 He mended whatever was broken, and made 
 whatever was wanted. He was general glazier, 
 among other things, and mended all the broken 
 windows — at the prime cost (as was darkly 
 rumoured among us) of ninepence for every 
 square charged three-and-six to parents. We 
 had a high opinion of his mechanical genius, 
 and generally held that the Chief " knew some- 
 thing bad of him," and on pain of divulgence 
 enforced Phil to be his bondsman. We parti- 
 cularly remember that Phil had a sovereign con- 
 tempt for learning; which engenders in us a 
 respect for his sagacity, as it implies his accurate 
 observation of the relative positions of the Chief 
 and the ushers. He was an impenetrable man, 
 who waited at table between-whiles, and through- 
 out " the half" kept the boxes in severe custody. 
 He was morose, even to the Chief, and never 
 smiled, except at breaking -up, when, in ac- 
 knowledgment of the toast, " Success to Phil ! 
 Hooray!" he would slowly carve a grin out of 
 his wooden face, wdiere it would remain until we 
 were all gone. Nevertheless, one time when we 
 had the scarlet fever in the school, Phil nursed 
 all the sick boys of his own accord, and was 
 like a mother to them. 
 
 There was another school not far oft", and of 
 course our school could have nothing to say to 
 that school. It is mostly the way with schools, 
 whether of boys or men. Well ! the railway has 
 swallowed up ours, and the locomotives now run 
 smoothly over its ashes. 
 
 So fades and languishes, grows dim and dies, 
 All that this world is proud of, 
 
 — and is not protid of, too. It had little reason 
 to be proud of Our School, and has done much 
 better since in that way, and will do far better 
 yet. 
 
77/ '(9 EMINENT VOLUNTEERS. 
 
 231 
 
 3\'?S^V^ 
 
 OUR VESTRY. 
 
 l'W;E liave the glorious privilege of 
 t/fb. being always in hot water if wc 
 like. We are a shareholder in a 
 Great Parochial British Joint- 
 Stock Bank of Baklerdash. We 
 have a Vestry in our borough, and 
 can vote for a vestryman — might even /u- 
 _ a vestryman, mayhap, if we were inspired 
 by a lofty and noble ambition. Which we 
 are not. 
 
 Our Vestry is a deliberative assembly of the 
 utmost dignity and importance. Like the Senate 
 of ancient Rome, its awful gravity overpowers 
 (or ought to overpower) barbarian visitors. It 
 sits in the Capitol (we mean in the capital 
 building erected for it), chiefly on Saturdays, 
 and shakes the earth to its centre with the echoes 
 of its thundering eloquence in a Sunday 
 paper. 
 
 To get into this Vestry in the eminent capa- 
 city of Vestryman, gigantic efforts are made, and 
 herculean exertions used. It is made manifest 
 to the dullest capacity at every election, that if 
 we reject Snozzle we are done for, and that if we 
 fail to bring in Blunderbooze at the top of the 
 poll, we are unworthy of the dearest rights of 
 Britons. Flaming placards are rife on all the 
 dead walls in the borough, public-houses hang 
 out banners, hackney cabs burst into full-grown 
 flowers of type, and everybody is, or should be, 
 in a paroxysm of anxiety. 
 
 At these momentous crises of the national 
 fate, we are much assisted in our deliberations 
 by two eminent volunteers ; one of whom sub- 
 scribes himself A Fellow-Parishioner, the other 
 A Rate-Payer. Who they are, or what they are, 
 or wliere they are, nobody knows ; but, whatever 
 one asserts, the other contradicts. They are 
 both voluminous writers, inditing more epistles 
 than Lord Chesterfield in a single week ; and 
 the greater part of their feelings are too big for 
 utterance in anything less than capital letters. 
 They require the additional aid of whole rows of 
 notes of admiration, like balloons, to point their 
 generous indignation ; and they sometimes com- 
 municate a crushing severity to stars. As thus : 
 
 MEN OF MOONEYMOUNT. 
 
 Is it, or is it not, a ■■'■ ■■' ■■' to saddle the parish 
 with a debt of j£2,']4^ 6s. gr/., yet claim to be a 
 
 RIGID ECONOMIST? 
 
 Is it, or is it not, a * " " to state as a fact 
 what is proved to be l>of/i a moral a7id a physical 
 
 IMPOSSIBILITY? 
 
 Is it, or is it not, a * * '■' to call ;^2,745 
 ds. Cjd. nothing ; and nothing, something ? 
 
 Do you, or do you not, want a * * ''' ''' to 
 
 REPRESENT YOU IN THE VeSTRY ? 
 
 Your consideration of these questions is re- 
 commended to you by 
 
 A Fellow-Parishioner. 
 
 It was to this important public document that 
 one of our first orators, Mr. Magg (of Little 
 Winkling Street), adverted, when he opened the 
 great debate of the fourteenth of November by 
 saying, " Sir, I hold in my hand an anonymous 
 slander" — and when the interruption, with which 
 he was at that point assailed by the opposite 
 faction, gave rise to that memorable discussion 
 on a point of order which will ever be remem- 
 bered with interest by constitutional assemblies. 
 In the animated debate to which w^c refer, no 
 fewer than tliirty-seven gentlemen, many of them 
 of great eminence, including Mr. Wigsey (of 
 Chumbledon Square), were seen upon their legs 
 at one time ; and it was on the same great occa- 
 sion that DoGGiNSON — regarded in our Vestry as 
 '•a regular John Bull:" we believe in conse- 
 quence of his having always made up his mind 
 on every subject without knowing anything 
 about it — informed another gentleman of similar 
 principles on the opposite side, that if he 
 " cheek'd him" he would resort to the extreme 
 measure of knocking his blessed head off. 
 
 This was a great occasion. But, our Vestry 
 shines habitual!}'. In asserting its own pre-emi- 
 nence, for instance, it is very strong. On the 
 least provocation, or on none, it will be clamor- 
 ous to know whether it is to be " dictated to," 
 or " trampled on," or "ridden over rough-shod." 
 Its great watchword is Self-government. That 
 is to say, supposing our Vestry to favour any 
 little harmless disorder like Typhus Fever, and 
 supposing the Government of the country to be, 
 by any accident, in such ridiculous hands as that 
 any ot its authorities should consider it a duty 
 to object to Typhus Fever — obviously an un- 
 constitutional objection— then, our Vestry cuts 
 in with a terrible manifesto about Self-govern- 
 ment, and claims its independent right to have 
 as much Typhus Fever as pleases itself. Some 
 absurd and dangerous persons have represented, 
 on the other hand, that though our Vestry may 
 be able to " beat the bounds " of its own parish, 
 it may not be able to beat the bounds of its own 
 diseases ; which (say they) spread over the whole 
 land in an ever-expanding circle of waste, and 
 misery, and death, and widowhood, and orphan- 
 age, and desolation. But, our Vestry makes 
 short work of any such fellows as these. 
 
?32 
 
 OUR VESTRY. 
 
 It was our Vestry — pink of Vestries as it is — 
 that in support of its favourite principle took the 
 celebrated ground of denying the existence of 
 the last pestilence that raged in England, when 
 the pestilence was raging at the Vestry doors. 
 Dogginson said it was plums ; Mr. Wigsby (of 
 
 Chumbledon Square) said it was oysters ; Mr. 
 Magg (of Little Winkling Street) said, amid 
 great cheering, it was the newspapers. The 
 noble indignation of our Vestry with that un- 
 English institution, the Board of Health, under 
 those circumstances, yields one of the finest pas- 
 
 " MR. BLINKINS, ARE YOU ILL, SIR ?" 
 
 sages in its history. It wouldn't hear of rescue. 
 Like Mr. Joseph Miller's Frenchman, it would 
 be drowned and nobody should save it. Trans- 
 ported beyond grammar by its kindled ire, it 
 spoke in unknown tongues, and vented unin- 
 telligible bellowings, more like an ancient oracle 
 
 than the modern oracle it is admitted on all 
 hands to be. Rare exigencies produce rare 
 things; and even our Vestry, new hatched to the 
 woeful time, came fortli a greater goose than 
 
 ever. 
 
 But this, again, was a special occasion. Our 
 
A REDOUBTABLE CASE. 
 
 233 
 
 Vestry, at more ordinary periods, demands its 
 meed of praise. 
 
 Our Vestry is eminently parliamentary. Play- 
 ing at Parliament is its favourite game. It is 
 even regarded by some of its members as a 
 chapel-of-ease to the House of Commons ; a 
 Little Go to be passed first. It has its strangers' 
 gallery, and its reported debates (see the Sunday 
 paper before mentioned), and our Vestrymen 
 are in and out of order, and on and off their 
 legs, and, above all, are transcendently quarrel- 
 some, after the pattern of the real original. 
 
 Our Vestry being assembled, Mr. Magg never 
 begs to trouble Mr. Wigsby with a simple in- 
 quiry. He knows better than that. Seeing the 
 honourable gentleman, associated in their minds 
 with Chumbledon Square, in his place, he wishes 
 to ask that honourable gentleman what the inten- 
 tions of himself, and those with whom he acts, 
 may be, on the subject of the paving of the dis- 
 trict known as Piggleum Buildings ? Mr. Wigsby 
 replies (with his eye on next Sunday's paper), 
 that in reference to the question which has been 
 put to him by the honourable gentleman oppo- 
 site, he must take leave to say, that if that 
 honourable gentleman had had the courtesy to 
 give him notice of that question, he (Mr. Wigsby) 
 would have consulted with his colleagues in 
 reference to the advisability, in the present state 
 of the discussions on the new paving-rate, of 
 answering that question. But, as the honourable 
 gentleman has not had the courtesy to give him 
 notice of that question (great cheering from the 
 Wigsby interest), he must decline to give the 
 honourable gentleman the satisfaction he re- 
 quires. Mr. Magg, instantly rising to retort, is 
 received with loud cries of " Spoke ! " from the 
 Wigsby interest, and with cheers from the Magg 
 side of the house. Moreover, five gentlemen 
 rise to order, and one of them, in revenge for 
 being taken no notice of, petrifies the assembly 
 by moving that this Vestry do now adjourn ; 
 but is persuaded to withdraw that awful pro- 
 posal, in consideration of its tremendous conse- 
 quences if persevered in. Mr. Magg, for the 
 purpose of being heard, then begs to move, that 
 you, sir, do now pass to the order of the day ; 
 and takes that opportunity of saying, that if an 
 honourable gentleman whom he has in his eye, 
 and will not demean himself by more particu- 
 larly naming (Oh, oh, and cheers), supposes that 
 he is to be put down by clamour, that honour- 
 able gentleman — however supported he may be, 
 through thick and thin, by a Fellow- Parishioner, 
 with whom he is well acquainted (cheers and 
 counter-cheers, Mr. Magg being invariably backed 
 by the Rate-Payer) — will find himself mistaken. 
 
 Upon this, twenty members of our Vestry speak 
 in succession concerning what the two great 
 men have meant, until it appears, after an hour 
 and twenty minutes, that neither of them 
 meant anything. Then our Vestry begins busi- 
 ness. 
 
 We have said that, after the pattern of the 
 real original, our Vestry in playing at Parliament 
 is transcendently quarrelsome. It enjoys a per- 
 sonal altercation above all things. Perhaps the 
 most redoubtable case of this kind we have ever 
 had — though we have had so many that it is 
 difticult to decide — was that on which the last 
 extreme solemnities passed between Mr. Tiddy- 
 pot (of Gumtion House) and Captain Banger (of 
 Wilderness Walk). 
 
 In an adjourned debate on the question 
 whether water could be regarded in the light of 
 a necessary of life ; respecting which there were 
 great differences of opinion, and many shades 
 of sentiment ; Mr. Tiddypot, in a powerful burst 
 of eloquence against that hypothesis, frequently 
 made use of the expression that such and such a 
 rumour had " reached his ears." Captain Banger, 
 following him, and holding that, for purposes 
 of ablution and refreshment, a pint of water per 
 diem was necessary for every adult of the lower 
 classes, and half a pint for every child, cast ridi- 
 cule upon his address in a sparkling speech, and 
 concluded by saying that instead of those ru- 
 mours having reached the ears of the honourable 
 gentleman, he rather thought the honourable 
 gentleman's ears must have reached the rumours, 
 in consequence of their well-known length. Mr. 
 Tiddypot immediately rose, looked the honour- 
 able and gallant gentleman full in the face, and 
 left the Vestry. 
 
 The excitement, at this moment painfully 
 intense, was heightened to an acute degree when 
 Captain Banger rose, and also left the Vestry. 
 After a {q.\s moments of profound silence — one 
 of those breathless pauses never to be forgotten 
 — Mr. Chib (of Tucket's Terrace, and the father 
 of the Vestry) rose. He said that words and 
 looks had passed in that assembly, replete with 
 consequences which every feeling mind must 
 deplore. Time pressed. The sword was drawn, 
 and while he spoke the scabbard might be 
 thrown away. He moved that those honourable 
 gentlemen who had left the Vestry be recalled, 
 and required to pledge themselves upon their 
 honour that this affair should go no farther. 
 The motion being by a general union of parties 
 unanimously agreed to (for everybody wanted 
 to have the belligerents there, instead of out of 
 sight : which was no fun at all), Mr. Magg was 
 deputed to recover Captain Banger, and lilr. 
 
234 
 
 OUR VESTRY. 
 
 Chib himself to go in search of Mr. Tiddypot. 
 The Captain was found in a conspicuous posi- 
 tion, surveying the passing omnibuses from the 
 top step of the front-door immediately adjoining 
 the beadle's box ; Mr. Tiddypot made a des- 
 perate attempt at resistance, but was over- 
 powered by Mr. Cliib (a remarkably hale old 
 gentleman of eighty-two), and brought back in 
 safety. 
 
 Mr. Tiddypot and the Captain being restored 
 to their places, and glaring on each other, were 
 called upon by the chair to abandon all homi- 
 cidal intentions, and give the Vestry an assur- 
 ance that they did so. Mr. Tiddypot remained 
 profoundly silent. The Captain likewise re- 
 mained profoundly silent, saving that he was 
 observed by those around him to fold his arms 
 like Napoleon Euonaparte, and to snort in his 
 breathing — actions but too expressive of gun- 
 powder. 
 
 The most intense emotion now prevailed. 
 Several members clustered in remonstrance 
 round the Captain, and several round ]\Ir. 
 Tiddypot ; but, both were obdurate. ]\Ir. Chib 
 then presented himself amid tremendous cheer- 
 ing, and said, that not to shrink from the dis- 
 charge of his painful duty, he must now move 
 that both honourable gentlemen be taken into 
 custody by the beadle, and conveyed to the 
 nearest police-office, there to be held to bail. 
 The union of parties still continuing, the motion 
 was seconded by Mr. Wigsby — on all usual occa- 
 sions Mr. Chib's opponent — and rapturously 
 carried with only one dissentient voice. This 
 was Dogginson's, who said from his place, " I^et 
 'em fight it out with fistes ;" but whose coarse 
 remark was received as it merited. 
 
 The beadle now advanced along the floor of 
 the Vestr)', and beckoned with his cocked-hat to 
 both members. Every breath was suspended. 
 To say that a pin might have been heard to fall, 
 would be feebly to express the all-absorbing 
 interest and silence. Suddenly, enthusiastic 
 cheering broke out from every side of the Vestry. 
 Captain Banger had risen — being, in fact, pulled 
 up by a friend on either side^ and poked up by 
 a friend behind. 
 
 The Captain said, in a deep determined voice, 
 that he had every respect for that Vestry and 
 every respect for that chair ; that he also re- 
 spected the honourable gentleman of Gumtion 
 House ; but, that he respected his honour more. 
 Hereupon the Captain sat down, leaving the 
 whole Vestry much affected. Mr. Tiddypot 
 instantly rose, and was received with the same 
 encouragement. He likewise said — and the ex- 
 quisite art of this orator communicated to the 
 
 observation an air of freshness and novelty — 
 that he too had every respect for that Vestry ; 
 that he too had every respect for that chair. 
 That he too respected the honourable and gal- 
 lant gentleman of Wilderness Walk ; but, that 
 he too respected his honour more. " Hows'- 
 ever," added the distinguished Vestryman, " if 
 the honourable or gallant gentleman's honour is 
 never more doubted and damaged than it is by 
 me, he's all right." Captain Banger imme- 
 diately started up again, and said that after those 
 observations, involving as they did ample con- 
 cession to his honour without compromising the 
 honour of the honourable gentleman, he would 
 be wanting in honour, as well as in generosity, if 
 he did not at once repudiate all intention of 
 wounding the honour of the honourable gentle- 
 man, or saying anything dishonourable to his 
 honourable feelings. These observations were 
 repeatedly interrupted by bursts of cheers. IMr. 
 Tiddypot retorted that he well knew the spirit 
 of honour by which the honourable and gallant 
 gentleman was so honourably animated, and 
 that he accepted an honourable explanation, 
 offered in a way that did him honour ; but, he 
 trusted that the Vestry would consider that his 
 (Mr. Tiddypot's) honour had imperatively de- 
 manded of him that painful course which he had 
 felt it due to his honour to adopt. The Captain 
 and Mr. Tiddypot then touched their hats to 
 one another across the Vestry a great many 
 times, and it is thought that these proceedings 
 (reported to the extent of several columns in next 
 Sunday's paper) will bring them in as church- 
 wardens next year. 
 
 All this was strictly after the pattern of the 
 real original, and so are the whole of our 
 Vestry's proceedings. In all their debates, 
 they are laudably imitative of the windy and 
 wordy slang of the real original, and of nothing 
 that is better in it. They have headstrong 
 party animosities, without any reference to the 
 merits of (questions ; they tack a surprising 
 amount of debate to a very little business ; they 
 set more store by forms than they do by sub- 
 stances ; — all very like the real original ! It 
 has been doubted in our borough whether our 
 Vestry is of any utility ; but our own conclusion 
 is, that it is of the use to the Borough that a 
 diminishing mirror is to a Painter, as enabling 
 it to perceive in a small focus of absurdity all 
 the surface defects of the real original. 
 
HE HAS TRA VELLED. 
 
 235 
 
 OUR. BORE. 
 
 T is unnecessary to say that we keep 
 
 a bore. Everybody does. But, tlie 
 
 bore whom we have the pleasure 
 
 and honour of enumerating among 
 
 our particular friends is such a 
 
 generic bore, and has so many 
 
 ^^ ^ traits (as it appears to us) in common 
 
 *^ with the great bore family, that we are 
 
 tempted to make him the subject of the present 
 
 notes. May he be generally accepted ! 
 
 Our bore is admitted on all hands to be a 
 good-hearted man. He may put fifty people 
 out of temper, but he keeps his own. He pre- 
 serves a sickly solid smile upon his face, when 
 other faces are ruffled by the perfection he has 
 attained in his art, and has an equable voice 
 which never travels out of one key or rises 
 above one pitch. His manner is a manner of 
 tranquil interest. None of his opinions are 
 startling. Among his deepest-rooted convic- 
 tions, it may be mentioned that he considers 
 the air of England damp, and holds that our 
 lively neighbours — he always calls the French 
 our lively neighbours — have the advantage of 
 us in that particular. Nevertheless, he is un- 
 able to forget that John Bull is John Bull all 
 the world over, and that England, with all her 
 faults, is England still. 
 
 Our bore has travelled. He could not pos- 
 sibly be a complete bore without having tra- 
 velled. He rarely speaks of his travels without 
 introducing, sometimes on his own plan of con- 
 struction, morsels of the language of the country : 
 which he always translates. You cannot name 
 to him any little remote town in France, Italy, 
 Germany, or Switzerland, but he knows it well ; 
 stayed there a fortnight under peculiar circum- 
 stances. And talking of that little place, per- 
 haps you know a statue over an old fountain, 
 up a little court, which is the second — no, the 
 third — stay — yes, tlie third turning on the right, 
 after you come out of the I'ost-house, going up 
 the hill towards the market? You doii't know 
 that statue ? Nor that fountain ? You surprise 
 him ! They are not usually seen by travellers 
 (most extraordinary, he has never yet met with 
 a single traveller who knew them, except one 
 German, the most intelligent man he ever met 
 in his life !) but he thought that you would have 
 been the man to find them out. And then he 
 describes them, in a circumstantial lecture half 
 an hour long, generally delivered behind a door 
 which is constantly being opened from the other 
 side; and implores you, if you ever revisit that 
 
 place, now do go and look at that statue and 
 
 fountain ! 
 
 Our bore, in a similar manner, being in Italy, 
 made a discovery of a dreadful ])icture, whicli 
 has been the terror of a large portion of the 
 civilised world ever since. We have seen the 
 liveliest men paralysed by it across a broad 
 dining-table. He was lounging among the 
 mountains, sir, basking in the mellow influences 
 of the climate, when he came to una piccola 
 chicsa — a little church — or perhaps it would be 
 more correct to say una piccolissiiua cappcUa — 
 the smallest chapel you can possibly imagine — 
 and walked in. There was nobody inside but a 
 cieco — a blind man — saying his prayers, and a 
 vccchio padre — old friar — rattling a money-box. 
 But, above the head of that friar, and immedi- 
 ately to the right of the altar as you enter — to 
 the right of the altar ? No. To the left of the 
 altar as you enter — or say near the centre — there 
 hung a painting (subject. Virgin and Child) so 
 divine in its expression, so pure and yet so 
 warm and rich in its tone, so fresh in its touch, 
 at once so glowing in its colour and so statu- 
 esque in its repose, that our bore cried out in 
 an ecstasy, " That's the finest picture in Italy ! " 
 And so it is, sir. There is no doubt of it. 
 It is astonishing that that picture is so little 
 known. Even the painter is uncertain. He 
 afterwards took Blumb, of the Royal Academy 
 (it is to be observed that our bore takes none 
 but eminent people to see sights, and that none 
 but eminent people take our bore), and you 
 never saw a man so affected in your life as 
 Blumb' was. He cried like a child ! And then 
 our bore begins his description in detail — for all 
 this is introductory — and strangles his hearers 
 with the folds of the purple drapery. 
 
 By an equally fortunate conjunction of acci- 
 dental circumstances, it happened that when 
 our bore was in Switzerland, he discovered a 
 Valley, of that superb character, that Chamouni 
 is not to be mentioned in the same breath with 
 it. This is how it was, sir. He was travelling 
 on a mule — had been in the saddle some days 
 — when, as he and the guide, Pierre Blanquo : 
 whom you may know, perhaps ? — our bore is 
 sorry you don't, because he is the only guide 
 deserving of the name — as he and Pierre were 
 descending, towards evening, among those 
 everlasting snows, to the little village of La 
 Croix, our bore observed a mountain track turn- 
 ing off sharply to the right. At first he was un^ 
 certain whether it ^uas a track at all, and, in 
 fact, he said to Pierre, " Quest que c'cst done, 
 mon amil — what is that, my friend?" " C'//, 
 viousieurV said Pierre — "where, sir?" ^^ Lai 
 
236 
 
 OUR BORE. 
 
 — there ! " said our bore. " Monsieur, ce 71' est 
 rien de tout — sir, it's nothing at all," said Pierre. 
 " A/ions ! — make haste. // va nciger — it's going 
 to snow ! " But our bore was not to be done 
 in that way, and lie firmly replied, " I wish to go 
 in that direction^/"^ veux y allcr. I am bent 
 upon it-^<? suis dcicrmine. Eii avaiit ! — go 
 ahead ! " In consequence of which firmness on 
 our bore's part, they proceeded, sir, during two 
 hours of evening and three of moonlight (they 
 waited in a cavern till the moon was up), along 
 the slenderest track, overhanging perpendicu- 
 larly the most awful gulfs, until they arrived, by 
 a. winding descent, in a valley that jjossibly, and 
 he may say probably, was never visited by any 
 stranger before. What a valley ! Mountains 
 piled on mountains, avalanches stemmed by 
 pine forests ; water-falls, chalets, mountain tor- 
 rents, wooden bridges, every conceivable picture 
 of Swiss scenery ! The whole village turned out 
 to receive our bore. The peasant girls kissed 
 him, the men shook hands with him, one old 
 lady of benevolent appearance wept upon his 
 breast. He was conducted, in a primitive tri- 
 ,umph, to the little inn : where he was taken ill 
 next morning, and lay for six weeks, attended 
 by the amiable hostess (the same benevolent 
 old lady who had wept overnight) and her 
 charming daughter, Fanchette. It is nothing to 
 say that they were attentive to him ; they doted 
 on him. They called him, in their simple way, 
 i'Anoe Afii^lais — the English Angel. When our 
 bore left the valley, there was not a dry eye in 
 the place ; some of the people attended him for 
 rniles. He bogs and entreats of you as a per- 
 sonal favour, that if you ever go to Switzerland 
 again (you have mentioned that your last visit 
 was your twenty-third), you will go to that 
 valley, and see Swiss scenery for the first time. 
 And if you want really to know the pastoral 
 people of Switzerland, and to understand them, 
 mention, in that valley, our bore's name ! 
 
 Our bore has a crushing brother in the East, 
 who, somehow or other, was admitted to smoke 
 pipes with Mehemet Ali, and instantly became 
 an authority on the whole range of Eastern 
 matters, from Haroun Alraschid to the present 
 Sultan. He is in the habit of expressing mys- 
 terious opinions on this wide range of subjects, 
 but on questions of foreign policy more particu- 
 larly, to our bore, in letters ; and our bore is 
 continually sending bits of these letters to the 
 newspapers (which they never insert), and carry- 
 ing other bits about in his pocket-book. It is 
 even whispered that he has been seen at the 
 Foreign Office, receiving great consideration 
 from the messengers, and having his card 
 
 promptly borne into the sanctuary of the temple. 
 The havoc committed in society by this Eastern 
 brother is beyond belief. Our bore is always 
 ready with him. \Ve have known our bore to 
 fall upon an intelligent young sojourner in the 
 wilderness, in the first sentence of a narrative, 
 and beat all confidence out of him with one 
 blow of his brother. He became omniscient, as 
 to foreign policy, in the smoking of those pipes 
 with Mehemet Ali. The balance of power in 
 Europe, the machinations of the Jesuits, the 
 gentle and humanising influence of Austria, the 
 position and prosjjccts of that hero of the noble 
 soul who is worshipped by happy France, are all 
 easy reading to our bore's brother. And our 
 bore is so provokingly self-denying about him ! 
 " I don't pretend to more than a very general 
 knowledge of these subjects myself," says he, 
 after enervating the intellects of several strong 
 men, "but these are my brother's opinions, and 
 I believe he is known to be well informed." 
 
 The commonest incidents and places would 
 appear to have been made special, expressly for 
 our bore. Ask him whether he ever chanced to 
 walk, between seven and eight in the morning, 
 down St. James's Street, London, and he will 
 tell you, never in his life but once. But, it's 
 curious that that once was in eighteen thirty ; 
 and that as our bore was walking down the 
 street you have just mentioned, at the hour you 
 have just mentioned — half-past seven — or twenty 
 minutes to eight. No ! Let him be correct ! — 
 exactly a quarter before eight by the Palace 
 clock — he met a fresh-coloured, grey-haired, 
 good-humoured-looking gentleman, with a brown 
 umbrella, who, as he passed him, touched his 
 hat and said, " Fine morning, sir, fine morn- 
 ing ! " — William the Fourth ! 
 
 Ask our bore whether he has seen Mr. Barry's 
 new Houses of Parliament, and he will reply 
 that he has not yet inspected them minutely, 
 but that you remind him that it was his singular 
 fortune to be the last man to see the old Houses 
 of Parliament before the fire broke out. It 
 happened in this way. Poor John S])ine, the 
 celebrated novelist, had taken him over to South 
 Lambeth to read to him the last few chapters of 
 what was certainly his best book — as our bore 
 told him at the time, adding, '•' Now, my dear 
 John, touch it, and you'll spoil it!" — and our 
 bore was going back to the club by way of 
 Millbank antl Parliament Street, when he stopped 
 to think of Canning, and look at the Houses 
 of Parliament. Now, you know far more of the 
 philosophy of Mintl than our bore does, and are 
 much better able to explain to him than he is to 
 explain to you why or wherefore, at that par- 
 
HE HAS HAD A DREADFUL ILLNESS. 
 
 237 
 
 ticular time, the thought of fire should come 
 into his head. But it did. It did. He thought, 
 What a national calamity if an edifice connected 
 with so many associations should be consumed 
 by fire ! At that time there was not a single 
 soul in the street but himself All was quiet, 
 dark, and solitary. After contemplating the 
 building for a minute — or, say a minute and a 
 half, not more — our bore proceeded on his way, 
 mechanically repeating, What a national cala- 
 mity if such an edifice, connected with such 
 
 associations, should be destroyed by A 
 
 man coming towards him in a violent state of 
 agitation completed the sentence with the excla- 
 mation, Fire ! Our bore looked round, and the 
 whole structure was in a blaze. 
 
 In harmony and union with these experiences, 
 our bore never went anywhere in a steamboat 
 but he made either the best or the worst voyage 
 ever known on that station. Either he over- 
 heard the captain say to himself, with his hands 
 clasped, "'We are all lost ! " or the ca])tain openly 
 declared to him that he had never made such a 
 run before, and never should be able to do it 
 again. Our bore was in that express train on 
 that railway when they made (unknown to the 
 passengers) the experiment of going at the rate 
 of a hundred miles an hour. Our bore remarked 
 on that occasion to the other people in the car- 
 riage, " This is too fast, but sit still ! " He was 
 at the Norwich musical festival when the extra- 
 ordinary echo, for which science has been wholly 
 unable to account, was heard for the first and 
 last time. He and the bishop heard it at the 
 same moment, and caught each other's eye. He 
 was present at that illumination of St. Peter's of 
 which the Pope is known to have remarked, as 
 he looked at it out of his window in the Vatican, 
 " O Cielo ! Qiiesta cosa no7i sara fatta, viai an- 
 cora, come qiiesta ! — O Heaven ! this thing will 
 never be done again like this ! " He has seen 
 every lion he ever saw, under some remarkably 
 propitious circumstances. He knows there is 
 no fancy in it, because in every case the show- 
 man mentioned the fact at the time, and con- 
 gratulated him upon it. 
 
 At one period of his life our bore had an ill- 
 ness. It was an illness of a dangerous character 
 for society at large. Innocently remark that 
 you are very well, or that somebody else is very 
 well ; and our bore, with a preface that one 
 never knows what a blessing health is until one 
 has lost it, is reminded of that illness, and drags 
 you through the whole of its symptoms, pro- 
 gress, and treatment. Innocently remark that 
 you are not well, or that somebody else is not 
 well, and the same inevitable result ensues. You 
 
 will learn how our bore felt a tightness about 
 here, sir, for which he couldn't account, accom- 
 panied with a constant sensation as if he were 
 being stabbed — or rather, jobbed — that ex- 
 presses it more correctly — jobbed — with a blunt 
 knife. Well, sir ! This went on until sparks 
 began to flit before his eyes, water-wheels to 
 turn round in his head, and hammers to beat 
 incessantly thump, thump, thump, all down his 
 back — along the whole of the spinal vertebrje. 
 Our bore, when his sensations had come to this, 
 thought it a duty he owed to himself to take 
 advice, and he said. Now, whom shall I con- 
 sult ? He naturally thought of Callow, at that 
 time one of the most eminent physicians in 
 London, and he went to Callow. Callow said, 
 " Liver ! " and prescribed rhubarb and calomel, 
 low diet, and moderate exercise. Our bore went 
 on with this treatment, getting worse every day, 
 until he lost confidence in Callow, and went to 
 Moon, whom half the town was then mad about. 
 Moon was interested in the case ; to do him 
 justice, he was very much interested in the case ; 
 and he said, " Kidneys ! " He altered the whole 
 treatment, sir — gave strong acids, cupped, and 
 blistered. This went on, our bore still getting 
 worse every day, until he openly told Moon it 
 would be a satisfaction to him if he would have 
 a consultation with Clatter. The moment Clat- 
 ter saw our bore, he said, " Accumulation of fat 
 about the heart ! " Snugglewood, who was 
 called in with him, diftered, and said, " Brain ! " 
 But, what they all agreed upon was, to lay our 
 bore upon his back, to shave his head, to leech 
 him, to administer enormous quantities of medi- 
 cine, and to keep him low; so that he was re- 
 duced to a mere shadow, you wouldn't have 
 known him, and nobody considered it possible 
 that he could ever recover. This was his con- 
 dition, sir, when he heard of Jilkins — at that 
 period in a very small practice, and living in the 
 upper part of a house in Great Portland Street ; 
 but still, you understand, with a rising reputation 
 among the few people to whom he was known. 
 Being in that condition in which a drowning 
 man catches at a straw, our bore sent for Jilkins. 
 Jilkins came. Our bore liked his eye, and said, 
 "Mr. Jilkins, I have a presentiment that you 
 will do me good." Jilkins's reply was charac- 
 teristic of the man. It was, "Sir, I mean to do 
 you good." This confirmed our bore's opinion 
 of his eye, and they went into the case together 
 — went completely into it. Jilkins then got up, 
 walked across the room, came back, and sat 
 down. His words were these. " You have 
 been humbugged. This is a case of indigestion, 
 occasioned by deficiency of power in the Sto- 
 
23t> 
 
 A MONUMENT OF FRENCH FOLLY. 
 
 mach. Take a mutton chop in half an hour, 
 with a glass of the fmcst old sherry that can be 
 got for money. Take two mutton chops to-mor- 
 row, and two glasses of the finest old slierry. 
 Next day, I'll come again." In a week our 
 bore Avas on his legs, and Jilkins's success dates 
 from that period ! 
 
 Our bore is great in secret information. He 
 happens to know many things that nobody else 
 knows. He can generally tell you where the split 
 is in the Ministry ; he knows a deal about the 
 Queen ; ami has little anecdotes to relate of the 
 royal nursery. He gives you the judge's private 
 opinion of Sludge the murderer, and his thoughts 
 when he tried him. He hapi^ens to know what 
 such a man got by such a transaction, and it 
 was fifteen thousand five hundred pounds, and 
 his income is twelve thousand a year. Our 
 bore is also great in mystery. He believes, with 
 an exasperating appearance of profound mean- 
 ing, that you saw Parkins last Sunday ? — Yes, 
 you did. — Did he say anything particular? — No, 
 nothing particular. — Our bore is surprised at 
 that. — Why? — Nothing. Only he understood 
 that Parkins had come to tell you something. — 
 What about ? — Well ! our bore is not at liberty 
 to mention what about. But, he believes you 
 will hear that from Parkins himself soon, and 
 he hopes it may not surprise you as it did him. 
 Perhaps, however, you never heard about Par- 
 kins's wife's sister ? — No. — Ah ! says our bore, 
 that explains it ! 
 
 Our bore is also great in argument. He in- 
 finitely enjoys a long, humdrum, drowsy inter- 
 change of words of dispute about nothing. He 
 considers that it strengthens the mind ; conse- 
 quently, he " don't see that " very often. Or, 
 he would be glad to know what you mean by 
 that. Or, he doubts that. Or, he has always 
 understood exactly the reverse of that. Or, he 
 can't admit that. Or, he begs to deny that. Or, 
 surely you don't mean that. And so on. He 
 once advised us ; offered us a piece of advice, 
 after the fact, totally impracticable and wholly 
 impossible of acceptance, because it supposed 
 the fact, then eternally disposed of, to be yet in 
 abeyance. It was a dozen years ago, and to 
 this hour our bore benevolently wishes, in a mild 
 voice, on certain regular occasions, that we had 
 thought better of his opinion. 
 
 The instinct with which our bore finds out 
 another bore, and closes with him, is amazing. 
 We have seen him pick his man out of fifty 
 men in a couple of minutes. They love to go 
 (which they do naturally) into a slow argument 
 on a previously exhausted subject, and to con- 
 tradict eacia other, and to wear the hearers out. 
 
 without impairing their own perennial freshness 
 as bores. It improves the good understanding 
 between them, and they get together afterwards, 
 and bore each other amicably. Whenever we 
 see our bore behind a door with another bore, 
 we know that when he comes forth, he will 
 praise the other bore as one of the most intelli- 
 gent men he ever met. And this bringing us to 
 the close of what we had to say about our bore, 
 we are anxious to have it understood that he 
 never bestowed this praise on us. 
 
 A MONUMENT OF FRENCH FOLLY. 
 
 ^^4W:^^ r was profoundly observed by a witty 
 ^^iMf;/ member of the Court of Common 
 (MSi I S|?ll Council, in Council assembled in the 
 lj^^^^~W City of London, in the year of our 
 'A^^^^^ Lord one thousand eight hundred 
 ^^j% and fifty, that the French are a frog- 
 ^^ eating people, who wear wooden shoes. 
 ^ We are credibly informed, in reference 
 
 to the nation whom this choice spirit so happily 
 disposed of, that the caricatures and stage repre- 
 sentations which were current in England some 
 half a century ago, exactly depict their present 
 condition. For example, we understand that 
 every Frenchman, without exception, wears a 
 pigtail and curl-papers. That he is extremely 
 sallow, thin, long-faced, and lantern-jawed. That 
 the calves of his legs are invariably undeveloped ; 
 that his legs fail at the knees, and that his 
 shoulders are always higher than his ears. We 
 are likewise assured that he rarely tastes any 
 food but soupe maigre, and an onion ; that he 
 always says, " By Gar ! Aha ! Vat you tell me, 
 Sare ? " at the end of every sentence he utters ; 
 and that the true generic name of his race is the 
 Mounseers, or the Parly-voos. If he be not a 
 dancing-master, or a barber, he must be a cook ; 
 since no other trades but those three are con- 
 genial to the tastes of the people, or permitted 
 by the Institutions of the country. He is a slave, 
 of course. The ladies of France (who are also 
 slaves) invariably have their heads tied up in 
 Belcher handkerchiefs, wear long ear-rings, carry 
 tambourines, and beguile the weariness of their 
 yoke by singing in head voices through their 
 noses — principally to barrel-organs. 
 
 It may be generally summed up, of this in- 
 ferior people, that they have no idea of any- 
 thing. 
 
 Of a great Institution like Smithfield they are 
 unable to form the least conception. A i3east 
 
THE JOLL V OLD ENGLISH ROAST BEEF. 
 
 '39 
 
 Market in the heart of Paris would be regarded 
 an impossible nuisance. Nor have they any 
 notion of slaughter-houses in the midst of a city. 
 One of these benighted frog-eaters would scarcely 
 understand your meaning, if you told him of the 
 existence of such a British bulwark. 
 
 It is agreeable, and perhaps pardonable, to 
 indulge in a little self-complacency when our 
 right to it is thoroughly established. At the 
 present time, to be rendered memorable by a 
 linal attack on that good old market which is 
 the (rotten) apple of the Corporation's eye, let 
 us compare ourselves, to our national delight 
 and pride as to these two subjects of slaughter- 
 house and beast-market, with the outlandish 
 foreigner. 
 
 The blessings of Smithfield are too w^ell under- 
 stood to need recapitulation ; all who run (away 
 from mad bulls and pursuing oxen) may read. 
 Any market-day they may be beheld in glorious 
 action. Possibly the merits of our slaughter- 
 houses are not yet quite so generally appre- 
 ciated. 
 
 Slaughter-houses, in the large towns of Eng- 
 land, are always (wiUi the exception of one or 
 two enterprising towns) most numerous in the 
 most densely crowded places, where there is the 
 least circulation of air. They are often under- 
 ground, in cellars ; they are sometimes in close 
 back-yards ; sometimes (as in Spitalfields) in the 
 very shops where the meat is sold. Occasionally, 
 under good private management, they are ven- 
 tilated and clean. For the most part, they are 
 unventilated and dirty ; and, to the reeking 
 walls, putrid fat and other offensive animal 
 matter cling with a tenacious hold. The busiest 
 slaughter-houses in London are in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Smithfield, in Newgate Market, in 
 Whitechapel, in Newport Market, in Leadenhall 
 Market, in Clare Market. All these places are 
 surrounded by houses of a poor description, 
 swarming Avith inhabitants. Some of them are 
 close to the worst burial-grounds in London. 
 When the slaughter-house is below the ground, 
 it is a common practice to throw the sheep down 
 areas, neck and crop — which is exciting, but not 
 at all cruel. When it is on the level surface, it 
 is often extremely difficult to approach. Then, 
 the beasts have to be worried, and goaded, and 
 pronged, and tail-twisted, for a long time before 
 they can be got in — which is entirely owing to 
 their natural obstinacy. When it is not difficult 
 of approach, but is in a foul condition, what they 
 see and scent makes them still more reluctant 
 to enter — which is their natural obstinacy again. 
 When they do get in at last, after no trouble and 
 suffering to speak of (for, there is nothing in 
 
 the previous journey into the heart of London, 
 the night's endurance in Smithfield, the struggle 
 out again, among the crowded multitude, the 
 coaches, carts, waggons, omnibuses, gigs, chaises, 
 phaetons, cabs, trucks, dogs, boys, whoopings, 
 roarings, and ten thousand other distractions), 
 they are represented to be in a most unfit state 
 to be killed, according to microscopic examina- 
 tions made of their fevered blood by one of the 
 most distinguished physiologists in the world, 
 Professor Owen — but that's humbug. When 
 they are killed, at last, their reeking carcases 
 are hung in impure air, to become,' as the same 
 Professor will explain to you, less nutritious and 
 more unwholesome — but he is only an ////com- 
 mon counsellor, so don't mind //////. In half a 
 quarter of a mile's length of Whitechapel, at 
 one time, there shall be six hundred newly 
 slaughtered oxen hanging up, and seven hundred 
 sheep — but, the more the merrier — proof of 
 prosperity. Hard by Snow Hill and Warwick 
 Lane, you shall see the little children, inured to 
 sights of brutality from their birth, trotting along 
 the alleys, mingled with troops of horribly busy 
 pigs, up to their ankles in blood — but it makes 
 the young rascals hardy. Into the imperfect 
 sewers of this overgrown city, you shall have 
 the immense mass of* corruption, engendered by 
 these practices, lazily thrown out of sight, to 
 rise, in poisonous gases, into your house at 
 night, when your sleeping children will most 
 readily absorb them, and to find its languid way, 
 at last, into the river that you drink — but, the 
 French are a frog-eating people who wear wooden 
 shoes, and it's Oh the roast beef of England, my 
 boy, the jolly old English roast beef. 
 
 It is quite a mistake— a new-fangled notion 
 altogether — to suppose that there is any natural 
 antagonism between putrefaction and health. 
 They know better than that in the Common 
 Council. You may talk about Nature, in her 
 wisdom, always warning man, through his sense 
 of smell, when he draws near to something dan- 
 gerous ; but, that won't go down in the City. 
 Nature very often don't mean anything. Mrs. 
 Quickly says that prunes are ill for a green 
 wound ; but whosoever says that putrid animal 
 substances are ill for a green wound, or for 
 robust vigour, or for anything or for anybody, is a 
 humanity-monger and a humbug. Britons never, 
 never, never, &c., therefore. And prosperity to 
 cattle-driving, cattle-slaughtering, bone-crushing, 
 blood -boiling, trotter -scraping, tripe -dressing, 
 paunch-cleaning, gut-spinning, hide-preparing, 
 tallow-melting, and other salubrious proceedings, 
 in the midst of hospitals, churchyanls, work- 
 houses, schools, infirmaries, refuges, dwellings, 
 
240 
 
 A MONUMENT OF FRENCH FOLLY. 
 
 provision shops, nurseries, sick beds, every stage 
 and baiting-place in the journey from birth to 
 death ! 
 
 These ///^common counsellors, your Professor 
 Owens and fellows, will contend that to tolerate 
 these things in a civilised city is to reduce it to 
 a worse condition than Bruce found to prevail 
 in Abyssinia. For, there (say they) the jackals 
 and wild dogs came at night to devour the offal ; 
 whereas here there are no such natural sca- 
 vengers, and quite as savage customs. Further, 
 they will demonstrate that nothing in Nature is 
 intended to be wasted, and that, besides the 
 ■waste which such abuses occasion in the articles 
 of health and life — main sources of the riches of 
 any community — they lead to a prodigious Avaste 
 of changing matters, which might, with proper 
 preparation, and under scientific direction, be 
 safely api)lied to the increase of the fertility of 
 the land. Thus (they argue) does Nature ever 
 avenge infractions of her beneficent laws, and so 
 surely as Man is determined to warp any of her 
 blessings into curses, shall they become curses, 
 and shall he suffer heavily. But, this is cant. 
 Just as it is cant of the worst description to say 
 to the London Corporation, " How can you 
 exhibit to the people so plain a spectacle of dis- 
 honest equivocation, as to claim the right of 
 holding a market in the midst of the great city, 
 for one of your vested privileges, when you know 
 that when your last market-holding charter was 
 granted to you by King Charles the First, 
 Smithfield stood in the Suburbs of London, 
 and is in that very charter so described in those 
 five words ? " — which is certainly true, but has 
 nothing to do with the question. 
 
 Now to the comparison, in these particulars of 
 civilisation, between the capital of England, and 
 the capital of that frog-eating and wooden-shoe 
 wearing country which the illustrious Common 
 Councilman so sarcastically settled. 
 
 In Paris there is no Cattle Market. Cows 
 and calves are sold within the city, but the 
 Cattle Markets are at Poissy, about thirteen 
 miles off, on a line of railway ; and at Sceaux, 
 about five miles off. The Poissy market is held 
 every Thursday; the Sceaux market, every Mon- 
 day. In Paris there are no slaughter-houses, in 
 our acceptation of the term. There are five 
 public Abattoirs — within the walls, though in 
 the suburbs — and in these all the slaughtering 
 for the city must be performed. They are 
 managed by a Syndicat or Guild of Butchers, 
 who confer with the Minister of the Interior on 
 all matters affecting the trade, and wlio are con- 
 sulted when any new regulations are contem- 
 plated for its government. They are, likewise, 
 
 under the vigilant superintendence of the police. 
 Every butcher must be licensed : which proves 
 him at once to be a slave, for we don't license; 
 butchers in England — we only license apothe- 
 caries, attorneys, postmasters, publicans, hawkers, 
 retailers of tobacco^ snuff, pepper, and vinegar 
 — and one or two other little trades not worth 
 mentioning. Every arrangement in connection 
 with the slaughtering and sale of meat is matter 
 of strict police regulation. (Slavery again, though 
 we certainly have a general sort of a Police Act 
 here.) 
 
 But, in order that the reader may understand 
 what a monument of folly these frog-eaters have 
 raised in their abattoirs and cattle-markets, and 
 may compare it with what common counselling 
 has done for us all these years, and would still 
 do but for the innovating spirit of the times, 
 here follows a sliort account of a recent visit to 
 these places : 
 
 It was as sharp a February morning as you 
 would desire to feel at your fingers' ends when I 
 turned out — tumbling over a chiffonnier with 
 his little basket and rake, who was picking up 
 the bits of coloured paper that had been swept 
 out, overnight, from a Bon-bon shop — to take 
 the Butchers' Train to Poissy, A cold dim light 
 just touched the high roofs of the Tuileries which 
 have seen such changes, such distracted crowds, 
 such riot and bloodshed ; and they looked as 
 calm, and as old, all covered with white frost, 
 as the very Pyramids. There was not light 
 enough yet to strike upon the towers of Notre 
 Dame across the water ; but I thought of the 
 dark pavement of the old Cathedral as just be- 
 ginning to be streaked with grey ; and of the 
 lamps in the " House of God," the Hospital 
 close to it, burning low and being quenched ; 
 and of the keeper of the Morgue going about 
 with a fading lantern, busy in the arrangement 
 of his terrible wax-work for another sunny day. 
 
 The sun was uj), and shining merrily when the 
 butchers and I, announcing our departure with 
 an engine-shriek to sleepy Paris, rattled away for 
 the Cattle Market. Across the country, over the 
 Seine, among a forest of scrubby trees — the hoar 
 frost lying cold in shady places, and glittering in 
 the light — and here we are at Poissy ! Out leap 
 the butchers, who have been chattering all the 
 way like madmen, and off they straggle for the 
 Cattle Market (still chattering, of course, inces- 
 santly), in hats and caps of all shapes, in coats 
 and blouses, in calf-skins, cow-skins, horse-skins, 
 furs, shaggy mantles, hairy coats, sacking, baize, 
 oil-skin, anything you please that will keep a 
 man and a butcher warm upon a frosty morning. 
 
FOISSY AND ITS CALF MARKET. 
 
 241 
 
 Many a French town have I seen, between 
 this spot of ground and Strasbourg or Marseilles, 
 that might sit for your picture, little Poissy ! 
 Barring the details of your old church, I know 
 you well, albeit we make acquaintance, now, for 
 the first time. I know your narrow, straggling, 
 winding streets, with a kennel in the midst, and 
 lamps slung across. I know your picturesque 
 street corners, winding uphill Heaven knows 
 why or where ! I know your tradesmen's in- 
 scriptions, in letters not quite fat enough ; your 
 barbers' brazen basins dangling over little shops ; 
 your Cafes and Estaminets, with cloudy bottles 
 of stale syrup in the windows, and pictures of 
 crossed billiard-cues outside. I know this iden- 
 tical grey horse with his tail rolled up in a knot 
 like the " back hair " of an untidy woman, who 
 won't be shod, and who makes himself heraldic 
 by clattering across the street on his hind-legs, 
 while twenty voices shriek and growl at him as a 
 Brigand, an accursed Robber, and an everlast- 
 ingly-doomed Pig. I know your sparkling town- 
 fountain too, my Poissy, and am glad to see it 
 near a cattle-market, gushing so freshly, under 
 the auspices of a gallant little sublimated French- 
 man wrought in metal, perched upon the top. 
 Through all the land of France I know this un- 
 swept room at the Glory, with its peculiar smell of 
 beans and coffee, where the butchers crowd about 
 the stove, drinking the thinnest of wine from the 
 smallest of tumblers; where the thickest of coffee- 
 cups mingle with the longest of loaves and the 
 weakest of lump sugar ; where Madame at the 
 counter easily acknowledges the homage of all en- 
 tering and departing butchers; where the biUiard- 
 table is covered up in the midst like a great bird- 
 cage — but the bird may sing by-and-by ! 
 
 A bell ! The Calf Market ! Polite departure 
 of butchers. Hasty payment and departure on 
 the part of amateur Visitor. Madame reproaches 
 Ma'amselle for too fine a susceptibility in refer- 
 ence to the devotion of a Butcher in a bear-skin. 
 Monsieur, the landlord of the Glory, counts a 
 double handful of sous, without an unobliterated 
 inscription, or an undamaged crowned head, 
 among them. 
 
 There is little noise without, abundant space, 
 and no confusion. The open area devoted to 
 the market is divided into three portions : the 
 Calf Market, the Cattle Market, the Sheep Mar- 
 ket. Calves at eight, cattle at ten, sheep at 
 mid-day. All is very clean. 
 
 The Calf Market is a raised platform of stone, 
 some three or four feet high, open on all sides, 
 with a lofty overspreading roof, supported on 
 stone columns, which give it the appearance of 
 a sort of vineyard from Northern Italy. Here, 
 Edwin Drood, Etc., 16. 
 
 on the raised pavement, lie innumerable calves, 
 all bound hind-legs and fore-legs together, and 
 all trembling violently — perhaps with cold, per- 
 haps with fear, perhaps with pain ; for, this mode 
 of tying, which seems to be an absolute super- 
 stition with the peasantry, can hardly fail to 
 cause great suffering. Here they lie, patiently 
 in rows, among the straw, with their stolid faces 
 and inexpressive eyes, superintended by men 
 and women, boys and girls ; here they are in- 
 spected by our friends, the butchers, bargaineil 
 for, and bought. Plenty of time ; plenty of 
 room ; plenty of good-humour. " Monsieur 
 Frangois in the bear-skin, how do you do, my 
 friend ? You come from Paris by the train ? 
 The fresh air does you good. If you are in want 
 of three or four fine calves this market-morning, 
 my angel, I, Madame Doche, shall be happy to 
 deal with you. Behold these calves. Monsieur 
 Francois ! Great Heaven, you are doubtful ! 
 Well, sir, walk round and look about you. If 
 you find better for the money, buy them. If not, 
 come to me ! " Monsieur Francois goes his way 
 leisurely, and keeps a wary eye upon the stock. 
 No other butcher jostles Monsieur Frangois ; 
 Monsieur Francois jostles no other butcher. 
 Nobody is flustered and aggravated. Nobody 
 is savage. In the midst of the country blue 
 frocks and red handkerchiefs, and the butchers' 
 coats, shaggy, furry, and hairy: of calf-skin, 
 cow-skin, horse-skin, and bear-skin : towers a 
 cocked-hat and a blue cloak. Slavery ! For 
 our Police wear great-coats and glazed hats. 
 
 But now the bartering is over, and the calves 
 are sold. " Ho ! Gregoire, Antoine, Jean, 
 Louis ! Bring up the carts, my children ! Quick, 
 brave infants ! Hola ! Hi ! " 
 
 The carts, well littered with straw, are backed 
 up to the edge of the raised pavement, and vari- 
 ous hot infants carry calves upon their heads, 
 and dexterously pitch them in, while other hot 
 infants, standing in the carts, arrange the calves, 
 and pack them carefully in straw. Here is a 
 promising young calf, not sold, whom Madame 
 Doche unbinds. Pardon me, Madame Doche, 
 but I fear this mode of tying the four legs of a 
 quadruped together, though strictly a la mode, 
 is not quite right. You observe, Madame 
 Doche, that the cord leaves deep indentations 
 in the skin, and that the animal is so cramped 
 at first as not to know, or even remotely sus- 
 pect, that he ?s unbound, until you are so oblig- 
 ing as to kick him, in your delicate little way, 
 and pull his tail like a bell-rope. Then, he 
 staggers to his knees, not being able to stand, 
 and stumbles about like a drunken calf, or the 
 horse at Franconi's, whom you may have seen. 
 
242 
 
 A MONUMENT OF FRENCH FOLLY, 
 
 Madame Doche, who is supposed to have been 
 mortally wounded in battle. But, what is this 
 rubbing against me, as I apostrophise Madame 
 Doche? It is another heated infant, with a calf 
 upon his head. " Pardon, Monsieur, but will 
 you have the politeness to allow me to pass ? " 
 " Ah, sir, willingly. I am vexed to obstruct 
 the way." On he staggers, calf and all, and 
 makes no allusion wliatever either to my eyes 
 or limbs. 
 
 Now, the carts are all full. More straw, my 
 Antoine, to shake over these top rows ; then, 
 off we will clatter, rumble, jolt, and rattle, a 
 long row of us, out of the first town-gate, and 
 out at the second town-gate, and past the empty 
 sentry-box, and the little thin square bandbox of 
 a guard-house, where nobody seems to live ; and 
 away for Paris, by the paved road, lying, a 
 straight straight line, in the long long avenue of 
 trees. We can neither choose our road nor our 
 pace, for that is all prescribed to us. The pub- 
 lic convenience demands that our carts should 
 get to Paris by such a route, and no other 
 (Napoleon had leisure to find that out, while he 
 had a little war with the world upon his hands), 
 and woe betide us if we infringe orders. 
 
 Droves of oxen stand in the Cattle Market, 
 tied to iron bars fixed into posts of granite. 
 Other droves advance slowly down the long 
 avenue, past the second town-gate, and the first 
 town-gate, and the sentry-box, and the bandbox, 
 thawing the morning with their smoky breath as 
 they come along. Plenty of room ; plenty of 
 time. Neither man nor beast is driven out of 
 his wits by coaches, carts, waggons, omnibuses, 
 gigs, chaises, phaetons, cabs, trucks, boys, 
 Nvhoopings, roarings, and multitudes. No tail- 
 twisting is necessary — no iron-pronging is 
 necessary. There are no iron prongs here. 
 The market for cattle is held as quietly as the 
 market for calves. In due time, off the cattle 
 go to Paris ; the drovers can no more choose 
 their road, nor their time, nor the numbers they 
 shall drive, than they can choose their hour for 
 dying in the course of nature. 
 
 Sheep next. The Sheep-pens are up here, 
 past the Branch Bank of Paris established for 
 the convenience of the butchers, and behind 
 the two pretty fountains they are making in the 
 !Market. My name is Bull : yet I think I 
 should like to see as good twin fountains — not 
 to say in Smithfield, but in England anywhere. 
 Plenty of room ; plenty of time. And here are 
 sheep-dogs, sensible as ever, but with a certain 
 French air about them — not without a suspicion 
 of dominoes — with a kind of flavour of mous- 
 tache and beard — demonstrative dogs, shaggy 
 
 and loose where an English dog would be tight 
 and close — not so troubled with business calcu- 
 lations as our English drovers' dogs, who have 
 always got their sheep upon their minds, and 
 think about their work, even resting, as you may 
 see by their faces ; but, dashing, showy, rather 
 unreliable dogs : who might worry me instead 
 of their legitimate charges if they saw occasion 
 — and might see it somewhat suddenly. The 
 market for sheep passes off like the other two ; 
 and away they go, by their allotted road to 
 Paris. My way being the Railway, I make the 
 best of it at twenty miles an hour ; whirling 
 through the now high-lighted landscape; think- 
 ing that the inexperienced green buds will be 
 wishing, before long, they had not been tempted 
 to come out so soon ; and* w^ondering who lives 
 in this or that chateau, all window and lattice, 
 and what the family may have for breakfast this 
 sharp morning. 
 
 After the Market comes the Abattoir. What 
 abattoir shall I visit first ? Montmartre is the 
 largest. So, I will go there. 
 
 The abattoirs are all within the walls of Paris, 
 with an eye to the receipt of the octroi duty ; 
 but, they stand in open places in the suburbs, 
 removed from the press and bustle of the city. 
 They are managed by the Syndicat or Guild of 
 Butchers, imder the inspection of the Police. 
 Certain smaller items of the revenue derived 
 from them are in part retained by the Guild for 
 the payment of their expenses, and in part de- 
 voted by it to charitable purposes in connection 
 with the trade. They cost six hundred and 
 eighty thousand pounds ; and they return to the 
 City of Paris an interest on that outlay, amount- 
 ing to nearly six and a half per cent. 
 
 Here, in a sufficiently dismantled space, is the 
 Abattoir of ]\Iontmartre, covering nearly nine 
 acres of ground, surrounded by a high wall, and 
 looking from the outside like a cavalry barrack. 
 At the iron gates is a small functionary in a 
 large cocked-hat. "Monsieur desires to see 
 the abattoir? Most certainly." State being 
 inconvenient in private transactions, and Mon- 
 sieur being already aware of the cocked-hat, the 
 functionary puts it into a little ofticial bureau 
 which it almost fills, and accompanies me in 
 the modest attire — as to his head — of ordinary 
 hfe. 
 
 Many of the animals from Poissy have come 
 here. On the arrival of each drove, it was 
 turned into yonder ample space, where each 
 butcher who had bought, selected his own pur- 
 chases. Some, we see now, in these long jjer- 
 spectives of stalls with a high overhanging roof 
 of wood and open tiles rising above the walls. 
 
THE ABATTOIR OF MONTMARTRE. 
 
 243 
 
 While they rest here, before being slaughtered, 
 they are required to be fed and watered, and the 
 stalls must be kept clean. A stated amount of 
 fodder must always be ready in the loft above ; 
 and the supervision is of the strictest kind. The 
 same regulations apply to sheep and calves ; for 
 which portions of these perspectives are strongly 
 railed off. All the buildings are of the strongest 
 and most solid description. 
 
 After traversing these lairs, through which, 
 besides the upper provision for ventilation just 
 mentioned, there may be a thorough current of 
 air from opposite windows in the side-walls, 
 and from doors at either end, we traverse the 
 broad, paved courtyard until we come to the 
 slaughter-houses. They are all exactly alike, 
 and adjoin each other, to the number of eight or 
 nine together, in blocks of solid building. Let 
 us walk into the first. 
 
 It is firmly built and paved with stone. It is 
 well lighted, thoroughly aired, and lavishly pro- 
 vided with fresh water. It has two doors oppo- 
 site each other ; the first, the door by which I 
 entered from the main yard ; the second, which 
 is opposite, opening on another smaller yard, 
 where the sheep and calves are killed on 
 benches. The pavement of that yard, I see, 
 slopes downward to a gutter, for its being more 
 easily cleansed. The slaughter-house is fifteen 
 feet high, sixteen feet and a half wide, and 
 thirty-three feet long. It is fitted with a power- 
 ful windlass, by which one man at the handle 
 can bring the head of an ox down to the ground 
 to receive the blow from the pole-axe that is to 
 fell him — with the means of raising the carcase, 
 and keeping it suspended during the after- 
 operation of dressing — and with hooks on 
 which carcases can hang, when completely pre- 
 pared, without touching the walls. Upon the 
 pavement of this first stone chamber lies an ox 
 scarcely dead. If I except the blood draining 
 from him into a little stone well in a corner of 
 the pavement, the place is free from offence as 
 the Place de la Concorde. It is infinitely purer 
 and cleaner, I know, my friend the functionary, 
 than the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Ha, ha ! 
 Monsieur is pleasant, but, truly, there is reason, 
 too, in what he says. 
 
 I look into another of these slaughter-houses. 
 " Pray enter," says a gentleman in bloody boots. 
 "This is a calf I have killed this morning. 
 Having a little time upon my hands, I have cut 
 and punctured this lace pattern in the coats of 
 his stomach. It is pretty enough. I did it to 
 divert myself." — " It is beautiful, Monsieur the 
 slaughterer ! " He tells me I have the gentility 
 to say so. 
 
 I look into rows of slaughter-houses. In 
 many, retail dealers, who have come here for 
 the purpose, are making bargains for meat. 
 There is killing enough, certainly, to satiate an 
 unused eye ; and there are steaming carcases 
 enough to suggest the expedience of a fowl and 
 salad for dinner ; but, everywhere, there is an 
 orderly, clean, well-systematised routine of work 
 in progress — horrible work at the best, if you 
 please ; but, so much the greater reason why it 
 should be made the best of. I don't know (I 
 think I have observed, my name is Bull) that a 
 Parisian of the lowest order is particularly deli- 
 cate, or that his nature is remarkable for an 
 infinitesimal infusion of ferocity ; but I do 
 know, my potent, grave, and common-counsel- 
 ling Signors, that he is forced, when at this 
 work, to submit himself to a thoroughly good 
 system, and to make an Englishman very 
 heartily ashamed of you. 
 
 Here, within the walls of the same abattoir, 
 in other roomy and commodious buildings, are 
 a place for converting the fat into tallow and 
 packing it for market — a place for cleansing 
 and scalding calves' heads and sheep's feet — a 
 place for preparing tripe — stables and coach- 
 houses for the butchers — innumerable con- 
 veniences, aiding in the diminution of offensive- 
 ness to its lowest possible point, and the raising 
 of cleanliness and supervision to their highest. 
 Hence, all the meat that goes out of the gate is 
 sent away in clean covered carts. And if every 
 trade connected with the slaughtering of animals 
 were obliged by law to be carried on in the 
 same place, I doubt, my friend, now reinstated 
 in the cocked-hat (whose civility these two francs 
 imperfectly acknowledge, but appear munifi- 
 cently to repay), whether there could be better 
 regulations than those which are carried out at 
 the Abattoir of Montmartre. Adieu, my friend, 
 for I am away to the other side of Paris, to the 
 Abattoir of Crenelle ! And there I find exactly 
 the same thing on a smaller scale, with the 
 addition of a magnificent Artesian well, and a 
 different sort of conductor, in the person of a 
 neat little woman with neat little eyes, and a 
 neat little voice, who picks her neat little way 
 among the bullocks in a very neat little pair of 
 shoes and stockings. 
 
 Such is the Monument of French Folly which 
 a foreigneering people have erected, in a national 
 hatred and antipathy for common-counselling 
 wisdom. That wisdom, assembled in the City 
 of London, having distinctly refused, after a 
 debate three days long, and by a majority of 
 nearly seven to one, to associate itself with any 
 
244 
 
 A CHRISTMAS TREE. 
 
 Metropolitan Cattle Market unless it be held in 
 the midst of the City, it follows that we shall 
 lose the inestimable advantages of common- 
 counselling protection, and be thrown, for a 
 market, on our own wretched resources. In all 
 human probability we shall thus come, at last, 
 to erect a monument of folly very like this 
 French monument. If that be done, the conse- 
 quences are obvious. The leather trade will be 
 ruined by the introduction of American timber, 
 to be manufactured into shoes for the fallen 
 English ; the Lord Mayor will be required, by 
 the popular voice, to live entirely on frogs ; and 
 both these changes will (how is not at present 
 quite clear, but certainly somehow or other) fall 
 on that unhappy landed interest which is always 
 being killed, yet is always found to be alive — 
 and kicking. 
 
 A CHRISTMAS TREE. 
 
 HAVE been looking on, this even- 
 ing, at a merry company of children 
 assembled round that pretty German 
 toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree 
 was planted in the middle of a great 
 round table, and towered high above 
 ^' ^ their heads. It was brilliantly lighted 
 V by a multitude of little tapers ; and 
 
 everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright 
 objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding 
 behind the green leaves ; there were real 
 watches (with movable hands, at least, and an 
 endless capacity of being wound up) dangling 
 from innumerable twigs; there were French- 
 polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, 
 eight-day clocks, and various other articles of 
 domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at 
 Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs, 
 as if in preparation for some fairy housekeep- 
 ing ; there were jolly, broad-faced little men, 
 much more agreeable in appearance than many 
 real men — and no wonder, for their heads took 
 off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums ; 
 there were fiddles and drums ; there were tam- 
 bourines, books, workboxes, paint-boxes, sweet- 
 meat boxes, peep-show boxes, all kinds of 
 boxes ; there were trinkets for the elder girls, 
 far brighter than any grown-up gold and jewels ; 
 there were baskets and pincushions in all de- 
 vices ; there were guns, swords, and banners; 
 there were witches standing in enchanted rings 
 of pasteboard, to tell fortunes ; there were tee- 
 totums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, 
 smelling-bottles, conversation cards, bouquet 
 
 holders ; real fruit, made artificially dazzling 
 with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, and 
 walnuts, crammed with surprises ; in short, as 
 a pretty child before me delightedly whispered 
 to another pretty child, her bosom friend, 
 " There was everything, and more." This 
 motley collection of odd objects clustering on 
 the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back the 
 bright looks directed towards it from every side 
 — some of the diamond-eyes admiring it were 
 hardly on a level with the table, and a few were 
 languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of 
 pretty mothers, aunts, and nurses — made a 
 lively realisation of the fancies of childhood ; 
 and set me thinking how all the trees that grow, 
 and all the things that come into existence on 
 the earth, have their wild adornments at that 
 well-remembered time. 
 
 Being now at home again, and alone, the 
 only person in the house awake, my thoughts 
 are drawn back, by a fascination which I do 
 not care to resist, to my own childhood. I 
 begin to consider, what do we all remember 
 best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree 
 of our own young Christmas days, by which we 
 climbed to real life ? 
 
 Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped 
 in the freedom of its growth by no encircling 
 walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree 
 arises ; and, looking up into the dreamy bright- 
 ness of its top — for I observe, in this tree, the 
 singular property that it appears to grow down- 
 ward towards the earth — I look into my young- 
 est Christmas recollections ! 
 
 All toys at first, I find. Up yonder, among 
 the green holly and red berries, is the Tumbler 
 with his hands in his pockets, who wouldn't lie 
 down, but whenever he was put upon the floor, 
 persisted in rolling his fat body aljout, until he 
 rolled himself still, and brought those lobster 
 eyes of his to bear upon me — when I affected 
 to laugh very much, but in my heart of hearts 
 was extremely doubtful of him. Close beside 
 him is that infernal snuff-box, out of which 
 there sprang a demoniacal Counsellor in a black 
 gown, with an obnoxious head of hair, and a 
 red cloth mouth, wide open, who was not to be 
 endured on any terms, but could not be put 
 away either ; for he used suddenly, in a highly 
 magnified state, to fly out of Mammoth Snuff- 
 boxes in dreams, when least expected. Nor is 
 the frog, with cobbler's wax on his tail, far off; 
 for there was no knowing where he wouldn't 
 jump ; and when he flew over the candle, and 
 came upon one's hand with that spotted back — 
 red on a green ground — he was horrible. The 
 cardboard lady in a blue silk skirt, who was 
 
CHRISTMAS-TREE FRUJT. 
 
 245 
 
 stood up against the candlestick to dance, and 
 whom I sec on the same branch, was milder, 
 and was beautiful ; but I can't say as much for 
 the larger cardboard man, who used to be hung 
 against the wall and pulled by a string ; there 
 was a sinister expression in that nose of his ; 
 and when he got his legs round his neck (which 
 he very often did), he was ghastly, and not a 
 creature to be alone with. 
 
 When did that dreadful Mask first look at 
 me ? AMio put it on, and why was I so fright- 
 ened that the sight of it is an era in my life ? 
 It is not a hideous visage in itself; it is even 
 meant to be droll ; why then were its stolid 
 features so intolerable ? Surely not because it 
 hid the wearer's face. An apron would have 
 done as much ; and though I should have pre- 
 ferred even the apron away, it would not have 
 been absolutely insupportable, like the mask. 
 Was it the immovability of the mask ? The 
 doll's face was immovable, but I was not afraid 
 oi/ier. Perhaps that fixed and set change coming 
 over a real face, infused into my quickened heart 
 some remote suggestion and dread of the uni- 
 versal change that is to come on every face, and 
 make it still. Notliing reconciled me to it. No 
 drummers, from whom proceeded a melancholy 
 chirping on the turning of a handle ; no regiment 
 of soldiers, with a mute band, taken out of a box, 
 and fitted, one by one, upon a stift" and lazy little 
 set of lazy-tongs ; no old woman, made of wires 
 and a brown-paper composition, cutting up a pie 
 for two small children ; could give me a perma- 
 nent comfort for a long time. Nor was it any 
 satisfaction to be shown the Mask, and see that 
 it was made of paper, or to have it locked up 
 and be assured that no one wore it. The mere 
 recollection of that fixed face, the mere know- 
 ledge of its existence anywhere, was sufficient to 
 awake me in the night, all perspiration and 
 horror, with, " Ob, I know it's coming ! Oh the 
 mask ! " 
 
 I never wondered what the dear old donkey 
 with the panniers — there he is ! — was made of, 
 then ! His hide was real to the touch, I recol- 
 lect. And the great black horse with round red 
 spots all over him — the horse that I could even 
 get upon — I never wondered what had brought 
 him to that strange condition, or thought that 
 such a horse was not commonly seen at New- 
 market. The four horses of no colour, next to 
 him, that went into the waggon of cheeses, and 
 could be taken out and stabled under the piano, 
 appear to have bits of fur tippet for their tails, 
 and other bits for their manes, and to stand on 
 pegs instead of legs, but it was not so when 
 they were brought home for a Christmas pre- 
 
 sent. They were all right then ; neither was 
 
 their harness unceremoniously nailed into their 
 chests, as ai)pears to be the case now. The 
 tinkling works of the music-cart I did find out 
 to be made of ([uill toothi)icks and wire ; and I 
 always thought that little tumbler in his shirt- 
 sleeves, perpetually swarming up one side of a 
 wooden frame, and coming down, head foremost, 
 on the other, rather a weak-minded person — 
 though good-natured ; but the Jacob's Ladder, 
 next him, made of little squares of red wood, 
 that went flapping and clattering over one 
 another, each developing a difterent picture, 
 and the whole enlivened by small bells, was a 
 mighty marvel and a great deliglit. 
 
 Ah ! The Doll's house ! — of which I was 
 not proprietor, but where 1 visited. I don't 
 admire the Houses of Parliament half so much 
 as that stone-fronted mansion with real glass 
 windows, anil door-steps, and a real balcony — 
 greener than I ever see now, except at watering- 
 places ; and even they afford but a poor imita- 
 tion. And though it did open all at once, the 
 entire house-front (which was a blow, I admit, 
 as cancelling the fiction of a staircase), it was 
 but to shut it up again, and I could believe. 
 Even open, there were three distinct rooms in 
 it : a sitting-room and bedroom, elegantly fur- 
 nished, and, best of all, a kitchen, with uncom- 
 monly soft fire-irons, a plentiful assortment of 
 diminutive utensils — oh, the warming-pan ! — 
 and a tin man-cook in profile, who was always 
 going to fry two fish. What Barmecide justice 
 have I done to the noble feasts wherein the set 
 of wooden platters figured, each with its own 
 peculiar delicacy, as a ham or turkey, glued 
 tight on to it, and garnished with something 
 green, which I recollect as moss ! Could all 
 the Temperance Societies of these later days, 
 united, give me such a tea-drinking as I have 
 had through the means of yonder little set of 
 blue crockery, which really would hold liquid 
 (it ran out of the small wooden cask, I recollect, 
 and tasted of- matches), and which made tea, 
 nectar ? And if the two legs of the ineffectual 
 little sugar-tongs did tumble over one another, 
 and want purpose, like Punch's hands, what 
 does it matter ? And if I did once shriek out, 
 as a poisoned child, and strike the fashionable 
 company with consternation, by reason of having 
 drunk a little tea-spoon, inadvertently dissolved 
 in too hot tea, I was never the worse for it, 
 except by a powder ! 
 
 Upon the next branches of the tree, lower 
 down, hard by the green roller and miniature 
 gardening tools, how thick tlie books begin to 
 hang ! Thin books in themselves, at first, but 
 
246 
 
 A CHRISTMAS TREE. 
 
 many of them, and with deliciously smooth covers 
 of bright red or green. What fat black letters 
 to begin with ! " A was an archer, and shot at 
 a frog." Of course he was. He was an apple- 
 pie also, and there he is ! He was a good many 
 things in his time, was A, and so were most of 
 his friends, except X, who had so little versatility, 
 that I never knew him to get beyond Xerxes or 
 Xantippe — like Y, who was always confined to 
 a Yacht or a Yew-tree ; and Z, condemned for 
 ever to be a Zebra or a Zany. But now, the 
 very tree itself changes, and becomes a bean- 
 stalk — the marvellous bean-stalk up which Jack 
 climbed to the Giant's house ! And now, those 
 dreadfully interesting, double - headed giants, 
 with their clubs over their shoulders, begin to 
 stride along the boughs in a perfect throng, 
 dragging knights and ladies home for dinner by 
 the hair of their heads. And Jack — how noble, 
 with his sword of sharpness, and his shoes of 
 swiftness ! Again those old meditations come 
 upon me as I gaze up at him ; and I debate 
 within myself whether there was more than one 
 Jack (which I am loath to believe possible), or 
 only one genuine original admirable Jack, who 
 achieved all the recorded exploits. 
 
 Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour 
 of the cloak in which — the tree making a forest of 
 itself for her to trip through with her basket — Little 
 Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas 
 Eve to give me information of the cruelty and 
 treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate her 
 grandmother, without making any impression on 
 his appetite, and then ate her, after making that 
 ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first 
 love. I felt that if I could have married Little 
 Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect 
 bliss. But, it was not to be ; and there was 
 nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in the 
 Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the pro- 
 cession on the table, as a monster who was to 
 be degraded. Oh the wonderful Noah's Ark ! 
 It was not found seaworthy when put in a wash- 
 ing-tub, and the animals were crammed in at 
 the roof, and needed to have their legs well 
 shaken down before they could be got in, even 
 there — and then, ten to one but they began to 
 tumble out at the door, which was but imper- 
 fectly fastened with a wire latch — but what was 
 i/iat against it ? Consider the noble fly, a size 
 or two smaller than the elephant : the lady-bird, 
 tlie butterfly — all triumphs of art ! Consider the 
 goose, whose feet were so small, and whose 
 balance was so indifi"erent, that she usually 
 tumbled forward, and knocked down all the 
 animal creation. Consider Noah and his family, 
 like idiotic tobacco-stoppers ; and how the Leo- 
 
 pard stuck to warm little fingers ; and how the 
 tails of the larger animals used gradually to 
 resolve themselves into frayed bits of string I 
 
 Hush ! Again a forest, and somebody up in 
 a tree — not Robin Hood, not Valentine, not 
 the Yellow Dwarf (I have passed him, and all 
 Mother Bunch's wonders, without mention), but 
 an Eastern King with a glittering scimitar and 
 turban. By Allah ! two Eastern Kings, for I 
 see another looking over his shoulder ! Down 
 upon the grass, at the tree's foot, lies the full • 
 length of a coal-black Giant, stretched asleep, 
 with his head in a lady's lap ; and near them is 
 a glass box, fastened with four locks of shining 
 steel, in which he keeps the lady prisoner when 
 he is awake. I see the four keys at his girdle 
 now. The lady makes signs to the two kmgs 
 in the tree, who softly descend. It is the setting- 
 in of the bright Arabian Nights. 
 
 Oh, now all common things become uncom- 
 mon and enchanted to me ! All lamps are 
 wonderful ; all rings are talismans. Common 
 flower-pots are full of treasure, with a little earth 
 scattered on the top ; trees are for Ali Baba to 
 hide in ; beefsteaks are to throw down into the 
 Valley of Diamonds, that the precious stones 
 may stick to them, and be carried by the eagles 
 to their nests, whence the traders, with loud 
 cries, will scare them. Tarts are made, accord- 
 ing to the recipe of the Vizier's son of Bussorah, 
 who turned pastrycook after he was set down in 
 his drawers at the gate of Damascus ; cobblers 
 are all Mustaphas, and m the habit of sewing up 
 people cut into four pieces, to whom they are 
 taken blindfold. 
 
 Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance 
 to a cave which only waits for the magician, and 
 the little fire, and the necromancy, that will 
 make the earth shake. All the dates imported 
 come from the same tree as that unlucky date, 
 with whose shell the merchant knocked out the 
 eye of the genie's invisible son. All olives are 
 of the stock of that fresh fruit, concerning which 
 the Commander of the Faithful overheard the 
 boy conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent 
 olive merchant ; all apples are akin to the apple 
 purchased (with two others) from the Sultan's 
 gardener for three sequins, and which the tall 
 black slave stole from the child. All dogs are 
 associated with the dog, really a transformed 
 man, who jumped upon the baker's counter, and 
 put his paw on the piece of bad money. All 
 rice recalls the rice which the awful lady, who 
 was a ghoule, could only peck by grains, because 
 of her nightly feasts in the burial-place. My 
 very rocking-horse, — there he is, with his nostrils 
 turned completely inside out, indicative of 
 
CHRISTMAS-TREE THEATRICALS. 
 
 247 
 
 Blood ! — should have a peg in his neck, by 
 virtue thereof to ily away with me, as the wooden 
 horse did with the Prince of Persia, in the sight 
 of all his father's Court. 
 
 Yes, on every object that I recognise arubng 
 those upper branches of my Christmas Tree, I 
 see this fairy light ! AVhen I wake in bed, at 
 daybreak, on the cold dark winter mornings, the 
 white snow dimly beheld, outside, through the 
 frost on the window pane, I hear Dinarzade. 
 " Sister, sister, if you are yet awake, I pray you 
 finish the history of the Young King of the 
 Black Islands." Scheherazade replies, " If my 
 lord the Sultan will suffer me to live another 
 day, sister, I will not only finish that, but tell 
 you a more wonderful story yet." Then, the 
 gracious Sultan goes out, giving no orders for 
 the execution, and we all tliree breathe again. 
 
 At this height of my tree I begin to see, cower- 
 ing among the leaves — it may be born of tur- 
 key, or of pudding, or mince-pie, or of these 
 many fancies, jumbled with Robinson Crusoe on 
 his desert island, Philip Quarll among the mon- 
 keys, Sandford and Merton with Mr. Barlow, 
 jNIother Bunch, and the Mask — or it may be the 
 result of indigestion, assisted by imagination and 
 over-doctoring — a prodigious nightmare. It is 
 so exceedingly indistinct, that I don't know why 
 it's frightful — but I know it is. I can only make 
 out that it is an immense array of shapeless 
 things, which appear to be planted on a vast 
 exaggeration of the lazy-tongs that used to bear 
 the toy-soldiers, and to be slowly coming close 
 to my eyes, and receding to an immeasurable 
 distance. When it comes closest, it is worst. 
 In connection with it I descry remembrances of 
 winter nights incredibly long; of being sent 
 early to bed, as a punishment for some small 
 offence, and waking in two hours, with a sensa- 
 tion of having been asleep two nights ; of the 
 laden hopelessness of morning ever dawning ; 
 •and the oppression of a weight of remorse. 
 
 And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights 
 rise smoothly out of the ground, before a vast 
 green curtain. Now, a bell rings — a magic bell, 
 which still sounds in my ears unlike all other 
 bells — and music plays, amidst a buzz of voices, 
 and a fragrant smell of orange-peel and oil. 
 Anon, the magic bell commands the music to 
 cease, and the great green curtain rolls itself up 
 majestically, and The Play begins ! The de- 
 voted dog of Montargis avenges the death of his 
 master, foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy ; 
 and a humorous Peasant with a red nose and a 
 very little hat, whom I take from this hour forth 
 to my bosom as a friend (I think he was a 
 Waiter or an Hostler at a village Inn, but many 
 
 years have passed since he and I have met), re- 
 marks that the sassigassity of that dog is indeed 
 surprising ; and evermore this jocular conceit 
 will live in my remembrance fresh and unfolding, 
 overtopping all possible jokes, unto the end of 
 time. Or now, I learn with bitter tears how 
 poor Jane Sliore, dressed all in white, and with 
 her brown hair hanging down, went starving 
 through the streets ; or how George Barnwell 
 killed the worthiest uncle that ever man had, 
 and was afterwards so sorry for it that he ought 
 to have been let off. Comes swift to comfort 
 me, the Pantomime — stupendous Phenomenon ! 
 —when Clowns are shot from loaded mortars 
 into the great chandelier, bright constellation 
 that it is ; when Harlequins, covered all over 
 with scales of pure gold, twist and sparkle, like 
 amazing fish ; when Pantaloon (whom I deem it 
 no irreverence to compare in my own mind to 
 my grandfather) puts red-hot pokers in his 
 pocket, and cries, " Here's somebody coming ! " 
 or taxes the Clown with petty larceny by saying, 
 " Now I sawed you do it ! " when Everything 
 is capable, with the greatest ease, of being 
 changed into Anything ; and " Nothing is, but 
 thinking makes it so." Now, too, I perceive my 
 first experience of the dreary sensation — often to 
 return in after life — of being unable, next day, 
 to get back to the dull, settled world ; of want- 
 ing to live for ever in the bright atmosphere I 
 have quitted ; of doting on the little Fairy, with 
 the wand like a celestial Barber's Pole, and 
 pining for a Fairy immortality along with her. Ah, 
 she comes back, in many shapes, as my eye wan- 
 ders down the branchesof my Christmas Tree, and 
 goes as often, and has never yet stayed by me ! 
 
 Out of this delight springs the toy theatre, — 
 there it is, with its familiar proscenium, and 
 ladies in feathers in the boxes ! — and all 
 its attendant occupation with paste and glue, 
 and gum, and water colours, in the getting-up of 
 the Miller and his Men, and Elizabeth, or the 
 Exile of Siberia. In spite of a few besetting 
 accidents and failures (particularly an unreason- 
 able disposition, in the respectable Kelmar and 
 some others, to become faint in the legs, and 
 double up, at exciting points of the drama), a 
 teeming world of fancies so suggestive and all- 
 embracing, that, far below it on my Christmas 
 Tree. I see dark, dirty, real Theatres, in the day- 
 time, adorned with these associations as with 
 the freshest garlands of the rarest flowers, and 
 charming me yet. 
 
 But hark ! The Waits are playing, and they 
 break my childish sleep ! What images do I 
 associate with the Christmas music as I see them 
 set forth on the Christmas Tree ? Known before 
 
248 
 
 A CHRISTMAS ; REE. 
 
 all the others, keeping far apart from all the 
 others, they gather round my little bed. An 
 angel, speaking to a group of she])herds in a 
 field ; some travellers, with eyes uplifted, follow- 
 ing a star ; a baby in a manger ; a chilil in a 
 spacious temple, talking with grave men; a 
 solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face, 
 raising a dead girl by the hand ; again, near a 
 city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on 
 his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking 
 through the opened roof of a chamber where he 
 sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed 
 with ropes ; the same, in a tempest, walking on 
 the water to a ship ; again, on a seashore, teach- 
 ing a great multitude ; again, with a child upon 
 his knee, and other children round ; again, re- 
 storing sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, 
 hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength 
 to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, 
 dying upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, 
 a thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning 
 to shake, and only one voice heard : " Forgive 
 them, for they know not Avhat they do ! " 
 
 Still, on the lower and maturer branches of 
 the Tree, Christmas associations cluster thick. 
 School-books shut up ; Ovid and Virgil silenced ; 
 the Rule of Three, with its cool impertinent 
 inquiries long disposed of; Terence and Plau- 
 tus acted no more, in an arena of huddled desks 
 and forms, all chipped, and notched, and inked ; 
 cricket bats, stumps, and balls left higher up, 
 with the smell of trodden grass and the softened 
 noise of shouts in the evening air ; the tree is 
 still fresh, still gay. If I no more come home 
 at Chri-stmas-time, there will be girls and boys 
 (thank Heaven !) while the AVorld lasts ; and 
 they do ! Yonder they dance and play upon 
 the branches of my Tree, God bless them, 
 merrily, and my heart dances and plays too ! 
 
 And I do come home at Christmas. We all 
 do, or we all should. We all come home, or 
 ought to come home, for a short holiday — the 
 longer, the better — from the great boarding- 
 school, where we are for ever working at our 
 arithmetical slates, to take and give a rest. As 
 to going a visiting, where can we not go, if we 
 will ; where have we not been, when we would ; 
 starting our fancy from our Christmas Tree? 
 
 Away into the winter prospect. There are 
 many such upon the tree ! On, by low-lying 
 misty grounds, through fens and fogs, up long 
 hills, winding dark as caverns between thick 
 plantations, almost shutting out the sparkling 
 stars ; so, out on broad heights, until we sto[) at 
 last, with sudden silence, at an avenue. The 
 gate bell has a deep, half-awful sound in the 
 frosty air; the gate swings open on its hinges; 
 
 and, as we drive up to a great house, the glancing 
 lights grow larger in the windows, and the 
 opposing rows of trees seem to fall solemnly 
 back on either side, to give us place. At inter- 
 vals, all day, a frightened hare has shot across 
 this whitened turf; or the distant clatter of a 
 herd of deer trampling the hard frost has, for 
 the minute, crushed the silence too. Their 
 watchful eyes beneath the fern may be shining 
 now, if we could see them, like the icy dewdrops 
 on the leaves ; but they are still, and all is still. 
 And so, the lights growing larger, and the trees 
 falling back before us, and closing up again be- 
 hind us, as if to forbid retreat, we come to the 
 house. 
 
 There is probably a smell of roasted chest- 
 nuts and other good comfortable things all the 
 time, for we are telling Winter Stories — Ghost 
 Stories, or more shame for us — round the Christ- 
 mas fire ; and we have never stirred, except to 
 draw a little nearer to it. But, no matter for 
 that. We come to the house, and it is an old 
 house, full of great chimneys where wood is 
 burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and 
 grim portraits (some of them with grim legends, 
 too) lower distrustfully from the oaken panels 
 of the walls. We are a middle-aged nobleman, 
 and we make a generous supper with our host 
 and hostess and their guests — it being Christmas- 
 time, and the old house full of company — and 
 then we go to bed. Our room is a very old 
 room. It is hung with tapestry. We don't like 
 the portrait of a cavalier in green, over the 
 fire-place. There are great black beams in the 
 ceiling, and there is a great black bedstead, 
 supported at the foot by two great black figures, 
 who seem to have come off a couple of tombs 
 in the old baronial church in the park, for our 
 particular accommodation. But, we are not a 
 superstitious nobleman, and we don't mind. 
 Well ! we dismiss our servant, lock the door, 
 and sit before the fire in our dressing-gown, 
 musing about a great many things. At length 
 we go to bed. Well ! we can't sleep. We toss 
 and tumble, and can't sleep. The embers on 
 the hearth burn fitfully, and make the room look 
 ghostly. We can't help peeping out, over the 
 counterpane, at the two black figures and the 
 cavalier — that wicked-looking cavalier in green. 
 In the flickering light they seem to advance 
 and retire : which, though we are not by any 
 means a superstitious nobleman, is not agree- 
 able. Well ! we get nervous — more and more 
 nervous. We say, " This is very foolish, but we 
 can't stand this ; we'll pretend to be ill, and 
 knock up somebody." Well ! we are just going 
 to do it, when the locked door opens, and there 
 
CHRISTMAS-TREE GHOSTS. 
 
 249 
 
 comes in a young woman, deadly pale, and with 
 long fair hair, who glides to the fire, and sits 
 down in the chair we have left there, wringing 
 her hands. Then, we notice that her clothes 
 are wet. Our tongue cleaves to the roof of our 
 mouUi, and we can't speak ; but, we observe her 
 
 accurately. Her clothes are wet ; her long hair 
 is dabbled with moist mud ; she is dressed in 
 the fashion of two hundred years ago ; and she 
 has at her girtlle a bunch of rusty keys. Well ! 
 there she sits, and we can't even faint, we are in 
 such a state about it. Presently she gets up. 
 
 'HE TOOK HER IN HIS ARMS, AND TOLD HER IT WAS FANCY." 
 
 and tries all the locks in the room with the rusty 
 keys, which won't fit one of them ; then, she 
 fixes her eyes on the portrait of the cavalier in 
 green, and says, in a low, terrible voice, " The 
 stags know it ! " After that, she wrings her 
 hands again, passes the bedside, and goes out 
 
 at the door. We hurry on our dressing-gown, 
 seize our pistols (we always travel with pistols), 
 and are following, when we find the door locked. 
 We turn the key, look out into the dark gallery; 
 no one there. ^Ve wander away, and try to find 
 our servant. Can't be done. We jjace the gallery 
 
250 
 
 A CHRISTMAS TREE. 
 
 till daybreak ; then return to our deserted room, 
 fall asleep, and are awakened by our servant 
 (nothing ever haunts hi in) and the shining sun. 
 Well ! we make a wretched breakfast, and all the 
 company say we look queer. After breakfast, 
 we go over the house with our host, and then 
 we take him to the portrait of the cavalier in 
 green, and then it all comes out. He was false 
 to a young housekeeper once attached to that 
 family, and famous for her beauty, who drowned 
 herself in a pond, and whose body was dis- 
 covered, after a long time, because the stags 
 refused to drink of the water. Since which, it 
 has been whispered that she traverses the laouse 
 at midnight (but goes especially to that room, 
 where the cavalier in green was wont to sleep), 
 trying the old locks with the rusty keys. Well ! 
 we tell our host of what we have seen, and a 
 shade comes over his features, and he begs it 
 may be hushed up ; and so it is. But, it's all 
 true ; and we said so, before we died (we are 
 dead now), to many responsible people. 
 
 There is no end to the old houses, with re- 
 sounding galleries, and dismal state bedchambers, 
 and haunted wings shut up for many years, 
 through which we may ramble, with an agree- 
 able creeping up our back, and encounter any 
 number of ghosts, but (it is worthy of remark 
 perhaps) reducible to a very few general types 
 and classes ; for, ghosts have little originality, 
 and " walk" in a beaten track. Thus, it comes 
 to pass that a certain room in a certain old hall, 
 where a certain bad lord, baronet, knight, or 
 gentleman shot himself, has certain planks in 
 the floor from which the blood 76'/// 7iot be taken 
 out. You may scrape and scrape, as the pre- 
 sent owner has done, or plane and plane, as his 
 father did, or scrub and scrub, as his grandfather 
 did, or burn and burn with strong acids, as his 
 great-grandfather did, but there the blood will 
 still be — no redder and no paler — no more and 
 no less — always just the same. Thus, in such 
 another house there is a haunted door that never 
 will keep open; or another door that never will 
 keep shut; or a haunted sound of a spinning- 
 wheel, or a hammer, or a footstep, or a cry, or 
 a sigh, or a horse's tramp, or the rattling of a 
 chain. Or else there is a turret clock, which, at 
 the midnight hour, strikes thirteen when the 
 head of the family is going to die ; or a shadowy, 
 immovable black carriage which at such a time 
 is always seen by somebody, waiting near the 
 great gates in the stable-yard. Or thus, it came 
 to pass how Lady Mary went to pay a visit at a 
 large wild house in the Scottish Highlands, and, 
 being fatigued with her long journey, retired to 
 bed early, and innocently said, next morning, at 
 
 the breakfast-table, " How odd to have so late 
 a party last night in this remote place, and not 
 to tell me of it before I went to bed ! " Then, 
 every one asked Lady Mary what she meant. 
 Then, Lady Mary replied, " Why, all night long, 
 the carriages were driving round and round the 
 terrace, underneath my window ! " Then, the 
 owner of the house turned pale, and so did his 
 Lady, and Charles Macdoodle of Macdoodle 
 signed to Lady Mary to say no more, and every 
 one was silent. After breakfast, Charles Mac- 
 doodle told Lady Mary that it was a tradition 
 in the family that those rumbling carriages on 
 the terrace betokened death. And so it proved, 
 for, two months afterwards, the Lady of the 
 mansion died. And Lady Mary, who was a 
 IMaid of Honour at Court, often told this story 
 to the old Queen Charlotte ; by this token, that 
 the old King always said, " Eh, eh ? What, 
 what ? Ghosts, ghosts ? No such thing, no 
 such thing ! " And never left off saying so until 
 he went to bed. 
 
 Or, a friend of somebody's, whom most of us 
 know, w^hen he was a young man at college, had 
 a particular friend, with whom he made the 
 compact that, if it were possible for the Spirit to 
 return to this earth after its separation from the 
 body, he of the twain who first died should re- 
 appear to the other. In course of time this 
 compact was forgotten by our friend ; the two 
 young men having progressed in life, and taken 
 diverging paths that were wide asunder. But 
 one night, many years afterwards, our friend 
 being in the North of England, and staying for 
 the night in an inn on the Yorkshire INIoors, hap- 
 pened to look out of bed ; and there, in the 
 moonlight, leaning on a bureau near the window, 
 steadfastly regarding him, saw his old college 
 friend ! The appearance being solemnly ad- 
 dressed, replied, in a kind of whisper, but very 
 audibly, " Do not come near me. I am dead. 
 I am here to redeem my promise. I come from 
 another world, but may not disclose its secrets !" 
 Then, the whole form becoming paler, melted, 
 as it were, into the moonlight, and faded away. 
 
 Or, there vv-as the daughter of the first occupier 
 of the picturesque Elizabethan house, so fiimous 
 in our neighbourhood. You have heard about 
 her } No ! Why, She went out one summer 
 evening at twilight, when she was a beautiful 
 girl, just seventeen years of age, to gather flowers 
 in the garden ; and presently came running, ter- 
 rified, into the hall to her father, saying, " Oh, 
 dear father, I have met myself ! " He took her 
 in his arms, and told her it was fancy, but she 
 said, " Oh no ! I met myself in the broad walk, 
 and I was pale and gathering withered flowers, 
 
THE ORPHAN BOY. 
 
 251 
 
 .and I turned my head, and held them up ! " 
 
 And, that night, she died ; and a picture of her 
 story was begun, though never finished, and they 
 say it is somewhere in the house to this day, 
 with its face to the wall. 
 
 Or, the uncle of my brother's wife was riding 
 home on horseback, one mellow evening at sun- 
 set, when, in a green lane close to his own 
 house, he saw a man standing before him, in the 
 very centre of the narrow way. "Why does 
 that man in the cloak stand there ? " he thought. 
 " Does he want me to ride over him ? " But 
 the figure never moved. He felt a strange sen- 
 sation at seeing it so still, but slackened his trot 
 and rode forward. When he was so close to it 
 as almost to toucli it with his stirrup, his horse 
 shied, and the figure glided up the bank in a 
 curious, unearthly manner — backward, and with- 
 out seeming to use its feet — and was gone. The 
 uncle of my brother's wife exclaiming, " Good 
 Heaven ! It's my cousin Harry, from Bombay !" 
 put spurs to his horse, which was suddenly in a 
 profuse sweat, and, wondering at such strange 
 behaviour, dashed round to the front of his 
 house. There, he saw the same figure, just 
 passing in at the long French window of the 
 drawing-room opening on the ground. He 
 threw his bridle to a servant, and hastened in 
 after it. His sister was sitting there alone. 
 ''Alice, Where's my cousin Harry?" "Your 
 cousin Harry, John ? " " Yes. From Bombay. 
 I met him in the lane just now, and saw him 
 enter here this instant." Not a creature had 
 been seen by any one ; and in that hour and 
 minute, as it afterwards appeared, this cousin 
 died in India. 
 
 Or, it was a certain sensible old maiden lady, 
 who died at ninety-nine, and retained her facul- 
 ties to the last, who really did see the Orphan 
 Boy ; a story which has often been incorrectly 
 told, but of which the real truth is this — because 
 it is, in fact, a story belonging to our family — 
 and she was a connection of our family. When 
 she was about forty years of age, and still an un- 
 commonly fine woman (her lover died young, 
 which was the reason w^hy she never married, 
 though she had many offers), she went to stay 
 at a place in Kent, which her brother, an Indian 
 merchant, had newly bought. There was a 
 story that this place had once been held in 
 trust by the guardian of a young boy; who 
 was himself the next heir, and who killed 
 the young boy by harsh and cruel treatment. 
 She knew nothing of that. Ic has been said 
 that there was a Cage in her bedroom, in 
 which the guardian used to put the boy. There 
 was no such thing. There was only a closet. 
 
 She went to bed, made no alarm whatever in 
 
 the night, and in the morning said composedly 
 to her maitl, when she came in, " Who is the 
 pretty forlorn-looking child who has been peep- 
 ing out of that closet all night?" The maid 
 replied by giving a loud scream, and instantly 
 decamping. She was surprised ; but, she was a 
 woman of remarkable strength of mind, and she 
 dressed herself and went down-stairs, and clo- 
 seted herself with her brother. " Now, Walter," 
 she said, " I have been disturbed all night by a 
 pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who has been con- 
 stantly peeping out of that closet in my room, 
 which I can't open. This is some trick." " I 
 am afraid not, Charlotte," said he, " for it is the 
 legend of the house. It is the Orphan Boy. 
 What did he do?" "He opened the door 
 softly," said she, " and peeped out. Sometimes, 
 he came a step or two into the room. Then, I 
 called to him, to encourage him, and he shrunk, 
 and shuddered, and crept in again, and shut the 
 door," "The closet has no communication, 
 Charlotte," said her brother, "with any other 
 part of the house, and it's nailed up." This 
 was undeniably true, and it took two carpenters 
 a whole forenoon to get it open for examination. 
 Then, she was satisfied that she had seen the 
 Orphan Boy. But the wild and terrible part of 
 the story is, that he was also seen by three of 
 her brother's sons in succession, who all died 
 young. On the occasion of each child being 
 taken ill, he came home in a heat, twelve hours 
 before, and said. Oh, mamma, he had been play- 
 ing under a particular oak-tree, in a certain 
 meadow, with a strange boy — a prett)-, forlorn- 
 icoking boy, who was very timid, and made 
 signs ! From fatal experience, the parents came 
 to know that this was the Orphan Boy, and that 
 the course of that child whom he chose for his 
 little playmate was surely run. 
 
 Legion is the name of the German castles 
 where we sit up alone to wait for the Spectre-— 
 where we are shown into a room, made compara- 
 tively cheerful for our reception — where we glance 
 round at the shadow^s thrown on the blank walls 
 by the crackling fire — where we feel very lonely 
 when the village innkeeper and his pretty 
 daughter have retired, after laying down a fresh 
 store of wood upon the hearth, and setting forth 
 on the small table such supper cheer as a cold 
 roast capon, bread, grapes, and a flask of old 
 Rhine wine — where the reverberating doors 
 close on their retreat, one after another, like so 
 many peals of sullen thunder — and where, about 
 the small hours of the night, we come into the 
 knowledge of divers supernatural mysteries. 
 Legion is the name of the haunted German 
 
252 
 
 A CHRISTMAS TREE. 
 
 students in whose society we draw yet nearer to 
 the fire, while the school-boy in the corner opens 
 his eyes wide and round, and flies off the foot- 
 stool he has chosen for his seat when the door 
 accidentally blows open. Vast is the crop of 
 such fruit shining on our Christmas Tree ; in 
 blossom, almost at the very top ; ripening all 
 down the boughs ! 
 
 Among the later toys and fancies hanging 
 there — as idle often, and less pure — be the 
 images once associated with the sweet old Waits, 
 the softened music in the night, ever unalterable ! 
 Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas- 
 time, still let the benignant figure of my child- 
 hood stand unchanged ! In every cheerful 
 image and suggestion that the season brings, 
 may the bright star that rested above the poor 
 roof be the star of all the Christian world ! A 
 moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the 
 lower boughs are dark to me as yet, and let me 
 
 look once more ! I know there are blank 
 spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have 
 loved have shone and smiled ; from which they 
 are departed. But, far above, I see the raiser 
 of the dead girl and the Widow's Son ; and 
 God is good ! If Age be hiding for me in the 
 unseen portion of thy downward growth, oh 
 may I, with a grey head, turn a child's heart to 
 that figure yet, and a child's trustfulness and 
 confidence ! 
 
 Now, the tree is decorated with bright merri- 
 ment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness. 
 And they are welcome. Innocent and welcome 
 be they ever held beneath the branches of the 
 Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow ! 
 But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear a whis- 
 per going through the leaves, " This, in com- 
 memoration of the law of love and kindness, 
 mercy and compassion. This, in remembrance 
 of Me ! " 
 
 THE END OF REPRINTED PIECES. 
 
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 I. 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY, FROM HIS 
 CLOCK-SIDE IN THE CHIMNEY- 
 CORNER. 
 
 T^HE reader must not expect to know where 
 -■- I live. At present, it is true, my abode 
 may be a question of little or no import to any- 
 body, but if I should carry my readers with 
 
 me, as I hope to do, and there should spring 
 up between them and me feelings of homely 
 affection and regard attaching something of 
 interest to matters ever so slightly connected 
 with my fortunes or my speculations, even my 
 place of residence might one day have a kind 
 of charm for them. Bearing this possible contin- 
 gency in mind, I wish them to understand, in the 
 outset, that they must never expect to know it. 
 
254 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 I am not a churlish old man. Friendless I 
 can never be, for all mankind are my kindred, 
 and I am on ill terms with no one member of 
 my great fomily. But for many years I have led 
 a lonely, solitary life ; — what wound I sought to 
 heal, what sorrow to forget, originally, matters 
 not now ; it is sufficient that retirement has be- 
 come a habit with me, and that I am unwilling 
 to break the spell which for so long a time has 
 shed its quiet influence upon my home and 
 heart. 
 
 I live in a venerable suburb of London, in an 
 old house, which in bygone days was a famous 
 resort for merry roysterers and peerless ladies, 
 long since departed. It is a silent, shady place, 
 with a paved courtyard so full of echoes, that 
 sometimes I am tempted to believe that faint 
 responses to the noises of old times linger there 
 yet, and that these ghosts of sound haunt my 
 footsteps as I pace it up and down. I am the 
 more confirmed in this belief, because, of late 
 years, the echoes that attend my walks have 
 been less loud and marked than they were wont 
 to be ; and it is pleasanter to imagine in them 
 the rustling of silk brocade, and the light step of 
 some lovely girl, than to recognise in their 
 altered note the failing tread of an old man. 
 
 Those who like to read of brilliant rooms and 
 gorgeous furniture would derive but little plea- 
 sure from a minute description of my simple 
 dwelling. It is dear to me for the same reason 
 that they would hold it in slight regard. Its 
 wonn-eaten doors, and low ceilings crossed by 
 clumsy beams; its walls of wainscot, dark stairs, 
 and gaping closets ; its small chambers, com- 
 municating with each other by winding passages 
 or narrow steps ; its many nooks, scarce larger 
 than its comer-cupboards ; its very dust and 
 dulness, are all dear to me. The moth and 
 spider are my constant tenants, for in my house 
 the one basks in his long sleep, and the other 
 plies his busy loom secure and undisturbed. I 
 have a pleasure in thinking on a summer's day 
 how many butterflies have sprung for the first 
 time into light and sunshine from some dark 
 corner of these old walls. 
 
 When I first came to live here, which was 
 many years ago, the neighbours were curious to 
 know who I was, and whence I came, and why 
 I lived so much alone. As time went on, and 
 they still remained unsatisfied on these points, I 
 became the centre of a popular ferment, extend- 
 ing for half a mile round, and in one direction 
 for a full mile. Various rumours were circulated 
 to my prejudice. I was a spy, an infidel, a con- 
 jurer, a kidnapper of children, a refugee, a priest, 
 a monster. Mothers caught up their infants and 
 
 ran into their houses as I passed ; men eyed me 
 spitefully, and muttered threats and curses. I 
 was the object of suspicion and distrust — ay, of 
 downright hatred too. 
 
 But when in course of time they found I did 
 no harm, but, on the contrary, inclined towards 
 them despite their unjust usage, they began to 
 relent. I found my footsteps no longer dogged, 
 as they had often been before, and observed that 
 the women and children no longer retreated, but 
 would stand and gaze at me as I passed their 
 doors. I took this for a good omen, and waited 
 patiently for better times. By degrees I began 
 to make friends among these humble folks ; and 
 though they were yet shy of speaking, would 
 give them " good day," and so pass on. In a 
 little time, those whom I had thus accosted 
 would make a point of coming to their doors 
 and windows at the usual hour, and nod or 
 curtsey to me ; children, too, came timidly within 
 my reach, and ran away quite scared when I 
 patted their heads and bade them be good at 
 school. These little people soon grew more 
 familiar. From exchanging mere words of course 
 with my older neighbours, I gradually became 
 their friend and adviser, the depositary of their 
 cares and sorrows, and sometimes, it may be, the 
 reliever, in my small way, of their distresses. 
 And now I never walk abroad but pleasant 
 recognitions and smiling faces wait on Master 
 Humphrey. 
 
 It was a Avhim of mine, perhaps as a whet to 
 the curiosity of my neighbours, and a kind of 
 retaliation upon them for their suspicions, — it 
 was, I say, a whim of mine, when I first took up 
 my abode in this place, to acknowledge no other 
 name than Humphrey. With my detractors, I 
 was ugly Humphrey. When I began to convert 
 them into friends, I was Mr. Humphrey, and 
 Old Mr. Humphrey. At length I settled down 
 into plain Master Humphrey, which was under- 
 stood to be the title most pleasant to my ear ; 
 and so completely a matter of course has it be- 
 come, that sometimes when I am taking my 
 morning walk in my little courtyard, I overhear 
 my barber — who has a profound respect for me, 
 and would not, I am sure, abridge my honours 
 for the world — holding forth on the other side 
 of the wall, touching the state of " Master 
 Humphrey's" health, and communicating to 
 some friend the substance of the conversation 
 that he and Master Humphrey have had to- 
 gether in the course of the shaving which he has 
 just concluded. 
 
 That I may not make acquaintance with my 
 readers under false pretences, or give them cause 
 to complain hereafter that I have withheld any 
 
MASTER HUMPHREY'S INFANCY. 
 
 255 
 
 matter which it was essential for them to have 
 learnt at first, I wish them to know — and I 
 smile sorrowfully to think that the time has 
 been when the confession would have given me 
 pain — that I am a misshapen, deformed old man. 
 
 I have never been made a misanthrope by 
 this cause. I have never been stung by any 
 insult, nor wounded by any jest upon my crooked 
 figure. As a child I was melancholy and timid, 
 but that was because the gentle consideration 
 paid to my misfortune sunk deep into my spirit 
 and made me sad, even in those early days. I 
 was but a very young creature when my poor 
 mother died, and yet I remember that often 
 when I hung around her neck, and oftener still 
 when I played about the room before her, slie 
 would catch me to her bosom, and bursting into 
 tears, soothe me with every term of fondness 
 and affection. God knows I was a happy child 
 at those times, — happy to nestle in her breast, 
 — happy to weep when she did, — happy in not 
 knowing Avhy. 
 
 These occasions are so strongly impressed' 
 upon my memory, that they seem to have occu- 
 pied whole years. I had numbered very, very 
 few when they ceased for ever, but before then 
 their meaning had been revealed to me. 
 
 I do not know whether all children are im- 
 bued with a quick perception of childish grace 
 and beauty, and a strong love for it, but I was. 
 I had no thought that I remember, either that I 
 possessed it myself or that I lacked it, but I 
 admired it with an intensity that I cannot de- 
 scribe. A little knot of playmates — they must 
 have been beautiful, for I see them now — were 
 clustered one day round my mother's knee in 
 eager admiration of some picture representing a 
 group of infant angels, which she held in her 
 hand. Whose the picture was, whether it was 
 familiar to me or otherwise, or how all the 
 children came to be there, I forget ; I have some 
 dim thought it was my birthday, but the begin- 
 ning of my recollection is that we were all to- 
 gether in a garden, and it was summer weather, 
 ' — I am sure of that, for one of the little girls 
 had roses in her sash. There were many lovely 
 angels in the picture, and I remember the fancy 
 coming upon me to point out which of them 
 represented each child there, and that when I 
 had gone through my companions, I stopped 
 and hesitated, wondering which was most like 
 me. I remember the children looking at each 
 other, and my turning red and hot, and their 
 crowding round to kiss me, saying that they 
 loved me all the same ; and then, and when the 
 old sorrow came into my dear mother's mild and 
 lender look, the truth broke upon me for the 
 
 first time, and I knew, while watching my awk- 
 ward and ungainly sports, how keenly she had 
 felt for her poor crii)i)lcd boy. 
 
 I used frequently to dream of it afterwards, 
 and now my heart aches for that child as if I 
 had never been he, when I think how often he 
 awoke from some foiry change to his own old 
 form, and sobbed himself to sleep again. 
 
 Well, well, — all these sorrows are past. My 
 glancing at them may not be without its use, for 
 it may help in some measure to explain why I 
 have all my life been attached to the inanimate 
 objects that people my chamber, and how I have 
 come to look upon them rather in the liglit of 
 old and constant friends, than as mere chairs 
 and tables which a little money could replace 
 at will. 
 
 Chief and first among all these is my Clock, — 
 my old, cheerful, companionable Clock. How 
 can I ever convey to others an idea of the com- 
 fort and consolation that this old clock has been 
 for years to me ? 
 
 It is associated with my earliest recollections. 
 It stood upon the staircase at home (I call it 
 home still mechanically), nigh sixty years ago. 
 I like it for that ; but it is not on that account, 
 nor because it is a quaint old thing in a huge 
 oaken case curiously and richly carved, that I 
 prize it as I do. I incline to it as if it were 
 alive, and could understand and give me back 
 the love I bear it. 
 
 And what other thing that has not life could 
 cheer me as it does ? what other thing that has 
 not life (I will not say how few things that have) 
 could have proved the same patient, true, un- 
 tiring friend ? How often have I sat in the long 
 winter evenings feeling such society in its cricket- 
 voice, that raising my eyes from my book and 
 looking gratefully towards it, the face reddened 
 by the glow of the shining fire has seemed to 
 relax from its staid expression and to regard me 
 kindly ! how often in the summer twilight, when 
 my thoughts have wandered back to a melan- 
 choly past, have its regular whisperings recalled 
 them to the calm and peaceful present ! how 
 often in the dead tranquillity of night has its bell 
 broken the oppressive silence, and seemed to 
 give me assurance that the old clock was still a 
 faithful watcher at my chamber door ! My easy- 
 chair, my desk, my ancient furniture, my very 
 books, I can scarcely bring myself to love even 
 these last like my old clock ! 
 
 It stands in a snug corner, midway between 
 the fireside and a low arched door leading to my 
 bedroom. Its fame is diffused so extensively 
 throughout the neighbourhood, that I have often 
 the satisfaction of hearing the publican or the 
 
256 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 baker, and sometimes even the parish clerk, 
 petitioning my housekeeper (of whom I shall 
 have much to say by-and-by) to inform him the 
 exact time by Master Humphrey's Clock. My 
 barber, to whom I have referred, would sooner 
 believe it than the sun. Nor are these its only 
 distinctions. It has acquired, I am happy to 
 say, another, inseparably connecting it not only 
 with my enjoyments and reflections, but with 
 those of other men ; as I shall now relate. 
 
 I lived alone here for a long time without any 
 friend or acquaintance. In the course of my 
 wanderings by night and day, at all hours and 
 seasons, in city streets and quiet country parts, 
 I came to be familiar with certain faces, and to 
 take it to heart as quite a heavy disappointment 
 if they failed to present themselves each at its 
 accustomed spot. But these were the only 
 friends I knew, and beyond them I had none. 
 
 It happened, however, when I had gone on 
 thus for a long time, that I formed an acquaint- 
 ance with a deaf gentleman, which ripened into 
 intimacy and close companionship. To this 
 hour I am ignorant of his name. It is his hu- 
 mour to conceal it, or he has a reason and pur- 
 pose for so doing. In either case, I feel that he 
 has a right to require a return of the trust he has 
 reposed ; and as he has never sought to discover 
 my secret, I have never sought to penetrate his. 
 There may have been something in this tacit 
 confidence in each other flattering and pleasant 
 to us both, and it may have imparted in the 
 beginning an additional zest, perhaps, to our 
 friendship. Be this as it may, we have grown to 
 be like brothers, and still I only know him as 
 the deaf gentleman. 
 
 I have said that retirement has become a 
 habit with me. When I add that the deaf gen- 
 tleman and I have two friends, I communicate 
 nothing which is inconsistent with that declara- 
 tion. I spend many hours of every day in soli- 
 tude and study, have no friends or change of 
 friends but these, only see them at stated pe- 
 riods, and am supposed to be of a retired spirit 
 by the very nature and object of our association. 
 
 We are men of secluded habits, with some- 
 thing of a cloud upon our early fortunes, whose 
 enthusiasm, nevertheless, has not cooled with 
 age, whose spirit of romance is not yet quenched, 
 who are content to ramble through the world in 
 a pleasant dream, rather than ever waken again 
 to its harsh realities. \Ve are alchemists who 
 would extract the essence of perpetual youth 
 from dust and ashes, tempt coy Truth in many 
 light and airy forms from the bottom of her well, 
 and discover one crumb of comfort or one gram 
 of good in the commonest and least-regarded 
 
 matter that passes through our crucible. Spirits 
 of past times, creatures of imagination, and 
 people of to-day, are alike the objects of our 
 seeking, and, unHke the objects of search with 
 most piiilosophers, we can insure their coming 
 at our command. 
 
 The deaf gentleman and I first began to be- 
 guile our days with these fancies, and our nights 
 in communicating them to each other. We are 
 now four. But in my room there are six old 
 chairs, and we have decided tliat the two empty 
 seats sliall always be placed at our table when 
 we meet, to remind us that we may yet increase 
 our company by that number, if we should find 
 two men to our mind. When one among us 
 dies, his chair will always be set in its usual 
 place, but never occupied again ; and I have 
 caused my will to be so drawn out, that when 
 we are all dead, the house shall be shut up, and 
 the vacant chairs still left in their accustomed 
 places. It is pleasant to think that even then 
 our shades may, perhaps, assemble together as 
 of yore we did, and join in ghostly converse. 
 
 One night in every week, as the clock strikes 
 ten, w^e meet. At the second stroke of two, I 
 am alone. 
 
 And now shall I tell how that my old servant, 
 besides giving us note of time, and ticking 
 cheerful encouragement of our proceedings, 
 lends its name to our society, which for its 
 punctuality and my love, is christened " Master 
 Humphrey's Clock?" Now shall I tell how 
 that in the bottom of the old dark closet, where 
 the steady pendulum throbs and beats with 
 healthy action, though the pulse of him who 
 made it stood still long ago, and never moved 
 again, there are piles of dusty papers constantly 
 placed there by our hands, that we may link our 
 enjoyments with my old friend, and draw means 
 to beguile time from the heart of time itself? 
 Shall I, or can I, tell with what a secret pride I 
 open this repository when we meet at night, and 
 still find new store of pleasure in my dear old 
 Clock ? 
 
 Friend and companion of my solitude ! mine 
 is not a selfish love ; I would not keep your 
 merits to myself, but disperse something of 
 pleasant association with your image through 
 the whole wide w^orld ; I would have men 
 couple with your name cheerful and healthy 
 thoughts ; I would have them believe that you 
 keep true and honest time ; and how would it 
 gladden me to know that they recognised some 
 hearty English work in Master Humphrey's 
 Clock ! 
 
A SUBSTANTIAL CITIZEN. 
 
 257 
 
 THE CLOCK CASE. 
 
 It is my intention constantly to address my 
 readers from the chimney-corner, and I woidd 
 fain hope that such accounts as I shall give 
 them of our histories and proceedings, our 
 (]uiet speculations or more busy adventures, 
 will never be unwelcome. Lest, however, I 
 should grow prolix in the outset by lingering 
 too long upon our little association, confounding 
 the enthusiasm with which I regard this chief 
 happiness of my life with that minor degree of 
 interest which those to whom I address myself 
 may be supposed to feel for it, I have deemed 
 it expedient to break off as they have seen. 
 
 But, still clinging to my old friend, and natu- 
 rally desirous that all its merits should be known, 
 I am tempted to open (somewhat irregularly and 
 against our laws, I must admit) the clock-case. 
 The first roll of paper on which I lay my hand 
 is in the writing of the deaf gentleman. I shall 
 have to speak of him in my next paper ; and 
 how can I better approach that welcome task 
 than by prefacing it with a production of his 
 own pen, consigned to the safe keeping of my 
 honest Clock by his own hand ? 
 
 The manuscript runs thus : 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO THE GIANT CHRONICLES. 
 
 Once upon a time, that is to say, in this our 
 time, — th^ exact year, month, and day are of no 
 matter, — there dwelt in the city of London a 
 substantial citizen, who united in his single per- 
 son the dignities of wholesale fruiterer, alder- 
 man, common-councilman, and member of the 
 worshipful Company of Patten-makers ; who 
 had superadded to these extraordinary distinc- 
 tions the important post and title of Sheriff, and 
 who at length, and to crown all, stood next in 
 rotation for the high and honourable office of 
 Lord Mayor. 
 
 He was a very substantial citizen indeed. 
 His face was like the full moon in a fog, with 
 two little holes punched out for his eyes, a very 
 ripe pear stuck on for his nose, and a wide gash 
 to serve for a mouth. The girth of his waist- 
 coat was hung up and lettered in his tailor's 
 shop as an extraordinary curiosity. He breathed 
 like a heavy snorer, and his voice in speaking 
 came thickly forth, as if it were oppressed and 
 stifled by feather beds. He trod the ground 
 like an elephant, and ate and drank like — hke 
 nothing but an alderman, as he was. 
 
 This worthy citizen had risen to his great 
 eminence from small beginnings. He had once 
 been a very lean, weazen little boy, never 
 Edwin Drocd, Etc., 17. 
 
 dreaming of carrying such a weight of flesh 
 upon his bones or of money in his pockets, and 
 glad enough to take his dinner at a baker's 
 door, and his tea at a pump. But he had long 
 ago forgotten all this, as it was proper that a 
 wholesale fruiterer, alderman, common-council- 
 man, member of the worshipful Company of 
 Patten-makers, past Sheriff, and, above all, a 
 Lord Mayor that was to be, should ; and he 
 never forgot it more completely in all his life 
 than on the eighth of November in the year of 
 his election to the great golden civic chair, 
 which was the day before his grand dinner at 
 Guildhall. 
 
 It happened that as he sat that evening all 
 alone in his counting-house, looking over the 
 bill of fare for next day, and checking off the 
 fat capons in fifties, and the turtle-soup by the 
 hundred quarts, for his private amusement, — it 
 happened that as he sat alone occupied in these 
 pleasant calculations, a strange man came in 
 and asked him how he did, adding, " If I am 
 half as much changed as you, sir, you have no 
 recollection of me, I am sure." 
 
 The strange man was not over and above 
 well dressed, and was very far from being fat or 
 rich-looking in any sense of the word, yet he 
 spoke with a kind of modest confidence, and 
 assumed an easy, gentlemanly sort of an air, to 
 which nobody but a rich man can lawfully pre- 
 sume. Besides this, he interrupted the good 
 citizen just as he had reckoned three hundred 
 and seventy-two fat capons, and was carrying 
 them over to the next column ; and as if that 
 were not aggravation enough, the learned re- 
 corder for the city of London had only ten 
 minutes previously gone out at that very same 
 door, and had turned round and said, "Good 
 night, my lord." Yes, he had said " my lord ; " 
 — he, a man of birth and education, of the 
 Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, 
 Barrister-at-Law, — he who had an uncle in the 
 House of Commons, and an aunt almost but 
 not quite in the House of Lords (for she had 
 married a feeble peer, and made him vote as 
 she liked), — he, this man, this learned recorder, 
 had said " my lord." " I'll not wait till to- 
 morrow to give you your title, my Lord Mayor," 
 says he, with a bow and a smile ; " you are 
 Lord Mayor de facto, if not de Jure. Good 
 night, my lord ! " 
 
 The Lord Mayor elect thought of this, and 
 turning to the stranger, and sternly bidding him 
 " go out of his private counting-house," brought 
 forward the three hundred and seventy-two fat 
 capons, and went on with his account. 
 
 " Do you remember," said the other, stepping 
 
258 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 forward, — " do you remember little Joe Toddy- 
 high ? " 
 
 The port wine fled for a moment from tlie 
 fruiterer's nose as he muttered, " Joe Toddy- 
 high ! What about Joe Toddyhigh ? " 
 
 " / am Joe Toddyhigh," cried the visitor. 
 ** Look at me, look hard at me, — harder, harder. 
 You know me now? You know little Joe 
 again ? What a happiness to us both, to meet 
 the very night before your grandeur ! Oh ! 
 give me your hand, Jack, — both hands, — both, 
 for the sake of old times." 
 
 " You pinch me, sir. You're a hurting of 
 me," said the Lord Mayor elect pettishly. 
 " Don't, — suppose anybody should come, — Mr. 
 Toddyhigh, sir." 
 
 •' Mr. Toddyhigh ! " repeated the other rue- 
 fully. 
 
 "Oh! don't bother," said the Lord Mayor 
 elect, scratching his head." " Dear me ! Why, 
 I thought you was dead. What a fellow you 
 are ! " 
 
 Indeed, it was a pretty state of things, and 
 worthy the tone of vexation and disappointment 
 in which the Lord Mayor spoke. Joe Toddy- 
 high liad been a poor boy with him at Hull, 
 and had oftentimes divided his last penny and 
 parted his last crust to relieve his wants ; for 
 though Joe was a destitute child in those times, 
 he was as faithful and affectionate in his friend- 
 ship as ever man of might could be. They 
 parted one day to seek their fortunes in differ- 
 ent directions. Joe went to sea, and the now 
 wealthy citizen begged his way to London. 
 They separated with many tears, like foolish 
 fellows as they were, and agreed to remain fast 
 friends, and if they lived, soon to communicate 
 again. 
 
 When he was an errand-boy, and even in the 
 early days of his apprenticeship, the citizen had 
 many a time trudged to the Post Office to ask 
 if there were any letter from poor little Joe, and 
 liad gone home again with tears in his eyes, 
 when lie found no news of his onl}'- friend. The 
 world is a wide place, and it was a long time 
 before the letter came ; when it did, the writer 
 was forgotten. It turned from white to yellow 
 from lying in the Post Office with nobody to 
 claim it, and in course of time was torn up with 
 five hundred others, and sold for waste paper. 
 And now at last, and when it might least have 
 been expected, here was this Joe Toddyhigh 
 turning up and claiming acquaintance with a 
 great public character, who on the morrow 
 would be cracking jokes with the Prime 
 Minister of England, and who had only, at any 
 time during the next twelve months, to say 
 
 the word, and he could shut up Temple Bar. 
 and make it no thoroughfare for the king him- 
 self! 
 
 " I am sure I don't know what to say, Mr. 
 Toddyhigh," said the Lord Mayor elect ; " I 
 really don't. It's very inconvenient. I'd sooner 
 have given twenty pound, — it's very incon- 
 venient, really." 
 
 A thought had come into his mind, that per- 
 haps his old friend might say something passion- 
 ate which would give him an excuse for being 
 angry himself. No such thing. Joe looked at 
 him steadily, but very mildly, and did not open 
 his lips. 
 
 " Of course I shall pay you what I owe you," 
 said the Lord Mayor elect, fidgeting in his 
 chair, " You lent me — I think it was a shilling 
 or some small coin — when we parted company, 
 and that of course I shall pay, with good inter- 
 est. I can pay my way with any man, and 
 always have done. If you look into the Man- 
 sion House the day after to-morrow, — some 
 time after dusk, — and ask for my private clerk, 
 you'll find he has a draft for you. I haven't got 
 time to say anything more just now, unless," — he 
 hesitated, for, coupled with a strong desire to 
 glitter for once in all his glory in the eyes of his 
 former companion, was a distrust of his appear- 
 ance, which might be more shabby than he 
 could tell by that feeble light, — " unless you'd 
 like to come to the dinner to-morrow. I don't 
 mind your having this ticket, if you like to take 
 it. A great many people would give their ears 
 for it, I can tell you." 
 
 His old friend took the card without speaking 
 a word, and instantly departed. His sunburnt 
 face and grey hair were present to the citizen's 
 mind for a moment ; but by the time he reached 
 three hundred and eighty-one fat capons, he had 
 quite forgotten him. 
 
 Joe Toddyhigh had never been in the capital 
 of Europe before, and he wandered up and 
 down the streets that night, amazed at the 
 number of churches and other public buildings, 
 the splendour of the shops, the riches that were 
 heaped up on every side, the glare of light in 
 which they were displayed, and the concourse 
 of people who hurried to and fro, indifferent, 
 apparently, to all the wonders that surrounded 
 them. But in all the long streets and broad 
 squares, there were none but strangers : it was 
 quite a relief to turn down a by-way and hear 
 his own footsteps on the pavement. He went 
 home to his inn, thought that London was a 
 dreary, desolate place, and felt disposed to 
 doubt the existence of one true-hearted man in 
 the whole worshipful Company of Patten-makers. 
 
AFTER THE LORD MAYOR'S DINNER. 
 
 259 
 
 Finally, he went to bed, and dreamed that he 
 and the Lord Mayor elect were boys again. 
 
 He went next day to the dinner ; and when, 
 in a burst of light and music, and in the midst 
 of splendid decorations and surrounded by bril- 
 liant com]-iany, his former frienil appeared at the 
 head of the Hall, and was hailed with shouts 
 and cheering, he cheered and shouted with the 
 best, and for the moment could have cried. 
 The next moment he cursed his weakness in 
 behalf of a man so changed and selfish, and 
 quite hated a jolly-looking old gentleman oppo- 
 site for declaring himself in the pride of his 
 heart a Patten-maker. 
 
 As the banquet proceeded, he took more and 
 more to heart the rich citizen's unkindness ; and 
 that, not from any envy, but because he felt that 
 a man of his state and fortune could all the 
 better afford to recognise an old friend, even if 
 he were poor and obscure. The more he 
 thought of this, the more lonely and sad he felt. 
 When the company dispersed and adjourned to 
 the ball-room, he paced the hall and passages 
 alone, ruminating in a very melancholy con- 
 dition upon the disappointment he had experi- 
 enced. 
 
 It chanced, while he was lounging about in 
 this moody state, that he stumbled upon a flight 
 of stairs, dark, steep, and narrow, which he 
 ascended without any thought about the matter, 
 and so came into a little music-gallery, empty 
 and deserted. From this elevated post, which 
 commanded the whole hall, he amused himself 
 in looking down upon the attendants who were 
 clearing away the fragments of the feast very 
 lazily, and drinking out of all the bottles and 
 glasses with most commendable perseverance. 
 
 His attention gradually relaxed, and he fell 
 fast asleep. 
 
 When he awoke, he thought there must be 
 something the matter with his eyes ; but, rub- 
 bing them a little, he soon found that the 
 moonlight was really streaming through the east 
 window, that the lamps were all extinguished, 
 and that he was alone. He listened, but no 
 distant murmur in the echoing passages, not 
 even the shutting of a door, broke the deep 
 silence ; he groped his way down the stairs, and 
 found that the door at the bottom was locked 
 on the other side. He began now to compre- 
 hend that he must have slept a long time, that 
 he had been overlooked, and was shut up there 
 for the night. 
 
 His first sensation, perhaps, was not alto- 
 gether a comfortable one, for it was a dark, 
 chilly, earthy-smelling place, and something too 
 large for a man so situated, to feel at home in. 
 
 However, when the m(;mentary consternation of 
 Jiis surprise was over, he made light of the acci- 
 dent, and resolved to feel his way up the stairs 
 again, and make himself as comfortable as he 
 could in the gallery until morning. As he 
 turned to execute this puri)Ose, he heard the 
 clocks strike three. 
 
 Any such invasion of a dead stillness as the 
 striking of distant clocks, causes it to appear 
 the more intense and insupportable when the 
 sound has ceased. He listened with strained 
 attention in the hope that some clock, lagging 
 behind its fellows, had yet to strike, — looking 
 all the time into the profound darkness before 
 him, until it seemed to weave itself into a black 
 tissue, patterned with a hundred reflections of 
 his own eyes. But the bells had all pealed out 
 their warning for that once, and the gust of wind 
 that moaned through the place seemed cold and 
 heavy with their iron breath. 
 
 The time and circumstances were favourable 
 to reflection. He tried to keep his thoughts to 
 the current, unpleasant though it was, in which 
 they had moved all day, and to think with what 
 a romantic feeling he had looked forward to 
 shaking his old friend by the hand before he 
 died, and what a wide and cruel difference 
 there was between the meeting they had had, 
 and that which he had so often and so long 
 anticipated. Still, he was disordered by waking 
 to such sudden loneliness, and could not pre- 
 vent his mind from running upon odd tales of 
 people of undoubted courage, who, being shut 
 up by night in vaults or churches, or other 
 dismal places, had scaled great heights to get 
 out, and fled from silence as they had never 
 done from danger. This brought to his mind 
 the moonlight through the window, and be- 
 thinking himself of it, he groped his way back 
 up the crooked stairs,— but very stealthily, as 
 though he were fearful of being overheard. 
 
 He was very much astonished, when he ap- 
 proached the gallery again, to see a light in the 
 building : still more so, on advancing hastily and 
 looking round, to observe no visible source from 
 which it could proceed. But how much greater 
 yet was his astonishment at the spectacle which 
 this light revealed ! 
 
 The statues of the two giants, Gog and 
 Magog, each above fourteen feet in height, those 
 which succeeded to still older and more bar- 
 barous figures after the Great Fire of London, 
 and which stand in the Guildhall to this day, 
 were endowed with life and motion. These 
 guardian genii of the City had quitted theii: 
 pedestals, and reclined in easy attitudes in the 
 great stained-glass window. Between them was 
 
26o 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 an ancient cask, which seemed to be full of 
 wine; for the younger Giant, clapping his huge 
 hand upon it, and throwing up his mighty leg, 
 burst into an exulting laugh, which reverberated 
 through the hall like thunder. 
 
 Joe Toddyhigh instinctively stooped down, 
 and, more dead than alive, felt his hair stand on 
 end, his knees knock together, and a cold damp 
 break out upon his forehead. But even at that 
 minute curiosity prevailed over every other feel- 
 ing, and somewhat reassured by the good- 
 humour of the Giants and their apparent un- 
 consciousness of his presence, he crouched in a 
 corner of the gallery, in as small a space as he 
 could, and peeping between the rails, observed 
 them closely. 
 
 It was then that the elder Giant, who had a 
 flowing grey beard, raised his thoughtful eyes to 
 his companion's face, and in a grave and solemn 
 voice addressed him thus : 
 
 FIRST NIGHT OF THE GIANT CHRONICLES. 
 
 Turning towards his companion, the elder 
 Giant uttered these words in a grave, majestic 
 tone : — 
 
 " Magog, does boisterous mirth beseem the 
 Giant Warder of this ancient city? Is this 
 becoming demeanour for a watchful spirit 
 over whose bodiless head so many years have 
 rolled, so many changes swept like empty air 
 — in whose impalpable nostrils the scent of 
 blood and crime, pestilence, cruelty, and 
 horror, has been familiar as breath to mortals 
 — in whose sight Time has gaUiered in the 
 harvest of centuries, and garnered so many 
 crops of human pride, affections, hopes, and 
 sorrows ? Bethink you of our compact. The 
 night wanes; feasting, revelry, and music have 
 encroached upon our usual hours of solitude, 
 and morning will be here apace. Ere we are 
 stricken mute again, bethink you of our com- 
 pact." 
 
 Pronouncing these latter words with more of 
 impatience than quite accorded with his apparent 
 age and gravity, the Giant raised a long pole 
 (which he still bears in his hand), and tapped 
 his brother Giant rather smartly on the head ; 
 indeed, the blow was so smartly administered, 
 that the latter quickly withdrew his lips from the 
 cask, to which they had been applied, and, catch- 
 ing up his shield and halbert, assumed an attitude 
 of defence. His irritation was but momentary, 
 for he laid these weapons aside as hastily as he 
 had assumed them, and said as he did so : — 
 
 " You know, Gog, old friend, that when we 
 animate these shapes which the Londoners of 
 
 old assigned (and not unworthily) to the guar- 
 dian genii of their city, we are susceptible of 
 some of the sensations which belong to human- 
 kind. Thus when I taste wine, I feel blows ; 
 when I relish the one, I disrelish the other. 
 Therefore, Gog, the more especially as your arm 
 is none of the lightest, keep your good staff by 
 your side, else we may chance to differ. Peace 
 be between us ! " 
 
 " Amen ! " said the other, leaning his staff in 
 the window-corner. " Why did you laugh just 
 now ? " 
 
 " To think," replied the Giant Magog, laying 
 his hand upon the cask, " of him who owned 
 this wine, and kept it in a cellar hoarded from 
 the light of day, for thirty years, — ' till it should 
 be fit to drink,' quoth he. He was twoscore 
 and ten years old when he buried it beneath his 
 house, and yet never thought that he might be 
 scarcely ' fit to drink' when the wine became so. 
 I wonder it never occurred to him to make him- 
 self unfit to be eaten. There is very little of him 
 left by this time." 
 
 " The night is waning," said Gog mournfully. 
 
 " I know it," replied his companion, " and I 
 see you are impatient. But look. Through the 
 eastern window— placed opposite to us, that the 
 first beams of the rising sun may every morning 
 gild our giant faces — the moon-rays fall upon the 
 pavement in a stream of light that to my fancy 
 sinks through the cold stone and gushes into 
 the old crypt below. The night is scarcely 
 past its noon, and our great charge is sleeping 
 heavily." 
 
 They ceased to speak, and looked upward at 
 the moon. The sight of their large, black, roll- 
 ing eyes filled Joe Toddyhigh with such horror 
 that he could scarcely draw his breath. Still 
 they took no note of him, and appeared to be- 
 lieve themselves quite alone. 
 
 " Our compact," said Magog after a pause, 
 " is, if I understand it, that, instead of watching 
 here in silence through the dreary nights, we 
 entertain each other with stories of our past ex- 
 perience ; with tales of the past, the present, and 
 the future ; with legends of London and her 
 sturdy citizens from the old simple times. That 
 every night at midnight, when St. Paul's bell tolls 
 out one, and we may move and speak, we thus 
 discourse, nor leave such themes till the first 
 grey gleam of day shall strike us dumb. Is that 
 our bargain, brother ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the Giant Gog, " that is the 
 league between us who guard this city, by day 
 in spirit, and by night in body also ; and never 
 on ancient holidays have its conduits run wine 
 more merrily than we will pour forth our legend- 
 
THE BOJVYER'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 :Gi 
 
 ary lore. We are old chroniclers from this time 
 hence. The crumbled walls encircle us once 
 more, the postern-gates are closed, the draw- 
 bridge is up, and pent in its narrow den beneath, 
 the water foams and struggles with the sunken 
 starlings. Jerkins and (juarter-staves are in the 
 streets again, the nightly watch is set, the rebel, 
 sad and lonely in his Tower dungeon, tries to 
 sleep, and weeps for home and children. Aloft 
 upon the gates and walls are noble heads glaring 
 fiercely down upon the dreamin,' city, and vex- 
 ing the hungry dogs that scent them in the air, 
 and tear the ground beneath with dismal bowl- 
 ings. The axe, the block, the rack, in their 
 dark chambers give signs of recent use. The 
 Thames, floating past long lines of clieerful 
 windows whence come a burst of music and a 
 stream of light, bears sullenly to the Palace wall 
 the last red stain brought on the tide from 
 Traitor's Gate. But your pardon, brother. The 
 night wears, and I am talking idly." 
 
 The other Giant appeared to be entirely of 
 this opinion, for during the foregoing rhapsody 
 of his fellow-sentinel he had been scratching his 
 head with an air of comical uneasiness, or rather 
 with an air that would have been very comical 
 if he had been a dwarf or an ordinary-sized man. 
 He winked too, and though it could not be 
 doubted for a moment that he winked to himself, 
 still he certainly cocked his enormous eye to- 
 wards the gallery where the listener was con- 
 cealed. Nor was this all, for he gaped ; and 
 when he gaped, Joe was horribly reminded of 
 the popular prejudice on the subject of giants, 
 and of their fabled power of smelling out Eng- 
 lishmen, however closely concealed. 
 
 His alarm was such that he nearly swooned, 
 and it was some little time before his j^ower of 
 sight or hearing was restored. When he recovered 
 he found that the elder Giant was pressing the 
 younger to commence the Chronicles, and that 
 the latter was endeavouring to excuse himself, 
 on the ground that the night was far spent, and 
 it would be better to wait until the next. Well 
 assured by this that he was certainly about to 
 begin directly, the listener collected his faculties 
 by a great effort, and distinctly heard Magog 
 express himself to the following effect : — 
 
 In the sixteenth century, and in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth of glorious memory (albeit her 
 golden days are sadly rusted with blood), there 
 lived in the city of London a bold young 'pren- 
 tice who loved his master's daughter. There 
 were no doubt within the walls a great many 
 'prentices in this condition, but I speak of only 
 one, and his name was Hugh Graham. 
 
 This Hugh was apprenticed to an honest 
 Bowyer who dwelt in the ward of Cheype, and 
 was rumoured to possess great wealth. Rumour 
 was (juite as infallible in those days as at the 
 present time, but it happened then as now to be 
 sometimes right by accident. It stumbled upon 
 the truth when it gave the old Bowyer a mint of 
 money. His trade had been a profitable one in 
 the time of King Henry the Eighth, who encou- 
 raged English archery to the utmost, and he had 
 been prudent and discreet. Thus it came to pass 
 that Mistress Alice, his only daughter, was the 
 richest heiress in all his wealthy ward. Young 
 Hugh had often maintained with staff and cudgel 
 that she was the handsomest. To do him jus- 
 tice, 1 believe she was. 
 
 If he could have gamed the heart of pretty 
 Mistress Alice by knocking this conviction into 
 stubborn people's heads, Hugh would have had 
 no cause to fear. But though the Bowyer's 
 daughter smiled in secret to hear of his doughty 
 deeds for her sake, and though her little waiting- 
 woman reported all her smiles (and many more) 
 to Hugh, and though he was at a vast expense 
 in kisses and small coin to recompense her fide- 
 lity, he made no progress in his love. He durst 
 not whisper it to Mistress Alice save on sure 
 encouragement, and that she never gave him, A 
 glance of her dark eye as she sat at the door on 
 a summer's evening after prayer-time, while he 
 and the neighbouring 'prentices exercised them- 
 selves in the street with blunted sword and 
 buckler, would fire Hugh's blood so that none 
 could stand before him ; but then she glanced at 
 others quite as kindly as on him, and where was 
 the use of cracking crowns if Mistress Alice 
 smiled upon the cracked as well as on the 
 cracker ? 
 
 Still Hugh went on, and loved her more and 
 more. He thought of her all day, and dreamed 
 of her all night long. He treasured up her every 
 word and gesture, and had a palpitation of the 
 heart whenever he heard her footstep on the 
 stairs or her voice in an adjoining room. To 
 him, the old Bowyer's house was haunted by an 
 angel; there was enchantment in the air and 
 space in which she moved. It would have been 
 no miracle to Hugh if flowers had sprung from 
 the rush-strewn floors beneath the tread of lovely 
 Mistress Alice. 
 
 Never did 'prentice long to distinguish him- 
 self in the eyes of his lady-love so ardently as 
 Hugh. Sometimes he pictured to himself the 
 house taking fire by night, and he, when all drew 
 back in fear, rushing through flame and smoke, 
 and bearing her from the ruins in his arms. At 
 other times he thought of a rising of fierce rebels, 
 
262 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK, 
 
 an attack upon the City, a strong assault upon 
 the Bowyer's house in particular, and he falling 
 on the thrcshohl pierced with numberless wounds 
 in defence of Mistress Alice. If he could only 
 enact some prodigy of valour, do some wonderful 
 deed, and let her know that she had inspired it, 
 he thought he could die contented. 
 
 Sometimes the Bowyer and his daughter would 
 go out to supper with a worthy citizen at the 
 fashionable hour of six o'clock, and on such 
 occasions Hugh, wearing his blue 'prentice cloak 
 as gallantly as 'prentice might, would attend 
 with a lantern and his trusty club to escort them 
 home. These were the brightest moments of 
 his life. To hold the light while Mistress Alice 
 picked her ste[)s, to touch her hand as he helped 
 her over broken ways, to have her leaning on 
 his arm, — it sometimes even came to that, — this 
 was happiness indeed ! 
 
 When the nights were fair, Hugh followed in 
 the rear, his eyes riveted on the graceful figure 
 of the Bowyer's daughter as she and the old 
 man moved on before him. So they threaded 
 the narrow winding streets of the City, now 
 passing beneath the overhanging gables of old 
 wooden houses whence creaking signs projected 
 into the street, and now emerging from some 
 dark and frowning gateway into the clear moon- 
 light. At such times, or when the shouts of 
 straggling brawlers met her ear, the Bowyer's 
 daughter would look timidly back at Hugh, be- 
 seeching him to draw nearer ; and then how he 
 grasped his club and longed to do battle with 
 a dozen rufflers, for the love of Mistress Alice ! 
 
 The old Bowyer was in the habit of lending 
 money on interest to the gallants of the Court, 
 and thus it happened that many a richly-dressed 
 gentleman dismounted at his door. More 
 waving plumes and gallant steeds, indeed, were 
 &<i.ii.\\ at the Bowyer's house, and more embroi- 
 dered silks and velvets si:)arkled in his dark 
 shop and darker private closet, than at any 
 merchant's in the City. In those times no less 
 than in the present it would seem that the 
 richest-looking cavaliers often wanted money 
 the most. 
 
 Of these glittering clients there was one who 
 always came alone. He was always nobly 
 mounted, and, having no attendant, gave his 
 horse in charge to Hugh while he and the 
 Bowyer were closeted within. Once as he 
 sprung into the saddle Mistress Alice was 
 seated at an upper window, and before she 
 could withdraw he had doffed his jewelled cap 
 and kissed his hand. Hugh watched him cara- 
 coling down the street, and burnt with indigna- 
 tion. But how much deeper was the glow that 
 
 reddened in his cheeks when, raising his eyes to 
 the casement, he saw that Alice watched the 
 stranger too ! 
 
 He came again and often, each time arrayed 
 more gaily than before, and still the little case- 
 ment showed him Mistress Alice. At length, 
 one heavy day, she iled from home. It had 
 cost her a hard struggle, for all her old father's 
 gifts were strewn about her chamber as if she 
 had parted from them one by one, and knew 
 that the time must come when these tokens of 
 his love would wring her heart, — yet she was 
 gone. 
 
 She left a letter commending her poor father 
 to the care of Hugh, and wishing he might be 
 hai)pier than ever he could have been with her, 
 for he deserved the love of a better and a purer 
 heart than she had to bestow. The old man's 
 forgiveness (she said) she had no power to ask, 
 but she prayed God to bless him, — and so ended 
 with a blot upon the paper where her tears had 
 fallen. 
 
 At first the old man's wrath was kindled, and 
 he carried his wrong to the Queen's throne 
 itself; but there was no redress he learnt at 
 Court, for his daughter had been conveyed 
 abroad. This afterwards appeared to be the 
 truth, as there came from France, after an in- 
 terval of several years, a letter in her hand. It 
 was written in trembling characters, and almost 
 illegible. Little could be made out save that 
 she often thought of home and her old dear 
 pleasant room, — and that she had dreamt her 
 lather was dead and had not blessed her, — and 
 that her heart was breaking. 
 
 The poor old Bowyer lingered on, never suffer- 
 ing Hugh to quit his sight, for he knew now that 
 he had loved his daughter, and that was the 
 only link that bound him to earth. It broke at 
 length, and he died, bequeathing his old 'pren- 
 tice his trade and all his wealth, and solemnly 
 charging him with his last breath to revenge his 
 child if ever he who had worked her misery 
 crossed his path in life again. 
 
 From the time of Alice's flight, the tilting- 
 ground, the fields, the fencing-school, the sum- 
 nier-evening sports, knew Hugh no more. His 
 spirit was dead within him. He rose to great 
 eminence and repute among the citizens, but 
 was seldom seen to smile, and never mingled in 
 their revelries or rejoicings. Brave, humane, 
 and generous, he was beloved by all. He was 
 pitied too by those who knew his story, and 
 these were so many that when he walked along 
 the streets alone at dusk, even the rude common 
 people doifed their caps and mingled a rough 
 air of sympathy with their respect. 
 
A ROYAL FROCLAMATION, 
 
 26.-; 
 
 One night in May — it was her birthnight, and 
 twenty years since she had left her home — HuL'h 
 Graham sat in tlie room she had hallowed in his 
 boyish days. He was now a grey-haired man, 
 though still in the prime of life. Old thoughts 
 had borne him company for many hours, and 
 the chamber had gradually grown quite dark, 
 when he was roused by a low knocking at the 
 outer door. 
 
 He hastened down, and opening it, saw by 
 the light of a lamp which he had seized upon 
 the way, a female figure crouching in the portal. 
 It hurried swiftly past him antl glided up the 
 stairs. He looked for pursuers. There were 
 none in sight. No, not one. 
 
 He was inclined to think it a vision of his 
 own brain, when suddenly a vague suspicion of 
 the truth flashed upon his mind. He barred 
 the door and hastened wildly back. Yes, there 
 she was, — there, in the chamber he had quitted, 
 — there in her old innocent happy home, so 
 changed that none but he could trace one 
 gleam of what she had been, — there upon her 
 knees, — with her hands clasped in agony and 
 shame before her burning face. 
 
 " My God, my God ! " she cried, " now 
 strike me dead ! Though I have brought death 
 and shame and sorrow on this roof, oh, let me 
 die at home in mercy ! " 
 
 There was no tear upon her face then, but 
 she trembled and glanced round the chamber. 
 Everything was in its old place. Her bed 
 looked as if she had risen from it but that 
 morning. The sight of these familiar objects, 
 marking the dear remembrance in which she 
 had been held, and the blight she had brought 
 upon herself, was more than the woman's better 
 nature that had carried her there could bear. 
 She wept and fell upon the ground. 
 
 A rumour was spread about, in a few days' 
 time, that the Bowyer's cruel daughter had 
 come home, and that Master Graham had 
 given her lodging in his house. It was ru- 
 moured too that he had resigned her fortune, in 
 order that she might bestow it in acts of charity, 
 and that he had vowetl to guard her in her soli- 
 tude, but that they were never to see each other 
 more. These rumours greatly incensed all vir- 
 tuous wives and daughters in the ward, especially 
 when they appeared to receive some corrobora- 
 tion from the circumstance of Master Graham 
 taking up his abode in another tenement hard 
 by. The estimation in which he ^vas held, 
 however, forbade any questioning on the sub- 
 ject ; and as the Bowyer's house was close shut 
 up, and nobody came forth when public shows 
 and festivities were in progress, or to flaunt in 
 
 the public walks, or to buy new fashions at the 
 mercers' booths, all the well-conducted females 
 agreed among themselves that there could be 
 no woman there. 
 
 These reports had scarcely died away when 
 the wonder of every good citizen, male ami 
 female, was utterly absorbed and swallowed up 
 by a Royal Proclamation, in which her Majesty, 
 strongly censuring the practice of wearing long 
 Spanish rapiers of preposterous length (as being 
 a bullying and swaggering custom, tending to 
 bloodshed and public disorder), commanded 
 that on a particular day therein named, certain 
 grave citizens should repair to the City gates, 
 and there, in public, break all rapiers worn or 
 carried by persons claiming admission, that 
 exceeded, though it were only by a quarter of 
 an inch, three standard feet in length. 
 
 Royal Proclamations usually take their course, 
 let the public wonder never so much. On the 
 appointed day two citizens of high repute took 
 up their stations at each of the gates, attended 
 by a party of the City guard, the main body to 
 enforce the Queen's will, and take custody of 
 all such rebels (if any) as might have the 
 temerity to dispute it : and a few to bear the 
 standard measures and instruments for reducing 
 all unlawful sword-blades to the prescribed 
 dimensions. In pursuance of these arrange- 
 ments, Master Graham and another were 
 posted at Lud Gate, on the hill before St. 
 Paul's. 
 
 A pretty numerous company were gathered 
 together at this spot, for, besides the ofticers in 
 attendance to enforce the proclamation, there 
 was a motley crowd of lookers-on of various 
 degrees, who raised from time to time such 
 shouts and cries as the circumstances called 
 forth. A spruce young courtier was the first 
 who approached : he unsheathed a weapon of 
 burnished steel that shone and glistened in the 
 sun, and handed it with the newest air to the 
 officer, who, finding it exactly three feet long, 
 returned it with a bow. Thereupon the gallant 
 raised his hat, and crying, " God save the 
 Queen ! " passed on amidst the plaudits of the 
 mob. Then came another — a better courtier 
 still — who wore a blade but two feet long, 
 whereat the people laughed, much to the dis- 
 paragement of his honour's dignity. Then 
 came a third, a sturdy old officer of the army, 
 girded with a rapier at least a foot and a half 
 beyond her Majesty's i:)leasure ; at him they 
 raised a great shout, and most of the spectators 
 (but especially those who were armourers or 
 cutlers) laughed very heartily at the breakage 
 which would ensue. But they were disap- 
 
264 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 pointed, for the old campaigner, coolly un- 
 buckling his sword and bidding his servant 
 carry it home again, passed through unarmed, 
 to the great indignation of all the beholders. 
 They relieved themselves in some degree by 
 hooting a tall blustering fellow with a pro- 
 digious weapon, who stopped short on coming 
 in sight of the preparations, and after a little 
 consideration turned back again. But all this 
 time no rapier had been broken, although it 
 was high noon, and all cavaliers of any quality 
 or appearance were taking their way towards 
 St. Paul's Churchyard. 
 
 During these proceedings Master Graham 
 had stood apart, strictly confining himself to the 
 duty imposed upon him, and taking litlle heed 
 of anything beyond. He stepped forward now 
 as a richly-dressed gentleman on foot, followed 
 by a single attendant, was seen advancing up 
 the hill. 
 
 As this person drew nearer, the crowd 
 stopped their clamour, and bent forward with 
 eager looks. Master Graham standing alone in 
 the gateway, and the stranger coming slowly 
 towards him, they seemed, as it were, set face 
 to face. The nobleman (for he looked one) 
 had a haughty and disdainful air, which be- 
 spoke the slight estimation in which he held 
 the citizen. The citizen, on the other hand, 
 preserved the resolute bearing of one who was 
 not to be frowned down or daunted, and who 
 cared very little for any nobility but that of 
 worth and manhood. It was perhaps some 
 consciousness, on the part of each, of these 
 feelings in the other, that infused a more stern 
 expression into their regards as they came 
 closer together. 
 
 " Your rapier, worthy sir ! " 
 
 At the instant that he pronounced these 
 words Graham started, and falling back some 
 paces, laid his hand upon the dagger in his 
 belt. 
 
 " You are the man whose horse I used to 
 hold before the Bowyer's door ! You are that 
 man ! Speak ! " 
 
 " Out, you 'prentice hound 1 " said the other. 
 
 " You are he ! I know you well now ! " 
 cried Graham. " Let no man step between us 
 two, or I shall be his murderer." With that he 
 drew his dagger and rushed in upon him. 
 
 The stranger had drawn his weapon from the 
 scabbard ready for the scrutiny, before a word 
 was spoken. He maile a thrust at his assailant, 
 but the dagger which Graham clutched in his 
 left hand being the dirk in use at that time for 
 parrying such blows, promptly turned the point 
 aside. They closed. The dagger fell rattling 
 
 on the ground, and Graham, wresting his ad 
 versary's sword from his grasp, plunged it 
 through his heart. As he drew it out it 
 snapped in two, leaving a fragment in the dead 
 man's body. 
 
 All this passed so swiftly that the bystanders 
 looked on without an eftort to interfere ; but 
 the man was no sooner down than an uproar 
 broke forth which rent the air. The attendant, 
 rushing through the gate, proclaimed that his 
 master, a nobleman, had been set upon and 
 slain by a citizen ; the word quickly spread from 
 mouth to mouth ; St. Paul's Cathedral, and every 
 book-shop, ordinary, and smoking-house in the 
 churchyard poured out its stream of cavaliers 
 and their followers, who, mingling together in 
 a dense tumultuous body, struggled, sword in 
 hand, towards the spot. 
 
 With equal impetuosity, and stimulating each 
 other by loud cries and shouts, the citizens and 
 common people took up the quarrel on their 
 side, and encircling Master Graham a hundred 
 deep, forced him from the gate. In vain he 
 waved the broken sword above his head, crying 
 that he would die on London's threshold for 
 their sacred homes. They bore him on, and 
 ever keeping him in the midst, so that no man 
 could attack him, fought their way into the City. 
 
 The clash of swords and roar of voices, the 
 dust and heat and pressure, the trampling under 
 foot of men, the distracted looks and shrieks ol 
 women at the windows above as they recognised 
 their relatives or lovers in the crowd, the rapid 
 tolling of alarm-bells, the furious rage and passion 
 of the scene, were fearful. Those who, being 0:1 
 the outskirts of each crowd, could use their 
 weapons with effect, fought desperately, while 
 those behind, maddened with baffled rage, struck 
 at each other over the heads of those before 
 them, and crushed their own fellows. Wherever 
 the broken sword was seen above the people's 
 heads, towards that spot the cavaliers made a 
 new rush. Every one of these charges was 
 marked by sudden gaps in the throng where 
 men were trodden down, but as fast as the}- 
 were made, the tide swept over them, and still 
 the multitude pressed on again, a confused mass 
 of swords, clubs, staves, broken plumes, frag- 
 ments of rich cloaks and doublets, and angry 
 bleeding faces, all mixed up together in inex- 
 tricable disorder. 
 
 The design of the people was to force Master 
 Graham to take refuge in his dwelling, and to 
 defend it until the authorities could interfere, or 
 they could gain time for parley. But either from 
 ignorance or in the confusion of the moment 
 they stopped at his old house, which was closely 
 
A CHARMING FELLOW. 
 
 26: 
 
 shut. Some time was lost in beating the doors 
 open and passing him to the front. About a 
 score of the boldest of the other party threw them- 
 selves into the torrent while this was being done, 
 and reaching the door at the same moment with 
 himself, cut him off Irom his defenders. 
 
 " I never will turn in sucli a righteous cause, 
 so help me Heaven ! " cried Graham, in a voice 
 that at last made itself heard, and confronting 
 them as he spoke. '■ Least of all will I turn 
 upon this threshold, which owes its desolation 
 to such men as ye. I give no quarter, and I 
 will have none ! Strike ! " 
 
 For a moment they stood at bay. At that 
 moment a shot from an unseen hand, apparently 
 fired by some person who had gained access to 
 one of the opposite houses, struck Graham in 
 the brain, and he fell dead. A low wail was 
 heard in the air, — many people in the concourse 
 cried that they had seen a spirit glide across 
 the little casement window of the Bowyer's 
 house 
 
 A dead silence succeeded. After a short time 
 some of the flushed and heated throng lay down 
 their arms and softly carried the body within 
 doors. Others fell off or slunk away in knots 
 of two or three, others whispered together in 
 groups, and before a numerous guard which 
 then rode up could muster in the street, it was 
 nearly empty. 
 
 Those who carried Master Graham to the bed 
 up-stairs were shocked to see a woman lying 
 beneath the window with her hands clasped 
 together. After trying to recover her in vain, 
 they laid her near the citizen, who still retained, 
 tightly grasped in his right hand, the first and 
 last sword that was broken that day at Lud Gate. 
 
 The Giant uttered these concluding words 
 with sudden precipitation ; and on the instant 
 the strange light which had filled the hall faded 
 away. Joe Toddyhigh glanced involuntarily at 
 the eastern window, and saw the first pale gleam 
 of morning. He turned his head again towards 
 the other window in which the Giants had been 
 seated. It was empty. The cask of wine was 
 gone, and he could dimly make out that the two 
 great figures stood mute and motionless upon 
 their pedestals. 
 
 After rubbing his eyes and wondering for full 
 half an hour, during which time he observed 
 morning come creeping on apace, he yielded to 
 the drowsiness which overpowered him, and fell 
 into a refreshing slumber. When he awoke it 
 was broad day ; the building was open, and 
 workmen were busily engaged in removing the 
 vestiges of last nights feast. 
 
 Stealing gently down the little stairs, and 
 assuming the air of some early lounger who had 
 dropped in from the street, he walked up to the 
 foot of each pedestal in turn, and attentively 
 examined the figure it supported. There could 
 be no doubt about the features of either ; he 
 recollected the exact expression they had worn 
 at diftcrent passages of their conversation, and 
 recognised in every line and lineament the 
 Giants of the night. Assured that it was no 
 vision, but that he had heard and seen with his 
 own proper senses, he walked forth, determining 
 at all hazards to conceal himself in the Guildhall 
 again that evening. He further resolved to sleej) 
 all day, so that he might be very wakeful and 
 vigilant, and above all that he might take notice 
 of the figures at the precise moment of their 
 becoming animated and subsiding into their old 
 state, which he greatly reproached himself for 
 not having done already. 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE. 
 TO MASTER HUMPHREY. 
 
 " Sir, — Before you proceed any further in your 
 account of your friends and what you say and 
 do when you meet together, excuse me if I 
 proffer my claim to be elected to one of the 
 vacant chairs in that old room of yours. Don't 
 reject me without full consideration ; for if you 
 do, you'll be sorry for it afterwards — you will, 
 upon my life. 
 
 " I enclose my card, sir, in this letter. I never 
 was ashamed of my name, and I never shall be. 
 I am considered a devilish gentlemanly fellow, 
 and I act up to the character. If you want a 
 reference, ask any of the men at our club. Ask 
 any fellow who goes there to write his letters, 
 what sort of conversation mine is. Ask him if 
 he thinks I have the sort of voice that will suit 
 your dear friend, and make him hear, if he can 
 hear anything at all. Ask the servants what 
 they think of me. There's not a rascal among 
 'em, sir, but will tremble to hear my name. 
 That reminds me — don't you say too much about 
 that housekeeper of yours; it's a low subject, 
 damned low. 
 
 " I tell you what, sir. If you vote me into 
 one of those empty chairs, you'll have among 
 you a man with a fund of gentlemanly informa- 
 tion that'll rather astonish you. I can let you 
 into a few anecdotes about some fine women of 
 title, that are quite high life, sir — the tiptop sort 
 of thing. I know the name of every man who 
 has been out on an aftair of honour within the 
 
266 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 last five-and-twenty years ; I know the private 
 particulars of every cross and squabble that has 
 taken place upon the turf, at the gaming-table, 
 or elsewhere, during the whole of that time. I 
 have been called the gentlemanly chronicle. 
 You may consider yourself a lucky dog : upon 
 my soul, you may congratulate yourself, though 
 I say so, 
 
 " It's an uncommon good notion that of 
 yours, not letting anybody know where you 
 live. I have tried it, but there has always been 
 an anxiety respecting me, which has found me 
 out. Your deaf friend is a cunning fellow to 
 keep his name so close. 1 have tried that too, 
 but have always foiled. I shall be proud to 
 make his acquaintance — tell him so, with my 
 compliments, 
 
 " You must have been a queer fellow when 
 you Avere a child, confounded queer. It's odd, 
 all that about the picture in your first paper — 
 prosy, but told in a devilish gentlemanly sort of 
 way. In places like that I could come in with 
 great effect with a touch of life — don't you feel 
 that ? 
 
 " I am anxiously waiting for your next paper 
 to know whether your friends live upon the 
 premises, and at your expense, which I take it 
 for granted is the case. If I am right in this 
 impression, I know a charming fellow (an excel- 
 lent companion and most delightful company) 
 who will be proud to join you. Some years ago 
 he seconded a great many prize-fighters, and 
 once fought an amateur match himself; since 
 then he has driven several mails, broken at 
 different periods all the lamps on the right- 
 hand side of Oxford Street, and six times car- 
 ried away every bell-handle in Bloomsbury 
 Square, besides turning off the gas in various 
 thoroughfares. In point of gentlemanliness he 
 is unrivalled, and I should say that next to 
 myself he is of all men the best suited to your 
 purpose, 
 
 " Expecting your reply, 
 
 " I am, 
 
 " &c. &c," 
 
 Master Humphrey informs this gentleman 
 that his application, both as it concerns himself 
 and his friend, is rejected. 
 
 awake. 
 
 II. 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY, FROM HIS 
 CLOCK-SIDE IN THE CHIMNEY- 
 CORNER, 
 
 'Y old companion tells me it is mid- 
 'hJW^lii Kl night. The fire glows brightly, 
 H ll'^yfliSI crackling with a sharp and cheerful 
 sound, as if it loved to burn. The 
 merry cricket on the hearth (my con- 
 stant visitor), this ruddy blaze, my 
 clock, and I, seem to share the world 
 among us, and to be the only things 
 The wind, high and boisterous but 
 now, has died away and hoarsely mutters in its 
 sleep, I love all times and seasons each in its 
 turn, and am apt, perhaps, to think the present 
 one the best ; but past or coming, I always love 
 this peaceful time of night, when long-buried 
 thoughts, favoured by the gloom and silence, 
 steal from their graves, and haunt the scenes of 
 faded happiness and hope. 
 
 The popular faith in ghosts has a remarkable 
 affinity with the whole current of our thoughts 
 at such an hour as this, and seems to be their 
 necessary and natural consequence. For who 
 can wonder that man should feel a vague belief 
 in tales of disembodied sjDirits wandering 
 through those places which they once dearly 
 affected, when he himself, scarcely less separated 
 from his old world than they, is for ever linger- 
 ing upon past emotions and bygone times, and 
 hovering, the ghost of his former self, about the 
 places and people that warmed his heart of old ? 
 It is thus that at this quiet hour I haunt the 
 house where I was born, the rooms I used to 
 tread, the scenes of my infancy, my boyhood, 
 and my youth ; it is thus that I prowl around 
 my buried treasure (though not of gold or 
 silver), and mourn my loss ; it is thus that I re- 
 visit the ashes of extinguished fires, and take my 
 silent stand at old bedsides. If my spirit should 
 ever glide back to this chamber when my body 
 is mingled with the dust, it will but follow the 
 course it often took in the old man's lifetime, 
 and add but one more change to the subjects of 
 its contemplation. 
 
 In all my idle speculations I am greatly 
 assisted by various legends connected with my 
 venerable house, which are current in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and are so numerous that there is 
 scarce a cupboard or corner that has not some 
 dismal story of its own. When I first enter- 
 tained thoughts of becoming its tenant, I was 
 assured that it was haunted from roof to cellar. 
 
THE ^DEAF GENTLEMAN, 
 
 267 
 
 and I believe the bad opinion ia which my 
 neighbours once held me had its rise in my not 
 being torn to pieces, or at least distracted with 
 terror, on the night I took possession : in either 
 of which cases I should doubtless have arrived 
 by a short cut at the very summit ot" popularity. 
 
 But traditions and rumours all taken into 
 account, who so abets me in every fancy, and 
 chime-s with my every thought, as my dear deaf 
 friend ? and how often have I cause to bless the 
 day that brought us two together ! Of all days 
 in the year I rejoice to think that it should 
 have been Christmas Day, with which from 
 childhood we associate something friendly, 
 hearty, and sincere. 
 
 I had walked out to cheer myself with the 
 happiness of others, and, in the little tokens of 
 festivity and rejoicing, of which the streets and 
 houses present so many upon that day, had lost 
 some hours. Now I stopped to look at a merry 
 party hurrying through the snow on foot to their 
 place of meeting, and now turned back to see a 
 whole coachful of children safely deposited at 
 the welcome house. At one time, I admired 
 how carefully the working man carried the baby 
 in its gaudy hat and feathers, and how his wife, 
 trudging patiently on behind, forgot even her 
 care of her gay clothes, in exchanging greetings 
 with the child as it crowed and laughed over the 
 father's shoulder; at another, I pleased myself 
 with some passing scene of gallantry or court- 
 ship, and w^as glad to believe that for a season 
 half the world of poverty was gay. 
 
 As the day closed in, I still rambled through 
 the streets, feeling a companionship in the 
 bright fires that cast their v/arm reflection on 
 the windows as I passed, and losing all sense? of 
 my own loneliness in imagining the sociality 
 and kind- fellowship that everywhere prevailed. 
 At length I happened to stop before a Tavern, 
 and encountering a Bill of Fare in the window, 
 it all at once brought it into my head to wonder 
 what kind of people dined alone in Taverns 
 upon Christmas Day. 
 
 Solitary men are accustomed, I suppose, un- 
 consciously to look upon solitude as their own 
 peculiar property. I had sat alone in my room 
 on many, many anniversaries of this great holi- 
 day, and had never regarded it but as one of 
 universal assemblage and rejoicing. I had ex- 
 cepted, and with an aching heart, a crowd of 
 prisoners and beggars, but these were not the 
 men for whom the Tavern doors were open. 
 Had they any customers, or was it a mere 
 form ? — a form, no doubt. 
 
 Trying to feel quite sure of this, I walked 
 away; but before I had gone many paces, I 
 
 stopped and looked back. There was a pro- 
 voking air of business in the lamp above the 
 door, which I could not overcome. I began to 
 be afraid there might be many customers — 
 young men, perhaps, struggling with the world, 
 utter strangers in this great place, whose friends 
 lived at a long distance off, and whose means 
 were too slender to enable them to make the 
 journey. The supposition gave rise to so many 
 distressing little pictures, that, in preference to 
 carrying them home with me, I determined to 
 encounter the realities. So I turned, and 
 walked in. 
 
 I was at once glad and sorry to find that 
 there was only one person in the dining-room ; 
 glad to know that there were not more, and 
 sorry that he should be there by himself. He 
 did not look so old as I, but like me he was 
 advanced in life, and his hair was nearly white. 
 Though I made more noise in entering and 
 seating myself than was quite necessary, with 
 the view of attracting his attention and saluting 
 him in the good old form of that time of year, 
 he did not raise his head, but sat with it resting 
 on his hand, musing over his half-finished meal, 
 
 I called for something which would give me 
 an excuse for remaining in the room (I had 
 dined early, as my housekeeper was engaged at 
 night to partake of some friend's good cheer), 
 and sat where I could observe without intrud- 
 ing on him. After a time he looked up. He 
 was aware that somebody had entered, but 
 could see very little of me, as I sat in the shade 
 and he in the light. He was sad and thought- 
 ful, and I forbore to trouble him by speaking. 
 
 Let me believe that it was something better 
 than curiosity which riveted my attention and 
 impelled me strongly towards this gentleman. 
 I never saw so patient and kind a face. He 
 should have been surrounded by friends, and 
 yet here he sat dejected and alone when all 
 men had their friends about them. As often as 
 he roused himself from his reverie he would fall 
 into it again, and it was plain that, whatever 
 were the subject of his thoughts, they were of a 
 melancholy kind, and would not be controlled. 
 
 He was not used to solitude. I was sure of 
 that ; for I know by myself that if he had been, 
 his manner would have been different, and he 
 would have taken some slight interest in the 
 arrival of another. I could not fail to mark 
 that he had no appetite ; that he tried to eat in 
 vain ; that time after time the plate was pushed 
 away, and he relapsed into his tbrmer posture. 
 
 His mind was wandering among old Christ- 
 mas Days, I thought. Many of them sprung up 
 together, not with a long gap between each, but 
 
268 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 in unbroken succession like days of the week. 
 It was a great change to find himself for the 
 first time (I ciuite settled that it was the first) 
 in an empty silent room with no soul to care 
 for. I could not help following him in imagina- 
 tion through crowds of pleasant faces, and then 
 coming back to that dull place, with its bough 
 of mistletoe sickening in the gas, and sprigs of 
 holly parched up already by a Simoom of roast 
 and boiled. The very waiter had gone home ; 
 and his representative, a poor, lean, hungry 
 man, was keeping Christmas in his jacket. 
 
 I grew still more interested in my friend. 
 His dinner done, a decanter of wine was placed 
 before him. It remained untouched for a long 
 time, but at length with a quivering hand he 
 filled a glass and raised it to his lips. Some 
 tender wish to which he had been accustomed 
 to give utterance on that day, or some beloved 
 name that he had been used to pledge, trem- 
 bled upon them at the moment. He put it 
 down very hastily — took it up once more — 
 again put it down — pressed his hand upon his 
 face — yes — and tears stole down his cheeks, I 
 am certain. 
 
 Without pausing to consider whether I did 
 right or wrong, I stepped across the room, and 
 sitting down beside him, laid my hand gently on 
 his arm. 
 
 "My friend," I said, " forgive me if I beseech 
 you to take comfort and consolation from the 
 lips of an old man. I will not preach to you 
 what I have not practised, indeed. Whatever 
 be your grief, be of a good heart — be of a good 
 heart, pray ! " 
 
 " I see that you speak earnestly," he replied, 
 " and kindly I am very sure, but " 
 
 I nodded my head to show that I understood 
 what he would say ; for I had already gathered, 
 from a certain fixed expression in his face, and 
 from the attention with which he watched me 
 w^iile 1 spoke, that his sense of hearing was 
 destroyed. " There should be a freemasonry 
 between us," said I, pointing from himself to 
 me to explain my meaning ; " if not in our grey 
 hairs, at least in our misfortunes. You see that 
 1 am but a poor cripple." 
 
 I never felt so happy under my affliction 
 since the trying moment of my first becoming 
 conscious of it, as when he took my hand in his 
 with a smile that has lighted my path in life 
 from that day, and we sat down side by side. 
 
 This was the beginning of my friendship with 
 the deaf gentleman ; and when was ever the 
 slight and easy service of a kind word in season 
 repaid by such attachment and devotion as he 
 has shown to me ? 
 
 He produced a little set of tablets and a 
 pencil to facilitate our conversation, on that our 
 first acquaintance ; and I well remember how 
 awkward and constrained I was in writing down 
 my share of the dialogue, and how easily he 
 guessed my meaning before I had written half 
 of what I had to say. He told me in a faltering 
 voice that he had not been accustomed to be 
 alone on that day — that it had always been a 
 little festival with him ; and seeing that I glanced 
 at his dress in the expectation that he wore 
 mourning, he added hastily that it was not 
 that ; if it had been, he thought he could have 
 borne it better. From that time to the pre- 
 sent we have never touched upon this theme. 
 Upon every return of the same day we have 
 been together ; and although we make it our 
 annual custom to drink to each other hand in 
 hand after dinner, and to recall with affec- 
 tionate garrulity every circumstance of our first 
 meeting, we always avoid this one as if by 
 mutual consent. 
 
 Meantime we have gone on strengthening in 
 our friendship and regard, and forming an at- 
 tachment which, I trust and believe, will only be 
 interrupted by death, to be renewed in another 
 existence. 1 scarcely know how we communi- 
 cate as we do ; but he has long since ceased to 
 be deaf to me. He is frequently the companion 
 of my walks, and even in crowded streets replies 
 to my slightest look or gesture as though he 
 could read my thoughts. From the vast number 
 of objects which pass in rapid succession before 
 our eyes, we frequently select the same for some 
 particular notice or remark ; and when one ot 
 these little coincidences occurs, I cannot de- 
 scribe the pleasure which animates my friend, or 
 the beaming countenance he will preserve for 
 half an hour afterwards at least. 
 
 He is a great thinker from living so much 
 w'ithin himself, and, having a lively imagination, 
 has a facility of conceiving and enlarging upon 
 odd ideas, which renders him invaluable to our 
 little body, and greatly astonishes our two friends. 
 His powers in this respect are much assisted by 
 a large pipe, which he assures us once belonged 
 to a German Student. Be this as it may, it has 
 undoubtedly a very ancient and mysterious ap- 
 pearance, and is of such capacity that it takes 
 three hours and a half to smoke it out. I have 
 reason to believe that my barber, who is the 
 chief authority of a knot of gossips who congre- 
 gate every evening at a small tobacconist's hard 
 by, has related anecdotes of this pipe and the 
 grim figures that are carved upon its bowl, at 
 which all the smokers in the neighbourhood 
 have stood aghast; and I know that my 
 
JACK RED BURN. 
 
 269 
 
 housekeeper, while she holds it in high vene- 
 ration, has a superstitious feeling connected 
 with it which would render her exceedingly 
 unwilling to be left alone in its company after 
 tlark. 
 
 Whatever sorrow my deaf friend has known, 
 and whatever grief may linger in some secret 
 corner of his heart, he is now a cheerful, placid, 
 happy creature. Misfortune can never have 
 fallen upon such a man but for some good pur- 
 pose ; and when I see its traces in his gentle 
 nature and his earnest feeling, I am the less 
 disposed to murmur at such trials as I may have 
 undergone myself. With regard to the i)ipe, I 
 have a theory of my own ; I cannot help think- 
 ing that it is in some manner connected with 
 the event that brought us together ; for I re- 
 member that it was a long time before he even 
 talked about it ; that when he did, he grew re- 
 served and melancholy ; and that it was a long 
 time yet before he brought it forth. I have no 
 curiosity, however, upon this subject ; for I 
 know that it promotes his tranquillity and com- 
 fort, and I need no other inducement to regard 
 it with my utmost favour. 
 
 Such is the deaf gentleman. I can call up 
 his figure now, clad in sober grey, and seated in 
 the chimney-corner. As he puffs out the smoke 
 from his favourite pipe, he casts a look on me 
 brimful of cordiality and friendship, and says all 
 manner of kind and genial things in a cheerful 
 smile ; then he raises his eyes to my clock, 
 which is just about to strike, and, glancing from 
 it to me and back again, seems to divide his 
 heart between us. For myself, it is not too 
 much to say that I would gladly part with one 
 of my poor limbs, could he but hear the old 
 clock's voice. 
 
 Of our two friends, the first has been all his 
 life one of that easy, wayward, truant class whom 
 the world is accustomed to designate as nobody's 
 enemies but their own. Bred to a profession for 
 which he never qualified himself, and reared in 
 the expectation of a fortune he has never in- 
 herited, he has undergone every vicissitude of 
 which such an existence is capable. He and 
 his younger brother, both orphans from their 
 childhood, were educated by a wealthy relative, 
 who taught them to expect an equal division of 
 his property ; but too indolent to court, and too 
 honest to flatter, the elder gradually lost ground 
 in the affections of a capricious old man, and 
 the younger, who did not fail to improve his 
 opportunity, now triumphs in the possession of 
 enormous wealth. His triumph is to hoard it 
 in solitary wretchedness, and probably to feel 
 with the expenditure of every shilling a greater 
 
 pang than the loss of his whole inheritance ever 
 cost his brother. 
 
 Jack Redburn — he was Jack Redburn at the 
 first little school he went to, where every other 
 child was mastered and surnamed, and he has 
 been Jack Redburn all his life, or he woukl per- 
 haps have been a richer man by this time — has 
 been an inmate of my house these eight years 
 past. He is my librarian, secretary, steward, 
 and first minister ; director of all my affairs, and 
 inspector-general of my household. He is some- 
 thing of a musician, something of an author, 
 something of an actor, something of a painter, 
 very much of a carpenter, and an extraordinary 
 gardener, having had all his life a wonderful 
 aptitude for learning everything that was of no 
 use to him. He is remarkably fond of children, 
 and is the best and kindest nurse in sickness 
 that ever drew the breath of life. He has mixed 
 with every grade of society, and known the 
 utmost distress ; but there never was a less self- 
 ish, a more tender-hearted, a more enthusiastic, 
 or a more guileless man ; and I dare say, if few 
 have done less good, fewer still have done less 
 harm in the world than he. By what chance 
 Nature forms such whimsical jumbles I don't 
 know ; but I do know that she sends them 
 among us very often, and that the king of the 
 whole race is Jack Redburn. 
 
 I should be puzzled to say how old he is. 
 His health is none of the best, and he wears a 
 quantity of iron-grey hair, which shades his face 
 and gives it rather a worn appearance ; but we 
 consider him quite a young fellow notwithstand- 
 ing ; and if a youthful spirit, surviving the 
 roughest contact with the world, confers upon 
 its possessor any title to be considered young, 
 then he is a mere child. The only interruptions 
 to his careless cheerfulness are on a wet Sunday, 
 when he is apt to be unusually religious and 
 solemn, and sometimes of an evening, when he 
 has been blowing a very slow tune on the flute. 
 On these last-named occasions he is apt to in- 
 cline towards the mysterious or the terrible. As 
 a specimen of his powers in this mood, I refer 
 my readers to the extract from the clock-case 
 which follows this paper : he brought it to me 
 not long ago at midnight, and informed me that 
 the main incident had been suggested by a dream 
 of the night before. 
 
 His apartments are two cheerful rooms look- 
 ing towards the garden, and one of his great 
 delights is to arrange and rearrange the furniture 
 in these chambers, and put it in every possible 
 variety of position. During the whole time he 
 has been here, I do not think he has slept for 
 two nights running with the head of his bed in. 
 
270 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 the same place ; and every time he moves it is 
 to be the last. My housekeeper was at first 
 well-nigh distracted by these frequent changes ; 
 but she has become quite reconciled to them by 
 degrees, and has so lallen in witli his humour, 
 that they often consult together with great gra- 
 vity upon the next final alteration. Whatever 
 his arrangements are, howe\-er, they are always 
 a pattern of neatness ; and every one of the 
 manifold articles connected with his manifold 
 occupations is to be found in its own particular 
 place. Until within the last two or three years 
 he was subject to an occasional fit (which usually 
 came upon him in very fine weather), under the 
 influence of which he would dress himself with 
 peculiar care, and, going out under pretence of 
 taking a walk, disappear for several days to- 
 gether. At length, after the interval between 
 each outbreak of this disorder had gradually 
 grown longer and longer, it wholly disappeared ; 
 and now he seldom stirs abroad, except to stroll 
 out a little way on a summer's evening. Whether 
 he yet mistrusts his own constancy in this re- 
 spect, and is therefore afraid to wear a coat, I 
 know not ; but we seldom see him in any other 
 upper garment than an old spectral-looking dress- 
 ing-gown, with very disproportionate ])ockets, 
 full of a miscellaneous collection of odd matters, 
 which he picks up wherever he can lay his hands 
 upon them. 
 
 Everything that is a favourite with our friend 
 is a favourite with us ; and thus it happens that 
 the fourth among us is Mr. Ov\^en Miles, a most 
 worthy gentleman, who had treated Jack with 
 great kindness before my deaf friend and I en- 
 countered him by an accident, to which I may 
 refer on some future occasion, Mr. Miles was 
 once a very rich merchant; but receiving a 
 severe shock in the death of his wife, he retired 
 from business, and devoted himself to a quiet, 
 unostentatious life. He is an excellent man, 
 of thorou;j;hly sterling character : not of quick 
 apprehension, and not without some amusing 
 prejudices, which I shall leave to their own 
 development. He holds us all in profound 
 veneration ; but Jack Redburn he esteems as a 
 kind of pleasant wonder, that he may venture to 
 approach familiarly. He believes, not only that 
 no man ever lived who could do so many things 
 as Jack, but that no man ever lived who could 
 do anything so well ; and he never calls my 
 attention to any of his ingenious proceedings, 
 but he whispers in my ear, nudging me at the 
 same time with his elbow : " If he had only 
 made it his trade, sir — if he had only made it 
 his trade ! " 
 
 They are inseparable companions ; one would 
 
 almost suppose that although Mr. Miles never 
 by any chance does anything in the way of 
 assistance, Jack could do nothing without him. 
 Whether he is reading, writing, painting, car- 
 pentering, gardening, flute-playing, or what not, 
 there is Mr. Miles beside him, buttoned up to 
 the chin in his blue coat, and looking on with a 
 face of incredulous delight, as though he could 
 not credit the testimony of his own senses, and 
 had a misgiving that no man could be so clever 
 but in a dream. 
 
 These are my friends ; I have now introduced 
 myself and them. 
 
 THE CLOCK-CASE. 
 
 A CONFESSION FOUND IN A PRISON IN THE TIME 
 OF CHARLES THE SECOND. 
 
 I held a lieutenant's commission in his Ma- 
 jesty's army, and served abroad in the cam- 
 paigns of 167 7 and 1678. The treaty of Nimeguen 
 being concluded, I returned home, and retiring 
 from the service, withdrew to a small estate lying 
 a few miles east of London, which I had recently 
 acquired in right of my wife. 
 
 This is the last night I have to live, and I 
 will set down the naked truth without disguise. 
 I was never a brave man, and had always been 
 from my childhood of a secret, sullen, distrustful 
 nature. I speak of myself as if I had passed 
 from the world ; for while I write this, my grave 
 is digging, and my name is written in the black- 
 book of death. 
 
 Soon after my return to England, my only 
 brother was seized with mortal illness. This 
 circumstance gave me slight or no pain ; for 
 since we had been men, we had associated but 
 very little together. He was open-hearted and 
 generous, handsomer than I, more accomplished, 
 and generally beloved. Those who sought my 
 acquaintance abroad or at home, because they 
 were friends of his, seldom attached themselves 
 to me long, and would usually say, in our first 
 conversation, that they were surprised to find 
 two brothers so unlike in their manners and 
 appearance. It was my habit to lead them on 
 to this avowal; for I knew what comparisons 
 they must draw between us ; and having a rank- 
 ling envy in my heart, I sought to justify it to 
 myself. 
 
 We had man-ied two sisters. This additional 
 tie between us, as it may appear to some, only 
 estranged us the more. His wife knew me well. 
 I never struggled with any secret jealousy or 
 gall when she was present but that woman knew 
 
A MURDERER'S CONFESSION. 
 
 271 
 
 it as well as I did. I never raised my eyes at 
 such times but I found hers fixed upon me ; I 
 never bent them on the ground or looked 
 another way but I felt that she overlooked me 
 always. It was an inexpressible relief to me 
 when we quarrelled, and a greater relief still 
 when I heard abroad that she was dead. It 
 seems to me now as if some strange and terrible 
 foreshadowing of what has happened since must 
 have hung over us then. I was afraid of her; 
 she haunted me ; her fixed and steady look 
 comes back upon me now, like tlie memory of 
 a dark dream, and makes my blood run cold. 
 
 She died shortly after giving birth to a child 
 — a boy. When my brother knew that all hope 
 of his own recovery was past, he called my wife 
 to his bedside, and confided this orphan, a child 
 of four years old, to her protection. He be- 
 queathed to him all the property he had, and 
 willed that, in case of his child's death, it should 
 pass to my wife, as the only acknowledgment he 
 could make her for her care and love. He ex- 
 changed a few brotherly words with me, deploring 
 our long separation ; and being exhausted, fell 
 into a slumber, from which he never awoke. 
 
 We had no children ; and as there had been 
 a strong aftection between the sisters, and my 
 wife had almost supplied the place of a mother 
 to this boy, she loved him as if he had been her 
 own. The child was ardently attached to her; 
 but he was his mother's image in face and spirit^ 
 and always mistrusted me. 
 
 I can scarcely fix the date when the feeling 
 first came upon me ; but I soon began to be 
 uneasy when this child was by. I never roused 
 myself from some moody train of thought but 
 I marked him looking at me ; not with mere 
 childish wonder, but with something of the pur- 
 pose and meaning that I had so often noted 
 in his mother. It was no effort of my fancy, 
 founded on close resemblance of feature and 
 expression. I never could look the boy down. 
 He feared me, but seemed by some instinct to 
 despise me while he did so ; and even when -he 
 drew back beneath my gaze — as he would when 
 we were alone, to get nearer to the door — he 
 would keep his bright eyes upon me still. 
 
 Perhaps I hide the truth from myself, but I 
 do not think that, when this began, I meditated 
 to do him any wrong. I may have thought how 
 serviceable his inheritance would be to us, and 
 may have wished him dead ; but I believe I had 
 no thought of compassing his death. Neither 
 did the idea come upon me at once, but by very 
 slow degrees, presenting itself at first in dim 
 shapes at a very great distance, as men may 
 think of an earthquake or the last day; then 
 
 drawing nearer and nearer, and losing something 
 of its horror and improbability ; then coming to 
 be part and parcel — nay, nearly the whole sum 
 and substance — of my daily thoughts, and re- 
 solving itself into a question of means and 
 safety; not of doing or abstaining from the deed. 
 While this was going on within me, I never 
 could bear that the child should see me looking 
 at him, and yet I was under a fascination which 
 made it a kind of business with me to contem- 
 plate his slight and fragile figure, and think how 
 easily it might be done. Sometimes I would 
 steal up-stairs and watch him as he slept ; but 
 usually I hovered in the garden near the window 
 of the room in which he learnt his little tasks ; 
 and there, as he sat upon a low seat beside my 
 wife, I would peer at him for hours together 
 from behind a tree ; starting, like the guilty 
 wretch I was, at every rustling of a leaf, and 
 still gliding back to look and start again. 
 
 Hard by our cottage, but quite out of sight, 
 and (if there were any wind astir) of hearing 
 too, was a deep sheet of water. I spent days in 
 shaping with my pocket-knife a rough model of 
 a boat, which I finished at last, and dropped in 
 the child's way. Then I withdrew to a secret 
 place, which he must pass if he stole away alone 
 to swim this bauble, and lurked there for his 
 coming. He came neither that day nor the 
 next, though I waited from noon till nightfall. 
 I was sure that I had him in my net, for I had 
 heard him prattling of the toy, and knew that in 
 his infant pleasure he kept it by his side in 
 bed. I felt no weariness or fatigue, but waited 
 patiently, and on the third day he passed rae, 
 running joyously along, with his silken hair 
 streaming in the wind, and he singing — God 
 have mercy upon me ! — singing a merry ballad, 
 — who could hardly lisp the words. 
 
 I stole down after him, creeping under certain 
 shrubs which grow in that place, and none but 
 devils know with what terror I, a strong, full- 
 grown man, tracked the footsteps of that baby 
 as he approached the water's brink. I was close 
 upon him, had sunk upon my knee and raised 
 my hand to thrust him in, when he saw my sha- 
 dow in the stream and turned him round. 
 
 His mother's ghost was looking from his eyes. 
 The sun burst forth from behind a cloud ; it 
 shone in the bright sky, the glistening earth, the 
 clear water, the sparkling droi)s of rain upon the 
 leaves. There were eyes in everything. The 
 whole great universe of liglit was there to see 
 the murder done. I know not what he said ; he 
 came of bold and manly blood, and, child as he 
 was, he did not crouch or fawn upon me. I 
 heard him cry that he would try to love me, — 
 
272 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 not that he did,— and then I saw him running 
 back towards the house. The next I saw \yas 
 my own sword naked in my hand, and he lying 
 at my feet stark dead, — dabbled here and there 
 with blood, but otherwise no different from what 
 I had seen him in his sleep,— in the same attitude 
 too, with his cheek resting upon his litde hand. 
 
 I took him in my arms and laid him — very 
 gently now that he was dead — in a thicket. My 
 wife was from home that day, and would not 
 return until the next. Our bedroom window, 
 the only sleeping-room on that side of the house, 
 was but a few feet from the ground, and I re- 
 solved to descend from it at night and bury him 
 in the garden. I had no thought that I had 
 failed in my design, no thought that the water 
 would be dragged and nothing found, that the 
 money must now lie waste, since I must encou- 
 rage the idea that the child was lost or stolen. 
 All my thoughts were bound up and knotted 
 together in the one absorbing necessity of hiding 
 what I had done. 
 
 How I felt when they came to tell me that 
 the child was missing, when I ordered scouts in 
 all directions, when I gasped and trembled at 
 every one's approach, no tongue can tell or 
 mind of man conceive. I buried him that night. 
 When I parted the boughs and looked into the 
 dark thicket, there was a glow-worm shining like 
 the visible spirit of God upon the murdered 
 child. I glanced down into his grave when I 
 had placed him there, and still it gleamed upon 
 his breast ; an eye of fire looking up to Heaven 
 in supplication to the stars that watched me at 
 my work. 
 
 I had to meet my wife, and break the news, 
 and give her hope that the child would soon be 
 found. All this I did, — with some appearance, 
 I suppose, of being sincere, for I was the object 
 of no suspicion. This done, I sat at the bed- 
 room window all day long, and watched the 
 spot where the dreadful secret lay. 
 
 It was in a piece of ground which had been 
 (lug up to be newly turfed, and which I had 
 chosen on that account, as the traces of my 
 spade were less likely to attract attention. The 
 men who laid down the grass must have thought 
 me mad. I called to them continually to expe- 
 dite their work, ran out and worked beside them, 
 trod down the earth with my feet, and hurried 
 them with frantic eagerness. They had finished 
 their task before night, and then I thought my- 
 self comparatively safe. 
 
 I slept, — not as men do who wake refreshed 
 and cheerful, but I did sleep, passing from vague 
 and shadowy dreams of being hunted down, to 
 visions of the plot of grass, through which now 
 
 a hand, and now a foot, and now the head itself 
 was starting out. At this point I always woke 
 and stole to the window, to make sure that it 
 was not really so. That done, I crept to bed 
 again ; and thus I spent the night in fits and 
 starts, getting up and lying down full twenty 
 times, and dreaming the same dream over and 
 over again, — which was far worse than lying 
 awake, for every dream had a whole night's 
 suffering of its own. Once I thought the child 
 was alive, and that I had never tried to kill him. 
 To wake from that dream was the most dreadful 
 agony of all. 
 
 The next day I sat at the window again, never 
 once taking my eyes from the place, which, 
 although it was covered by the grass, was as 
 plain to me — its shape, its size, its depth, its 
 jagged sides, and all — as if it had been open to 
 the light of day. When a servant walked across 
 it, I felt as if he must sink in ; when he had 
 passed, I looked to see that his feet had not 
 worn the edges. If a bird lighted there, I was 
 in terror lest by some tremendous interposition 
 it should be instrumental in the discovery; if a 
 breath of air sighed across it, to me it whispered 
 murder. There was not a sight or sound — how 
 ordinary, mean, or unimportant soever — but was 
 fraught with fear. And in this state of ceaseless 
 watching I spent three days. 
 
 On the fourth there came to the gate one who 
 had served with me abroad, accompanied by a 
 brother officer of his whom I had never seen. 
 I felt that I could not bear to be out of sight of 
 the place. It was a summer evening, and I bade 
 my people take a table and a flask of wine into 
 the garden. Then I sat down with my chair 
 upon the grave, and being assured that nobody 
 could disturb it now without my knowledge, 
 tried to drink and talk. 
 
 They hoped that my wife was well, — that she 
 was not obliged to keep lier chamber, — that they 
 had not frightened her away. What could I do 
 but tell them with a faltering tongue about the 
 child ? The ofticer whom I did not know was a 
 down-looking man, and kept his eyes upon the 
 ground while I was speaking. Even that terri- 
 fied me. I could not divest myself of the idea 
 that he saw something there which caused him 
 to suspect the truth. I asked him hurriedly if 
 
 he supposed that and stopped. " That the 
 
 child has been murdered?" said he, looking 
 mildly at me. " Oh no ! what could a man gain 
 by murdering a poor child ? " / could have told 
 him what a man gained by such a deed, no one 
 better ; but I held my peace and shivered as 
 with an ague. 
 
 Mistaking my emotion, they were endeavour- 
 
HUNTED DOWN. 
 
 273 
 
 ing to cheer me with the hope that the boy 
 
 would certainly be found, — great cheer that was 
 for me ! — when wo heard a low deep howl, and 
 l)resentiy there sprung over the wall two great 
 dogs, who, bounding into the garden, repeated 
 the baying sound we had heard before. 
 
 " Bloodhounds ! " cried my visitors. 
 
 What need to tell me that? I had never 
 seen one of that kind in all my life, but I knew 
 what they were, and for what purpose they had 
 
 come. I grasped the elbows of my chair, and 
 neither spoke nor moved. 
 
 " They are of the genuine breed," said the 
 man whom I had known abroad, "and being out 
 for exercise, have no doubt escaped from their 
 keeper." 
 
 Both he and his friend turned to look at the 
 dogs, who with their noses to the ground moved 
 restlessly about, running to and fro, and up and 
 down, and across, and round in circles, careering 
 
 " AS HE SAT UPON A LOW SEAT BESIDE MY WIFE, I WOULD PEER AT HIM FOR HOURS TOGETHER FROM 
 
 BEHIND A TREE." 
 
 about like wild things, and all this time taking 
 no notice of us, but ever and again repeating the 
 yell we had heard already, then dropping their 
 noses to the ground again, and tracking earnestly 
 here and there. They now began to snuff the 
 earth more eagerly than they had done yet, and 
 although they were still very restless, no longer 
 beat about in such wide circuits, but kept near 
 to one spot, and constantly diminished the dis- 
 tance between themselves and me. 
 
 At last they came up close to the great chair 
 Edwin Drood, Etc., 18. 
 
 on which I sat, and raising their frightful howl 
 once more, tried to tear away the wooden rails 
 that kept them from the ground beneath. I 
 saw how I looked in the faces of the two who 
 were with me. 
 
 " They scent some prey," said they, bo:h 
 together. 
 
 " They scent no prey ! " cried I. 
 
 " In Heaven's name, move," said the one I 
 knew, very earnestly, " or you will be torn to 
 pieces." 
 
!74 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK, 
 
 " Let them tear me limb from limb, I'll never 
 leave this place ! " cried I. " Are dogs to hurry 
 men to shameful deaths? Hew them down, 
 cut them in pieces." 
 
 " There is some foul mystery here ! " said tlic 
 officer whom I did not know, drawing his sword. 
 " In King Charles's name, assist me to secure 
 this man." 
 
 They both set upon me and forced me away, 
 though I fought and bit and caught at them like 
 a madman. After a struggle, they got me 
 quietly between them ; and then, my God ! I 
 saw the angry dogs tearing at the earth and 
 throwing it up into the air like water. 
 
 What more have I to tell ? That I fell upon 
 my knees, and with chattering teeth confessed 
 the truth, and prayed to be forgiven. That I 
 have since denied, and now confess to it again. 
 That I have been tried for the crime, found guilty, 
 and sentenced. That I have not the courage 
 to anticipate my doom, or to bear up manfully 
 against it. That I have no compassion, no con- 
 solation, no hope, no friend. That my wife has 
 happily lost for the time those faculties which 
 would enable her to know my misery or hers. 
 That I am alone in this stone dungeon with my 
 evil spirit, and that I die to-morrow ! '■' 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 Master Humphrey has been favoured with 
 the following letter written on strongly-scented 
 paper, and sealed in light-blue wax with the 
 representation of two very plump doves inter- 
 changing beaks. It does not commence with 
 any of the usual forms of address, but begins as 
 is here set forth. 
 
 Bath, Wcdiiesday Night. 
 
 Heavens ! into what an indiscretion do I 
 suffer myself to be betrayed ! To address these 
 faltering lines to a total stranger, and that 
 stranger one of a conllicting sex ! — and yet I 
 am precipitated into the abyss, and have no 
 power of self-snatchation (forgive me if I coin 
 that phrase) from the yawning gulf before me. 
 
 Yes, I am writing to a man ; but let me not 
 think of that, for madness is in the thought. 
 You will understand my feelings ? Oh yes, I 
 am sure you will ; and you will respect them 
 too, and not despise them, — will you ? 
 
 Let me be calm. That portrait, — smiling as 
 once he smiled on me ; that cane, dangling as I 
 have seen it dangle from his hand I know not 
 * Old Curiosity Shop begins here. 
 
 how oft ; those legs that have glided through 
 my nighdy dreams and never stopped to speak ; 
 the perfectly gentlemanly, though false original, 
 — can I be mistaken ? Oh no, no. 
 
 Let me be calmer yet ; I would be calm as 
 coffins. You have published a letter from one 
 w^iose likeness is engraved, but whose name 
 (and wherefore ?) is suppressed. Shall / breathe 
 
 that name ? Is it But why ask when my 
 
 heart tells me too truly that it is ? 
 
 I would not upbraid him with his treachery ; 
 I would not remind him of those times when 
 he plighted the most eloquent of vows, and pro- 
 cured from me a small pecuniary accommoda- 
 tion ; and yet I would see him — see him did I 
 say ? — him — alas ! such is woman's nature. For 
 
 as the poet beautifully says But you will 
 
 already have anticipated the sentiment. Is it 
 not sweet ? Oh yes ! 
 
 It was in this city (hallowed by the recollec- 
 tion) that I met him first ; and assuredly if 
 mortal happiness be recorded anywhere, then 
 those rubbers with their three-and-sixpenny 
 points are scored on tablets of celestial brass. 
 He always held an honour, — geneially two. On 
 that eventful night we stood at eight. He raised 
 his eyes (luminous in their seductive sweetness) 
 to my agitated face. " Can you?" said he, with 
 peculiar meaning. I felt the gentle pressure of 
 his foot on mine ; our corns throbbed in unison. 
 '■'■Can you?" he said again; and every linea- 
 ment of his expressive countenance added the 
 words, "resist me?" I murmured " No," and 
 fainted. 
 
 They said, when I recovered, it was the 
 weather. / said it was the nutmeg in the negus. 
 How little did they suspect the truth ! How 
 little did they guess the deep mysterious mean- 
 ing of that inquiry ! He called next morning 
 on his knees ; I do not mean to say that he 
 actually came in that position to the house-door, 
 but that he went down upon those joints di- 
 rectly the servant had retired. He brought 
 some verses in his hat, which he said were origi- 
 nal, but which I have since found were Milton's; 
 likewise a little bottle labelled laudanum ; also 
 a pistol and a sword-stick. He drew the latter, 
 uncorked the former, and clicked the trigger of 
 the pocket fire-arm. He had come, he said, to 
 conquer or to die. He did not die. He wrested 
 from me an avowal of my love, and let off the 
 pistol out of a back-window previous to partak- 
 ing of a slight repast. 
 
 Faithless, inconstant man ! How many ages 
 seem to have elapsed since his unaccountable 
 and perfidious disappearance ! Could I still 
 forgive him both that and the borrowed lucre 
 
A VISITOR ANNO UN CEB- 
 
 ITS 
 
 that he promised to pay next week ? Could I 
 spurn him from my feet if he approached in 
 penitence, and with a matrimonial object ? 
 Would the blandishing enchanter still weave his 
 spells arounil me, or should I burst them all 
 and turn away in coldness ? I dare not trust 
 my weakness with the thought. 
 
 My brain is in a whirl again. Vou know his 
 address, his occupations, his mode of life, — are 
 acquainted, perhaps, with his inmost thoughts. 
 You are a humane and philanthropic character ; 
 reveal all you know — all ; but especially the 
 street and number of his lodgings. The post is 
 departing, the bellman rings, — pray Heaven it 
 be not the knell of love and hope to 
 
 Belinda. 
 
 P.S. Pardon the wanderings of a bad pen and 
 a distracted mind. Address to the Post Office. 
 The bellman, rendered impatient by delay, is 
 ringing dreadfully in the passage. 
 
 P. P.S. I open this to say that the bellman is 
 gone, and that you must not expect it till the 
 next post ; so don't be surprised when you don't 
 get it. 
 
 Master Humphrey does not feel himself at 
 liberty to furnish his fair correspondent with the 
 address of the gentleman in question, but he 
 publishes her letter as a public appeal to his 
 faith and gallantry. 
 
 in. 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREYS VISITOR. 
 
 ■ HEN I am in a thoughtful mood, 
 I often succeed in diverting the 
 current of some mournful reflec- 
 tions by conjuring up a number of 
 fanciful associations with th^ ob- 
 jects that surround me, and dwell- 
 upon the scenes and characters they 
 suggest. 
 
 I have been led by this habit to assign to 
 every room in my house and every old staring 
 portrait on its walls a separate interest of its 
 own. Thus, I am persuaded that a stately 
 dame, terrible to behold in her rigid modesty, 
 who hangs above the chimney-piece of my bed- 
 room, is the former lady of the mansion. In the 
 courtyard below is a stone face of surpassing 
 ugliness, which I have somehow — in a kind of 
 
 jealousy, I am afraid — associated with her hus- 
 band. Above my study is a little room with 
 ivy peeping through the lattice, from which I 
 bring their daughter, a lovely girl of eighteen or 
 nineteen years of age, and dutiful in all respects 
 save one, that one being her devoted attachment 
 to a young gentleman on the stairs, whose grand- 
 mother (degraded to a disused laundry in the 
 garden) piques herself upon an old family 
 quarrel, and is the implacable enemy of their 
 love. With such materials as these I work out 
 many a little drama, whose chief merit is, that I 
 can bring it to a happy end at will. I have so 
 many of them on hand, that if, on my return 
 home one of these evenings, I were to find some 
 bluff old wight of two centuries ago comfortably 
 seated in my easy-chair, and a love-lorn damsel 
 vainly appealing to his heart, and leaning her 
 white arm upon my clock itself, I verily believe 
 I should only express my surprise that they had 
 kept me waiting so long, and never honoured 
 me with a call before. 
 
 I was in such a mood as this, sitting in my 
 garden yesterday morning under the shade of a 
 favourite tree, revelling in all the bloom and 
 brightness about me, and feeling every sense of 
 hope and enjoyment quickened by this most 
 beautiful season of Spring, when my meditations 
 were interrupted by the unexpected appearance 
 of my barber at the end of the walk, who I imme- 
 diately saw was coming towards me with a hasty 
 step that betokened something remarkable. 
 
 My barber is at all times a very brisk, bus- 
 tling, active little man, — for he is, as it were, 
 chubby all over, without being stout or unwieldy, 
 — but yesterday his alacrity was so very uncom- 
 mon that it quite took me by surprise. For could 
 I fail to observe, wlien he came up to me, that 
 his grey eyes were twinkling in a most extra- 
 ordinary manner, that his little red nose was in 
 an unusual glow, that every line in his round 
 bright face was twisted and curved into an ex- 
 pression of pleased surprise, and that his whole 
 countenance was radiant with glee ? I was still 
 more surprised to see my housekeeper, who 
 usually preserves a very staid air, and stands 
 somewhat upon her dignity, peeping round the 
 hedge at the bottom of the walk, and exchang- 
 ing nods and smiles with the barber, who twice 
 or thrice looked over his shoulder for that pur- 
 pose. I could conceive no announcement to 
 which these appearances could be the prelude, 
 unless it were that they had married each other 
 that morning. 
 
 I was, consequendy, a little disappointed when 
 it only came out that there was a gentleman in 
 the house who wished to speak with me. 
 
276 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 " And who is it ? " said I. 
 
 The barber, with his face screwed up still 
 tiyhter than before, replied that the gentleman 
 would not send Iris name, but wished to see me. 
 I pondered for a moment, wondering who this 
 visitor might be, and I remarked that he em- 
 braced the opportunity of exchanging another 
 nod with the housekeeper, who still lingered in 
 the distance. 
 
 " Well ! " said I, " bid the gentleman come 
 here." 
 
 This seemed to be the consummation of the 
 barber's hopes, for he turned sharp round, and 
 actually ran away. 
 
 Now, my sight is not very good at a distance, 
 and therefore, when the gentleman first appeared 
 in the walk, I was not quite clear whether he 
 was a stranger to me or otherwise. He was an 
 elderly gentleman, but came tripping along in 
 the pleasantest manner conceivable, avoiding 
 the garden-roller and the borders of the beds 
 with inimitable dexterity, picking his way among 
 the flower-pots, and smiling with unspeakable 
 good-humour. Before he was half-way up the 
 walk he began to salute me ; then I thought I 
 knew him ; but when he came towards me with 
 his hat in his hand, the sun shining on his bald 
 head, his bland face, his bright spectacles, his 
 fawn-coloured tights, and his black gaiters, — 
 then my heart warmed towards him, and I felt 
 quite certain that it was Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 " My dear sir," said that gentleman as I rose 
 to receive him, " pray be seated. Pray sit down. 
 Now, do not stand on my account. I must insist 
 upon it, really." With these words Mr. Pick- 
 wick gently pressed me down into my seat, and 
 taking my hand in his, shook it again and again 
 with a warmth of manner perfectly irresistible. 
 I endeavoured to express in my welcome some- 
 thing of that heartiness and pleasure which the 
 sight of him awakened, and made him sit down 
 beside me. All this time he kept alternately 
 releasing my hand and grasping it again, and 
 surveying me through his spectacles with such a 
 beaming countenance as I never till then beheld. 
 
 " You knew me directly ! " saiil Mr. Pickwick. 
 " What a pleasure it is to think that you knew 
 me directly ! " 
 
 I remarked that I had read his adventures 
 very often, and his features were quite familiar 
 to me from the published portraits. As I thought 
 it a good opportunity of adverting to the circum- 
 stance, I condoled with him upon the various 
 libels on his character which had found their 
 way into print. Mr. Pickwick shook his head, 
 and for a moment looked very indignant, but 
 smiling again directly, added that no doubt 1 
 
 was acquainted with Cervantes's introduction to 
 the second part of Don Quixote, and that it 
 fully expressed his sentiments on the subject. 
 
 " But now," said Mr. Pickwick, " don't you 
 wonder how I found you out ? " 
 
 " I shall never wonder, and, with your good 
 leave, never know," said I, smiling in my turn. 
 " It is enough for me that you give me this grati- 
 fication. I have not the least desire that you 
 should tell me by what means I have obtained it." 
 
 " You are very kind," returned Mr. Pickwick, 
 shaking me by the hand again ; " you are so 
 exactly what I expected ! But for what parti- 
 cular purpose do you think I have sought you, 
 my dear sir? Now, what do you think I have 
 come for? " 
 
 Mr. Pickwick i)ut this ([uestion as though he 
 were persuaded that it was morally impossible 
 that I could by any means divine the deep pur- 
 pose of his visit, and that it must be hidden 
 from all human ken. Therefore, although I was 
 rejoiced to think that I had anticipated his 
 drift, I feigned to be quite ignorant of it, and 
 after a brief consideration shook my head 
 despairingly. 
 
 " What should you say," said Mr. Pickwick, 
 laying the forefinger of his left hand upon my 
 coat-sleeve, and looking at me with his head 
 thrown back, and a little on one side, — " what 
 should you say if I confessed that after reading 
 your account of yourself and your little society, 
 I had come here a humble candidate for one of 
 those empty chairs ? " 
 
 " I should say," I returned, " that I know of 
 only one circumstance which could still furdier 
 endear that little society to me, and that would 
 be the associating with it my old friend, — for 
 you must let me call you so, — my old friend, 
 Mr. Pickwick." 
 
 As I made him this answer every feature of 
 Mr. Pickwick's face fused itself into one all- 
 pervading expression of delight. After shaking 
 me heartily by both hands at once, he patted me 
 gently on the back, and then — I well understood 
 why— coloured up to the eyes, and hoped T\ith 
 great earnestness of manner that he had not 
 hurt me. 
 
 If he had, I would have been content that he 
 should have repeated the offence a hundred 
 times rather than suppose so ; but as he had not, 
 I had no difticulty in changing the subject by 
 making an inquiry which had been upon my lips 
 twenty times already. 
 
 " You have not told me," said I, " anything 
 about Sam Weller." 
 
 " Oh ! Sam," replied Mr. Pickwick, " is the 
 same as ever. The same true, faithful fellow 
 
— WHO PROVES TO BE MR. PICKWICK. 
 
 277 
 
 that he ever was. What should I tell you about 
 Sam, my dear sir, except that he is more indis- 
 pensable to my happiness and comfort every day 
 of my life?" 
 
 "And Mr. Weller senior?" said I. 
 " Old Mr. Weller," returned Mr. Pickwick, 
 " is in no respect more altered than Sam, unless 
 it be that he is a little more opinionated than he 
 was formerly, and perhaps at times more talka- 
 tive. He spends a good deal of his time now in 
 our neighbourhood, and has so constituted him- 
 self a part of my body-guard, that when I ask 
 permission for Sam to have a seat in your kitchen 
 on clock nights (supposing your three friends 
 think me worthy to fill one of the chairs), I am 
 afraid I must often include Mr. Weller too." 
 
 I very readily pledged myself to give both 
 Sam and his father a free admission to my house 
 at all hours and seasons, and this point settled, 
 we fell into a lengthy conversation which was 
 carried on with as little reserve on both sides as 
 if we had been intimate friends from our youth, 
 and which conveyed to me the comfortable 
 assurance that Mr. Pickwick's buoyancy of 
 spirit, and indeed all his old cheerful character- 
 istics, were wholly unimpaired. As he had 
 spoken of the consent of my friends as being 
 yet in abeyance, I repeatedly assured him that 
 his proposal was certain to receive their most 
 joyful sanction, and several times entreated that 
 lie would give me leave to introduce him to 
 Jack Redburn and Mr. Miles (who were near at 
 hand) without further ceremony. 
 
 To this proposal, however, Mr. Pickwick's 
 delicacy would by no means allow him to ac- 
 cede, for he urged that his eligibility must be 
 formally discussed, and that until this had been 
 done, he could not think of obtruding himself 
 further. The utmost I could obtain from him 
 was a promise that he would attend upon our next 
 night of meeting, that I might have the pleasure 
 of presenting him immediately on his election, 
 
 Mr. Pickwick, having with many blushes 
 placed in my hands a small roll of paper, which 
 he termed his " qualification," put a great many 
 questions to me touching my frie;ids, and par- 
 ticulady Jack Redburn, whom he repeatedly 
 termed " a fine fellow," and in whose favour I 
 could see he was strongly predisposed. When I 
 had satisfied him on these points, I took him 
 up into my room, that he might make acquaint- 
 ance with the old chamber which is our place of 
 meeting. 
 
 "And this," said Mr. Pickwick, stopping 
 short, " is the clock ! Dear me ! And this is 
 really the old clock ! " 
 I thought he would never have come away from 
 
 it. After advancing towards it softly, and laying 
 his hand upon it with as much respect and as 
 many smiling looks as if it were alive, he set 
 himself to consider it in every possible direc- 
 tion, now mounting on a chair to look at the 
 top, now going down upon his knees to examine 
 the bottom, now surveying the sides with his 
 spectacles almost touching the case, and now 
 trying to peep between it and the wall to get a 
 slight view of the back. Then he would retire 
 a pace or two and look up at the dial to see it 
 go, and then draw near again and stand with 
 his head on one side to hear it tick : never failing 
 to glance towards me at intervals of a few seconds 
 each, and nod his head with such complacent 
 gratification as I am quite unable to describe. 
 His admiration was not confined to the clock 
 either, but extended itself to every article in the 
 room ; and really, when he had gone through 
 them every one, and at last sat himself down in 
 all the six chairs, one after anothei', to try how 
 they felt, I never saw such a picture of good- 
 humour and happiness as he presented, from the 
 top of his shining head down to the very last 
 button of his gaiters. 
 
 I should have been well pleased, and should 
 have had the utmost enjoyment of his company, 
 if he had remained with me all day, but my 
 favourite, striking the hour, reminded him that 
 he must take his leave. I could not forbear 
 telling him once more how glad he had made 
 me, and we shook hands all the way down-stairs. 
 
 We had no sooner arrived in the hall than ir.y 
 housekeeper, gliding out of her little room (she 
 had changed her gown and cap, I observed), 
 greeted Mr. Pickwick with her best smile and 
 curtsy ; and the barber, feigning to be accident- 
 ally passing on his way out, made him a vast 
 number of bows. When the housekeeper curt- 
 sied, Mr. Pickwick bowed with the utmost 
 politeness, and when he bowed, the housekeeper 
 curtsied again ; between the housekeeper and 
 the barber, I should say that Mr. Pickwick faced 
 about and bowed with undiminished aflability 
 fifty times at least. 
 
 I saw him to the door ; an omnibus was at 
 the moment passing the corner of the lane, 
 which Mr. Pickwick hailed and ran after with 
 extraordinary nimbleness. When he had got 
 about half-way, he turned his head, and seeing 
 that I was still looking after him, and that I 
 waved my hand, stopped, evidently irresolute 
 whether to come back and shake hands again, 
 or to go on. The man behind the omnibus 
 shouted, and Mr. Pickwick ran a little way to- 
 wards him : then he looked round at me, and 
 ran a little way back again. Then there was 
 
278 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 another shout, and he turned round once more 
 and ran the other way. After several of these 
 vibrations, the man settled the question by 
 taking Mr. Pickwick by the arm and putting 
 him into the carriage ; but his last action was to 
 let down the window and wave his hat to me as 
 it drove off. 
 
 I lost no time in opening the parcel he 
 had left with me. The following were its con- 
 tents : — 
 
 MR. PICKWICK'S TALE. 
 
 A good many years have passed away since 
 old John Podgers lived in the town of Windsor, 
 where he was bom, and where, in course of 
 time, he came to be comfortably and snugly 
 buried. You may be sure that in the time 
 of King James the First, Windsor was a very 
 quaint queer old town, and you may take it 
 upon my authority that John Podgers was a 
 very quaint queer old fellow ; con-sequently he 
 and Windsor fitted each other to a nicety, and 
 seldom parted company even for half a day. 
 
 John Podgers was broad, sturdy, Dutch-built, 
 short, and a very hard eater, as men of his 
 figure often are. Being a hard sleeper likewise, 
 he divided his time pretty equally between these 
 two recreations, always falling asleep when he 
 had done eating, and always taking another turn 
 at the trencher when he had done sleeping, by 
 which means he grew more corpulent and more 
 drowsy every day of his life. Indeed, it used to 
 be currently reported that when he sauntered 
 up and down the sunny side of the street before 
 dinner (as he never failed to do in fair weather), 
 he enjoyed his soundest nap ; but many people 
 held this to be a fiction, as he had several times 
 been seen to look after fat oxen on market-days, 
 and had even been heard, by persons of good 
 credit and rej^utation, to chuckle at the sight, 
 and say to himself with great glee, ■' Live beef, 
 live beef ! " It was upon this evidence that the 
 wisest people in Windsor (beginning with the local 
 authorities of course) held that John Podgers was 
 a man of strong, sound sense, not what is called 
 smart, perhaps, and it might be of a rather 
 lazy and apoplectic turn, but still a man of solid 
 parts, and one wlio meant much more than he 
 cared to show. This impression was confirmed 
 by a very dignified way he had of shaking his 
 head and imparting, at the same time, a pendu- 
 lous motion to his double chin ; in short, he 
 passed for one of those people wlio, being 
 plunged into the Thames, would make no vain 
 eftbrts to set it afire, but would straightway flop 
 down to the bottom with a deal of gravity, and 
 
 be highly respected in consequence by all good 
 men. 
 
 Being well to do in the world, and a peaceful 
 widower, — having a great appetite, which, as he 
 coukl aftord to gratify it, was a luxury and no 
 inconvenience, and a power of going to sleep, 
 which, as he had no occasion to keep awake, 
 was a most enviable faculty, — you will readily 
 suppose that John Podgers was a happy man. 
 But appearances are often deceptive when they 
 least seem so, and the truth is that, notwith- 
 standing his extreme sleekness, he was rendered 
 uneasy in his mind, and exceedingly uncomfort- 
 able by a constant apprehension that beset him 
 night and day. 
 
 You know very well that in those times there 
 flourished divers evil old women who, under the 
 name of Witches, spread great disorder through 
 the land, and inflicted various dismal tortures 
 upon Christian men ; sticking pins and needles 
 into them when they least expected it, and 
 causing them to walk in the air with their feet 
 upwards, to the great terror of their wives and 
 families, who were naturally very much dis- 
 concerted when the master of the house un- 
 expectedly came home, knocking at the door 
 with his heels and combing his hair on the 
 scraper. These were their commonest ])ranks, 
 but they every day played a hundred others, of 
 which none were less objectionable, and many 
 were much more so, being improper besides; 
 the result was that vengeance was denounced 
 against all old women, with whom even the king 
 himself had no sympathy (as he certainly ought to 
 have had), for with his own most Gracious hand 
 he penned a most Gracious consignment of them 
 to everlasting wrath, and devised most Gracious 
 means for their confusion and slaughter, in 
 virtue whereof scarcely a day passed but one 
 witch at the least was most graciously hanged, 
 drowned, or roasted in some part of his domi- 
 nions. Still the press teemed with strange and 
 terrible news from the North or the South, or 
 the East or the West, relative to witches and 
 their unhappy victims in some corner of the 
 country, and the Public's hair stood on end to 
 that degree that it lifted its hat off its head, and 
 made its face pale with terror. 
 
 You may believe that the little town of Wind- 
 sor did not escape the general contagion. The 
 inhabitants boiled a witch on the king's birth- 
 day, and sent a botde of the broth to court, 
 with a dutiful address expressive of their loyalty. 
 The king being rather frightened by the present, 
 piously bestowed it upon the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, and returned an answer to the address, 
 wherein he gave them golden rules for discover- 
 
JNFA LL IBL A / / 'ITCH- TRAPS. 
 
 279 
 
 ing witches, and laid great stress upon certain 
 ])rotecting charms, and especially horse-shoos. 
 Immediately the townspeople went to work 
 nailing up horse-shoes over every door, and so 
 many anxious parents apprenticed their chiUlren 
 to farriers to keep them out of harm's way, that 
 it became cpiite a genteel trade, and Hourished 
 exceedingly. 
 
 In the midst of all this bustle John Podgers 
 ate and slept as usual, but shook his head a great 
 deal oftener than was his custom, and was ob- 
 served to look at the oxen less, and at the old 
 women more. He had a little shelf put up in 
 his sitting-room, whereon was displayed, in a 
 row which grew longer every week, all the witch- 
 craft literature of the time ; he grew learned in 
 charms and exorcisms, hinted at certain ques- 
 tionable females on broomsticks whom he had 
 seen from his chamber window riding in the air 
 at night, and was in constant terror of being 
 bewitched. At length, from perpetually dwell- 
 ing upon this one idea, which, being alone in 
 his head, had all its own way, the fear of witches 
 became the single passion of his life. He, who 
 up to that time had never known what it was to 
 dream, began to have visions of witches when- 
 ever he fell asleep ; waking, they were inces- ■ 
 santly present to his imagination likewise \ and, 
 sleeping or waking, he had not a moment's 
 peace. He began to set witch-traps in the high- 
 way, and was often seen lying in wait round the 
 corner for hours together, to watch their effect. 
 These engines were of simple construction, 
 usually consisting of two straws disposed in the 
 form of a cross, or a piece of a Bible cover with 
 a pinch of salt upon it ; but they were infallible, 
 and if an old woman chanced to stumble over 
 them (as not unfrequently happened, the chosen 
 spot being a broken and stony place), John 
 started from a doze, pounced out upon her, and 
 hung round her neck till assistance arrived, 
 when she was immediately carried away and 
 drowned. By dint of constantly inveigling old 
 ladies and disposing of them in this summary 
 manner, he acquired the reputation of a great 
 public character ; and as he received no harm 
 in these pursuits beyond a scratched face or so, 
 he came, in the course of time, to be considered 
 witch-proof 
 
 There was but one person who entertained 
 the least doubt of John Podgers's gifts, and that 
 l)erson was his own nephew, a wild, roving 
 young fellow of twenty who had been brought 
 up in his uncle's house, and lived there still, — 
 that is to say, when he was at home, which was 
 not as often as it might have been. As he was 
 an apt scholar, it was he who read aloud every 
 
 fresh piece of strange and terrible intelligence 
 that John Podgers bought ; and this he always 
 ditl of an evening in the little porch in front of 
 the house, round which the neighbours would 
 flock in crowds to hear the direful news, — for 
 people like to be frightened, and when they can 
 be Irightcned for nothing and at another man's 
 expense, they like it all the better. 
 
 One fine midsummer evening, a group of per- 
 sons were gathered in this place, listening in- 
 tently to Will Marks (that was the nephew's 
 name), as with his cap very much on one side, 
 his arm coiled slily round the waist of a pretty 
 girl who sat beside him, and his face screwed 
 into a comical expression intended to represent 
 extreme gravity, he read— with Heaven knows 
 how many embellishments of his own — a dismal 
 account of a gentleman down in Northampton- 
 shire under the influence of witchcraft, and taken 
 forcible possession of by the Devil, who was 
 playing his very self with him. John Podgers, 
 in a high sugar-loaf hat and short cloak, filled 
 the opposite seat, and surveyed the auditory 
 with a look of mingled pride and horror very 
 edifying to see ; while the hearers, with their 
 heads thrust forward and their mouths open, 
 listened and trembled, and hoped there was a 
 great deal more to come. Sometimes Will 
 stopped for an instant to look round upon his 
 eager audience, and then, with a more comical 
 expression of face than before, and a settling 
 of himself comfortably, which included a squeeze 
 ofthe young lady before mentioned, he launched 
 into some new wonder surpassing all the others. 
 
 The setting sun shed his last golden rays 
 upon this little party, who, absorbed in their 
 present occupation, took no heed of the ap- 
 proach of night, or the glory in which the day 
 went dov/n, when the sound of a horse, ap- 
 proaching at a good round trot, invading the 
 silence of the hour, caused the reader to make 
 a sudden stop, and the listeners to raise their 
 heads in wonder. Nor was their wonder dimi- 
 nished when a horseman dashed up to the porch, 
 and abruptly checking his steed, inquired where 
 one John Podgers dwelt. 
 
 " Here ! " cried a dozen voices, while a dozen 
 hands pointed out sturdy John, still basking in 
 the terrors of the pamphlet. 
 
 The rider, giving his bridle to one of those 
 who surrounded him, dismounted, and ap- 
 proached John, hat in hand, but with great 
 haste. 
 
 " Whence come ye ? " said John. 
 
 " From Kingston, master." 
 
 " And wherefore?" 
 
 " On most pressing business." 
 
28o 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 " Of what nature ? " 
 
 " Witchcraft." 
 
 Witchcraft ! Everybody looked aghast at the 
 breathless messenger, and the breathless mes- 
 senger looked equally aghast at everybody — 
 except Will Marks, who, finding himself unob- 
 served, not only squeezed the young lady again, 
 but kissed her twice. Surely he must have been 
 bewitched himself, or he never could have done 
 it — and the young lady too, or she never would 
 have let him. 
 
 " Witchcraft!" cried Will, drowning the sound 
 of his last kiss, which was rather a loud one. 
 
 The messenger turned towards him, and with 
 a frown repeated the word more solemnly than 
 before ; then told his errand, which was, in 
 brief, that the people of Kingston had been 
 greatly terrified for some nights past by hideous 
 revels, held by witches beneatli the gibbet within 
 a mile of the town, and related and deposed to 
 by chance wayfarers who had passed within ear- 
 shot of the spot ; that the sound of their voices 
 in their wild orgies had been plainly heard by 
 many persons ; that three old women laboured 
 under strong suspicion, and that precedents had 
 been consulted and solemn council had, and it 
 was found that to identify the hags some single 
 person must watch upon the spot alone ; that 
 no single person had the courage to perform the 
 task ; and that he had been dispatched express 
 to solicit John Podgers to undertake it that 
 very night, as being a man of great renown, who 
 bore a charmed life, and was proof against un- 
 holy spells. 
 
 John received this communication with much 
 composure, and said in a few words that it 
 would have afforded him inexpressible pleasure 
 to do the Kingston people so slight a service, 
 if it were not for his unfortunate propensity to 
 fall asleep, which no man regretted more than 
 himself upon the present occasion, but which 
 quite settled the question. Nevertheless, he 
 said, there 7iias a gentleman present (and here 
 he looked very hard at a tall farrier), who, hav- 
 ing been engaged all his life in the manufacture 
 of horse-shoes, must be (juite invulnerable to 
 the power of witches, and who, he had no doubt, 
 from his known reputation for bravery and good- 
 nature, would readily accept the commission. 
 The farrier politely thanked him for his good 
 opinion, which it would always be his study to 
 deserve, but added that, with regard to the pre- 
 sent little matter, he couldn't think of it on any 
 account, as his departing on such an errand 
 would certainly occasion the instant death of his 
 wife, to whom, as they all knew, he was tenderly 
 attached. Now, so far from this circumstance 
 
 being notorious, everybody had suspected the 
 reverse, as the farrier was in the habit of beat- 
 ing his lady rather more than tender husbands 
 usually do ; all the married men present, how- 
 ever, applauded his resolution with great vehe- 
 mence, and one and all declared that they 
 would stop at home and die if needful (which 
 happily it was not) in defence of their lawful 
 partners. 
 
 This burst of enthusiasm over, they began to 
 look, as by one consent, toward Will Marks, 
 who, with his cap more on one side than ever, 
 sat watching the proceedings with extraordinary 
 unconcern. He had never been heard openly 
 to express his disbelief in witches, but had often 
 cut such jokes at their expense as left it to be 
 inferred ; publicly stating on several occasions 
 that he considered a broomstick an incon- 
 venient charger, and one especially unsuited 
 to the dignity of the female character, and in- 
 dulging in other free remarks of the same tend- 
 ency, to the great amusement of his wild com- 
 panions. 
 
 As they looked at Will ihey began to whisper 
 and murmur among themselves, and at length 
 one man cried, "Why don't you ask Will 
 Marks?" 
 
 As this was what everybody had been think- 
 ing of, they all took up the word, and cried m 
 concert, " Ah ! why don't you ask Will ?" 
 
 '■'■He don't care," said the farrier. 
 
 "Not he," added another voice in the crowd. 
 
 "He don't believe in it, you know," sneered 
 a little man with a yellow face and a taunting 
 nose and chin, which he thrust out from under 
 the arm of a long man before him. 
 
 " Besides," said a red-faced gentleman with a 
 gruff voice, " he's a single man." 
 
 "That's the point ! " said the farrier; and all 
 the married men murmured, ah ! that was it, 
 and they only wished they were single them- 
 selves ; they would show him what spirit was, 
 very soon. 
 
 The messenger looked towards Will ^larks 
 beseechingly. 
 
 " It will be a wet night, friend, and my grey 
 nag is tired after yesterday's work " 
 
 Here there was a general litter. 
 
 " But," resumed Will, looking about him with 
 a smile, " if nobody else puts in a better claim 
 to go, for the credit of the town, I am your 
 man, and I woi'ld be, if I had to go afoot. In 
 five minutes I shall be in the saddle, unless I 
 am depriving any worthy gentleman here of the 
 honour of the adventure, which I wouldn't do 
 for the world." 
 
 But here arose a double difficulty, for not only 
 
: I 
 
 .- z 
 
 ;; o 
 
 z > 
 
 < > 
 
ON THE LOOK-OUT FOR WITCHES. 
 
 281 
 
 did John Podgers combat the resolution with all 
 the words he had, which were not many, but the 
 young lady combated it too with all the tears 
 she had, which were very many indeed. Will, 
 however, being inflexible, parried his uncle's 
 objections with a joke, and coaxed the young 
 lady into a smile in three short whispers. As it 
 was plain that he set his mind upon it and 
 would go, John Podgers offered him a few first- 
 rate charms out of his own pocket, which he 
 dutifully declined to accept ; and the young 
 lady gave him a kiss, which he also returned. 
 
 '• You see what a rare thing it is to be mar- 
 ried," said Will, " and how careful and consider- 
 ate all these husbands are. There's not a man 
 among them but his heart is leaping to forestall 
 me in this adventure, and yet a strong sense of 
 duty keeps him back. The husbands in this 
 one little town are a pattern to the world, and 
 so must the wives be too. for that matter, or 
 they could never boast half the influence thev 
 have ! " 
 
 Waiting for no reply to this sarcasm, he 
 snapped his fingers and withdrew into the house, 
 and thence into the stable, while some busied 
 themselves in refreshing the messenger, and 
 others in baiting his steed. In less than the 
 specified time he returned by another way, with 
 a good cloak hanging over his arm, a good sword 
 girded by his side, and leading his good horse 
 caparisoned for the journey. 
 
 •' Now," said W^ill, leaping into the saddle at 
 a bound, " up and away. Upon your mettle, 
 friend, and push on. Good night." 
 
 He kissed his hand to the girl, nodded to his 
 drowsy uncle, waved his cap to the rest — and 
 off they flew pell-mell, as if all the witches in 
 England were in their horses' legs. They were 
 out of sight in a minute. 
 
 The men who were left behind shook their 
 heads doubtfully, stroked their chins, and shook 
 their heads again. The farrier said that cer- 
 tainly Will ^^arks was a good horseman, nobody 
 should ever say he denied that ; but he was rash, 
 very rash, and there was no telling what the end 
 of it might be. What did he go for, that was 
 what he wanted to know ? He wished the 
 young fellow no harm, but why did he go ? 
 Ever}'body echoed these words, and shook their 
 heads again, having done which they wished 
 John Podgers good night, and straggled home 
 to bed. 
 
 The Kingston people were in their first sleep 
 when Will Marks and his conductor rode through 
 the town, and up to the door of a house where 
 sundry grave functionaries were assembled, 
 I'.nxiously expecting the arrival of the renowned 
 
 Podgers. They were a little disappointed to 
 find a gay young man in his place ; but they 
 put the best face upon the matter, and gave him 
 full instructions how he was to conceal himself 
 behind the gibbet, and watch and listen to the 
 witches, and how at a certain time he was to 
 burst forth and cut and slash among them 
 vigorously, so that the suspected parties might 
 be found bleeding in their beds next day, and 
 thoroughly confounded. They gave him a great 
 quantity of wholesome advice besides, and — 
 which was more to the purpose with Will — a 
 good supper. All these things being done, and 
 midnight nearly come, they sallied forth to show 
 him the spot where he was to keep his dreary 
 \-igil. 
 
 The night was by this time dark and threaten- 
 ing. There was a rumbling of distant thunder, 
 and a low sighing of wind among the trees, which 
 was very dismal. The potentates of the town 
 kept so uncommonly close to Will that they 
 trod upon his toes, or stumbled against his 
 ankles, or nearly tripped up his heels at 
 every step he took, and besides these annoy- 
 ances, their teeth chattered so with fear, that he 
 seemed to be accompanied by a dirge of casta- 
 nets. 
 
 At last they made a halt at the opening of a 
 lonely, desolate space, and pointing to a black 
 object at some distance, asked Will if he saw- 
 that }'onder. 
 
 " Yes," he replied. " What then ? " 
 
 Informing him abruptly that it was the gibbet 
 where he was to watch, they wished him good 
 night in an exiremely friendly manner, and ran 
 back as fast as their feet would carry them. 
 
 Will walked boldly to the gibbet, and glanc- 
 ing upwards when he came under it, saw — cer- 
 tainly with satisfaction — that it was empty, and 
 that nothing dangled fi-om the top but some iron 
 chains, which swung mournfully to and fro as 
 they were moved by the breeze. After a care- 
 ful survey of every quarter, he determined to 
 take his station with his face towards the town, 
 both because that would place him with his back 
 to the wind, and because if any trick or surprise 
 were attempted, it would probably come from 
 that direction in the first instance. Having taken 
 these precautions, he wrapped his cloak about 
 him so that it left the handle of his sword free, 
 and ready to his hand, and leaning against the 
 gallows-tree with his cap not quite so much on 
 one side as it had been before, took up his posi- 
 tion for the night. 
 
282 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 SECOND CHAPTER OF ]\IR. PICKWICK'S 
 TALE. 
 
 We left Will Marks leaning under the gibbet 
 with his face towards the town, scanning the 
 distance with a keen eye, which sought to pierce 
 the darkness and catch the earliest glimpse of 
 any person or persons that might approach towards 
 him. l>ut all was quiet, and save the howling of 
 the wind as it swept across the heath in gusts, and 
 the creaking of the chains that dangled above 
 his head, there was no sound to break the sullen 
 stillness of the night. After half an hour or so 
 this monotony became more disconcerting to 
 Will than the most furious uproar would have 
 been, and he heartily wished for some one anta- 
 gonist with whom he might have a fair stand-up 
 figlit, if it were only to warm himself. 
 
 Truth to tell, it was a bitter wind, and seemed 
 to blow to the very heart of a man whose blood, 
 heated but now with rapid riding, was the more 
 sensitive to the chilling blast. Will was a dar- 
 ing fellow, and cared not a jot for hard knocks 
 or sharp blades ; but he could not persuade 
 himself to move or walk about, having just that 
 vague expectation of a sudden assault which 
 made it a comfortable thing to have something 
 at his back, even though that something were a 
 gallows-tree. He had no great faith in the 
 superstitions of the age ; still such of them as 
 occurred to him did not serve to lighten the 
 time, or to render his situation the more en- 
 durable. He remembered how witches were 
 said to repair at that ghostly hour to church- 
 yards and gibbets, and such-like dismal spots, 
 to pluck the bleeding mandrake or scrape the 
 flesh from dead men's bones, as choice ingre- 
 dients for their spells ; how, stealing by night to 
 lonely places, they dug graves with their finger- 
 nails, or anointed themselves, before riding in 
 the air, with a delicate pomatum made of the fat 
 of infants newly boiled. These and many other 
 fabled practices of a no less agreeable nature, and 
 all having some reference to the circumstances 
 in which he was placed, passed and repassed 
 in quick succession through the mind of Will 
 Marks, and adding a shadowy dread to that 
 distrust and watchfulness which his situation 
 inspired, rendered it, upon the whole, sufficiently 
 uncomfortable. As he had foreseen, too, the 
 rain began to descend heavily, and driving 
 before the wind in a thick mist, obscured even 
 those few objects which the darkness of the 
 night had before imj)erfectly revealed. 
 
 " Look ! " shrieked a voice. " Great Heaven, 
 it has fallen down, and stands erect as if it 
 lived ! " 
 
 The speaker was close behind him ; the voice 
 was almost at his ear. Will threw oft' his cloak, 
 drew his sword, and darting swiftly round, seized 
 a woman by the wrist, who, recoiling from him 
 with a dreadful shriek, fell struggling upon her 
 knees. Another woman, clad, like her whom 
 he had grasped, in mourning garments, stood 
 rooted to the spot on which they were, gazing 
 upon his face with wild and glaring eyes that 
 quite appalled him. 
 
 " Say," cried Will, when they had confronted 
 each other thus for some time, '' what are ye ? " 
 
 "Say what are you^' returned the woman, 
 " who trouble even this obscene resting-place 
 of the dead, and strip the gibbet of its honoured 
 burden ? Where is the body ? " 
 
 He looked in wonder and affright from the 
 woman who questioned him to the other whose 
 arm he clutched. 
 
 "Where is the body?" repeated his ques- 
 tioner, more firmly than before. " You wear no 
 livery which marks you for the hireling of the 
 government. You are no friend to us, or I 
 should recognise you, for the friends of such as 
 we are fev/ in number. What are you then, and 
 wherefore are you here ? " 
 
 " I am no foe to the distressed and helpless," 
 said Will. " Are ye among that number ? Ye 
 should be by your looks." 
 
 " We are," was the answer. 
 
 " Is it ye who have been wailing and weeping 
 here under cover of the night .'' " said Will. 
 
 " It is," replied the woman sternly; and point- 
 ing, as she spoke, towards her companion, " she 
 mourns a husband, and I a brother. Even the 
 bloody law that wreaks its vengeance on the dead 
 does not make that a crime, and if it did 'twould 
 be alike to us who are past its fear or favour.'" 
 
 Will glanced at the two females, and could 
 barely discern that the one whom he addressed 
 was much the elder, and that the other was 
 young and of a slight figure. Both were deadly- 
 pale, their garments wet and worn, their hair di- 
 shevelled and streaming in the wind, themselves 
 bowed down with grief and misery ; their whole 
 appearance most dejected, wretched, and forlorn. 
 A sight so different from any he had expected 
 to encounter touched him to the quick, and all 
 idea of anything but their })itiable condition 
 vanished before it. 
 
 " I am a rough, blunt yeoman," said Will. 
 " Why I came here is told in a word : }-ou have 
 been overheard at a distance in the silence of 
 the night, and I have undertaken a watch for 
 hags or spirits. I came here expecting an ad- 
 venture, and prepared to go through with any. 
 If there be aught that I can do to help or aid 
 
A MYSTERIOUS SERVICE PROPOSED. 
 
 2^3 
 
 you, name it, and on the faith of a man who 
 can be secret and trusty, I will stand by you to 
 
 the death." 
 
 "How comes this gibbet to be empty?" 
 asked the elder female. 
 
 " I swear to you," replied Will, " tliat I know 
 as little as yourself. But this I know, that when 
 I came here an hour ago or so, it was as it is 
 now ; and if, as I gather from your question, it 
 was not so last night, sure I am that it has been 
 secretly disturbed without the knowledge of the 
 folks in yonder town. Bethink you, therefore, 
 whether you have no friends in league with you, 
 or with him on whom the law has done its worst, 
 by whom these sad remains have been removed 
 for burial." 
 
 The women spoke together, and Will retired 
 a pace or two while they conversed apart. He 
 could hear them sob and moan, and saw that 
 they wrung their hands in fruitless agony. He 
 could make out little that they said, but between- 
 whiles he gathered enough to assure him that 
 his suggestion was not very wide of the mark, 
 and that they not only suspected by whom the 
 body had been removed, but also whither it had 
 been conveyed. When they had been in con- 
 versation a long time, they turned towards him 
 once more. This time the younger female 
 spoke. 
 
 '' You have offered us your help ? " 
 
 " I have." 
 
 " And given a pledge that you are still willing 
 to redeem ? " 
 
 " Yes. So far as I may, keeping all plots and 
 conspiracies at arm's length." 
 
 " Follow us, friend." 
 
 Will, whose self-possession was now quite re- 
 stored, needed no second bidding, but with his 
 drawn sword in his hand, and his cloak so 
 muffled over his left arm as to serve for a kind 
 of shield without offering any impediment to its 
 free action, suffered them to lead the way. 
 Through mud and mire, and wind and rain, 
 they walked in silence a full mile. At length 
 they turned into a dark lane, where suddenly 
 starting out from beneath some trees where he 
 had taken shelter, a man appeared, having in 
 his charge three saddled horses. One of these 
 (his own apparently), in obedience to a whisper 
 from the women, he consigned to Will, who, 
 seeing that they mounted, mounted also. Then, 
 without a word spoken, they rode on together, 
 leaving the attendant behind. 
 
 They made no halt nor slackened their pace 
 until they arrived near Putney. At a large wooden 
 house, which stood apart from any other, they 
 alighted, and giving their horses to one who 
 
 was already waiting, passed in by a side-door, 
 and so up some narrow creaking stairs into a 
 small panelled chamber, where Will was left 
 alone. He had not been here very long, when 
 the door was softly ojjened, and there entered 
 to him a cavalier whose face was concealed be- 
 neath a black mask. 
 
 ^\'ill stood upon his guard, and scrutinised 
 this figure from head to foot. The form was that 
 of a man pretty far advanced in life, but of a firm 
 and stately carriage. His dress was of a rich and 
 costly kind, but so soiled and disordered that it 
 was scarcely to be recognised for one of those 
 gorgeous suits which the expensive taste and 
 fashion of the time prescribed for men of any 
 rank or station. He was booted and spurred, 
 and bore about him even as many tokens of the 
 state of the roads as Will himself. All this he 
 noted, while the eyes behind the mask regarded 
 him with equal attention. This survey over, the 
 cavalier broke silence. 
 
 " Thou'rt young and bold, and wouldst be 
 richer than thou art ? " 
 
 " The two first I am," returned Will. " The 
 last I have scarcely thought of. But be it so. 
 Say that I would be richer than I am ; what 
 then ? " 
 
 " The way lies before thee now," replied the 
 Mask. 
 
 " Show it me." 
 
 " First let me inform thee that thou wert 
 brought here to-night lest thou shouldst too 
 soon have told thy tale to those who placed 
 thee on the watch." 
 
 " I thought as much when I followed," said 
 Will. " But I am no blab, not I." 
 
 " Good," returned the Mask. " Now listen. 
 He who was to have executed the enterprise of 
 burying that body, which, as thou hast sus- 
 pected, was taken down to-night, has left us in 
 our need." 
 
 Will nodded, and thought within himself that 
 if the Mask were to attempt to play any tricks, 
 the first eyelet-hole on the left-hand side of his 
 doublet, counting from the buttons up the front, 
 would be a very good place in which to pink 
 him neatly. 
 
 " Thou art here, and the emergency is des- 
 perate. I propose his task to thee. Convey the 
 body (now cofiined in this house), by means 
 that I shall show, to the church of St. Dunstan 
 in London to-morrow night, and thy service 
 shall be richly paid. Thou'rt about to ask whose 
 corpse it is. Seek not to know. I warn thee, 
 seek not to know. Felons hang in chains on 
 every moor and heath. Believe, as others do, 
 that this was one, and ask no further. The 
 
284 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 murders of state policy, its victims or avengers, 
 
 had best remain unknown to such as thee." 
 
 " The mystery of this service," said Will, 
 " bespeaks its danger. What is the reward?" 
 
 " One hundred golden unities," replied the 
 cavalier. " The danger to one who cannot be 
 recognised as the friend of a fallen cause is not 
 great, but there is some hazard to be run. De- 
 cide between that and the reward." 
 
 "What if I refuse?" said Will. 
 
 " Depart in peace, in God's name," returned 
 the Mask in a melancholy tone, '" and keep our 
 -ecret, remembering that those who brought 
 thee here were crushed and stricken women, 
 and that those who bade thee go free could 
 have had thy life with one word, and no man 
 the wiser." 
 
 Men were readier to undertake desperate ad- 
 ventures in those times than they are now. In 
 this case the temptation was great, and the 
 punishment, even in case of detection, was not 
 likely to be very severe, as Will came of a loyal 
 stock, and his uncle was in good repute, and a 
 passable tale to account for his possession of the 
 body and his ignorance of the identity might be 
 easily devised. 
 
 The cavalier explained that a covered cart had 
 been prepared for the purpose ; that the time of 
 departure could be arranged so that he should 
 reach London Bridge at dusk, and proceed 
 through the City after the day had closed in ; 
 that people would be ready at his journey's end 
 to place the coffin in a vault without a minute's 
 delay ; that officious inquirers in the streets 
 would be easily repelled by the tale that he was 
 carrying for interment the corpse of one who 
 had died of the plague ; and, in short, showed 
 him every reason why he should succeed, and 
 none why he should fail. After a time they 
 were joined by another gentleman, masked like 
 the first, who added new arguments to those 
 which had been already urged ; the wretched 
 wife, too, added her tears and prayers to their 
 calmer representations ; and in the end, Will, 
 moved by compassion and good-nature, by a 
 love of the marvellous, by a mischievous antici- 
 pation of the terrors of the Kingston people 
 when he should be missing next day, and finally, 
 by the prospect of gain, took upon himself the 
 task, and devoted all his energies to its success- 
 ful execution. 
 
 The following night, when it was quite dark, the 
 hollow echoes of old London Bridge responded 
 to the rumbling of the cart which contained the 
 ghastly load, the object of Will Marks' care. 
 Sufficiently disguised to attract no attention by 
 his garb, Will walked at the horse's head, as un- 
 
 concerned as a man could be who was sensible 
 that he had now arrived at the most dangerous 
 part of his undertaking, but full of boldness and 
 confidence. 
 
 It was now eight o'clock. After nine, none 
 could walk the streets without danger of their 
 lives, and even at this hour robberies and murder 
 were of no uncommon occurrence. The shops 
 upon the bridge were all closed ; the low wooden 
 arches thrown across the way were like so many 
 black pits, in every one of which ill-favoured 
 fellows lurked in knots of three or four ; some 
 standing upright against the wall, lying in wait : 
 others skulking in gateways, and thrusting out 
 their uncombed heads and scowling eyes ; others 
 crossing and recrossing, and constantly jostling 
 both horse and man to provoke a quarrel; others 
 stealing away and summoning their companions 
 in a low whistle. Once, even in that short pas- 
 sage, there was the noise of scuffling and the 
 clash of swords behind him ; but Will, who 
 knew the City and its ways, kept straight on, 
 and scarcely turned his head. 
 
 The streets being unpaved, the rain of the 
 night before had converted them into a perfect 
 quagmire, which the splashing water-spouts from 
 the gables, and the filth and offal cast from the 
 different houses, swelled in no small degree. 
 These odious matters, being left to putrefy in 
 the close and heavy air, emitted an insupport- 
 able stench, to which every court and passage 
 poured forth a contribution of its own. Many 
 parts, even of the main streets, with their pro- 
 jecting stories tottering overhead and nearly 
 shutting out the sky, were more like huge chim- 
 neys than open ways. At the corners of some 
 of these, great bonfires were burning to prevent 
 infection from the plague, of which it was ru- 
 moured that some citizens had lately died ; and 
 few who, availing themselves of the light thus 
 afforded, paused for a moment to look around 
 them, would have been disposed to doubt the 
 existence of the disease, or wonder at its dread- 
 ful visitations. 
 
 But it was not in such scenes as these, or even 
 in the deep and miry road, that Will Marks found 
 the chief obstacles to his progress. There were 
 kites and ravens feeding in the streets (the only 
 scavengers the City kept), who, scenting what 
 he carried, followed the cart or fluttered on its 
 top, and croaked their knowledge of its burden 
 and their ravenous appetite for prey. There 
 were distant fires, where the poor wood-and- 
 plaster tenements wasted fiercely, and whither 
 crowds made their way, clamouring eagerly for 
 plunder, beating down all who came within their 
 reach, and yelhng like devils let loose. There 
 
THE MYSTERIOUS SERVICE PERFORMED. 
 
 285 
 
 were single-handeJ men flying from bands of 
 ruffians, who pursued them with naked weapons, 
 and hunted them savagely ; there were drunken, 
 desperate robbers issuing from their dens and 
 staggering through the open streets, where no 
 man dared molest them ; tliere were vagabond 
 servitors returning from the Bear Garden, where 
 had been good sport that day, dragging after 
 them their torn and bleeding dogs, or leaving 
 them to die and rot upon the road. Nothing 
 was abroad but cruelty, violence, and disorder. 
 
 Many were the interruptions which Will 
 Marks encountered from these stragglers, and 
 many the narrow escapes he made. Now some 
 stout bully would take his seat upon the cart, 
 insisting to be driven to his own home, and now 
 two or three men would come down upon him 
 together, and demand that on peril of his life 
 he showed them what he had inside. Then a 
 party of the City watch, upon their rounds, would 
 draw across the road, and not satisfied with his 
 tale, question him closely, and revenge them- 
 selves by a little cuffing and hustling for mal- 
 treatment sustained at other hands that night. 
 All these assailants had to be rebutted, some by 
 fair words, some by foul, and some by blows. 
 But Will Marks was not the man to be stopped 
 or turned back now he had penetrated so far, 
 and though he got on slowly, still he made his 
 way down Fleet Street, and reached the church 
 at last. 
 
 As he had been forewarned, all was in readi- 
 ness. Directly he stopped, the coffin was re- 
 moved by four men, who appeared so suddenly 
 that they seemed to have started from the earth. 
 A fifth mounted the cart, and scarcely allowing 
 Will time to snatch from it a little bundle con- 
 taining such of his own clothes as he had thrown 
 off on assuming his disguise, drove briskly away. 
 Will never saw cart or man again. 
 
 He followed the body into the church, and it 
 was well he lost no time in doing so, for the 
 door was immediately closed. There was no 
 light in the building save that which came from 
 a couple of torches borne by two men in cloaks, 
 who stood upon the brink of a vault. Each 
 supported a female figure, and all observed a 
 profound silence. 
 
 By this dim and solemn glare, which made 
 Will feel as though light itself were dead, and 
 its tomb the dreary arches that frowned above, 
 they placed the coffin in the vault, with un- 
 covered heads, and closed it up. One of the 
 torch-bearers then turned to Will and stretched 
 forth his hand, in which was a j)urse of gold. 
 Something told him directly that those were the 
 same eyes which he had seen beneath the mask. 
 
 " Take it," said the cavalier in a low voice, 
 " and be hajjpy. Though these have been hasty 
 obsequies, and no priest has blessed the work, 
 there will not be the less peace with thee here- 
 after, for having laid his bones beside those of 
 his little children. Keep thy own counsel, for 
 thy sake no less than ours, and God be with 
 thee ! " 
 
 " The blessing of a widowed mother on thy 
 head, good friend ! " cried the younger lady 
 through her tears ; " the blessing of one who 
 has now no hope or rest but in this grave ! " 
 
 Will stood with the purse in his hand, and 
 involuntarily made a gesture as though he would 
 return it, for though a thoughtless fellow, he 
 was of a frank and generous nature. But the 
 two gentlemen, extinguishing their torches, cau- 
 tioned him to be gone, as their common safety 
 would be endangered by a longer delay; and at 
 the same time their retreating footsteps sounded 
 through the church. He turned, therefore, to- 
 wards the point at which he had entered, and 
 seeing, by a faint gleam in the distance, that the 
 door was again partially open, groped his way 
 towards it, and so passed into the street. 
 
 Meantime the local authorities of Kingston 
 had kept watch and ward all the previous night, 
 fancying every now and then that dismal shrieks 
 were borne towards them on the wind, and fre- 
 quently winking to each other, and drawing closer 
 to the fire as they drank the health of the lonely 
 sentinel, upon whom a clerical gentleman pre- 
 sent was especially severe by reason of his levity 
 and youthful folly. Two or three of the gravest 
 in company, who were of a theological turn, pro- 
 pounded to him the question, whether such a 
 character was not but poorly armed for a single 
 combat with the Devil, and whether he himself 
 would not have been a stronger opponent ; but 
 the clerical gentleman, sharply reproving them 
 for their presumption in discussing such ques- 
 tions, clearly showed that a fitter chami)ion than 
 Will could scarcely have been selected, not only 
 for that, being a child of Satan, he was the less 
 likely to be alarmed by the appearance of his 
 own father, but because Satan himself would be 
 at his ease in such company, and would not 
 scruple to kick up his heels to an extent which 
 it was quite certain he would never venture 
 before clerical eyes, under whose influence (as 
 was notorious) he became quite a tame and 
 milk-and-water character. 
 
 But when next morning arrived, and with it 
 no Will Marks, and when a strong party repair- 
 ing to the spot, as a strong party ventured to do 
 in broad day, found Will gone and the gibbet 
 empty, matters grew serious indeed. The day 
 
2S6 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 passing away and no news arriving, and the 
 night going on also without any intelligence, the 
 thing grew more tremendous still ; in short, the 
 neighbourhood worketl itself up to such a com- 
 fortable pitch of mystery and horror, that it is a 
 great question whether the general feeling was 
 not one of excessive disappointment when, on 
 the second morning, Will ATarks returned. 
 
 However this may be, back Will came in a 
 very cool and collected state, and appearing not 
 to trouble himself much about anybody except 
 old John Podgers, who, having been sent for, 
 was sitting in the Town-hall crying slowly, and 
 dozing between-whiles. Having embraced his 
 uncle and assured him of his safety, Will mounted 
 on a table and told his story to the crowd. 
 
 And surely they would have been the most 
 unreasonable crowd that ever assembled to- 
 gether, if they had been in the least respect dis- 
 appointed with the tale he told them ; for, besides 
 describing the Witches" Dance to the minutest 
 motion of their legs, and performing it in cha- 
 racter on the table, with the assistance of a 
 broomstick, he related how they had carried off 
 the body in a copper cauldron, and so bewitched 
 him, that he lost his senses until he found 
 himself lying under a hedge at least ten miles 
 off, whence he had straightway returned as they 
 then beheld. The story gained such universal 
 applause that it soon afterwards brought down 
 express from London the great witch-finder of 
 the age, the Heaven-born Hopkins, who, having 
 examined Will closely on several points, pro- 
 nounced it the most extraordinary and the best 
 accredited witch story ever known, under which 
 title it was published at the Three Bibles on 
 London Bridge, in a small quarto, with view 
 of the cauldron from an original drawing, and a 
 portrait of the clerical gentleman as he sat by 
 the fire. 
 
 On one point Will was particularly careful : 
 and that was to describe, for the witches he had 
 seen, three impossible old females, whose like- 
 nesses never were or will be. Thus he saved 
 the lives of the suspected parties, and of all 
 other old women who were dragged before him 
 to be identified. 
 
 This circumstance occasioned John Podgers 
 much grief and sorrow, until, happening one day 
 to cast his eyes upon his housekeeper, and ob- 
 serving her to be plainly afflicted with rheuma- 
 tism, he procured her to be burnt as an un- 
 doubted witch. For this service to the state he 
 was immediately knighted, and became from 
 that time Sir John Podgers. 
 
 Will ALarks never gained any clue to the 
 mystery in which he had been an actor, nor did 
 
 any inscription in the church, which he often 
 visited afterwards, nor any of the limited in- 
 quiries that he dared to make, yield him the 
 least assistance. As he kept his own secret, he 
 was compelled to spend the gold discreetly and 
 sparingly. \\\ the course of time he married the 
 young lady of whom I have already told you, 
 whose maiden name is not recorded, with whom 
 he led a prosperous and happy life. Years and 
 years after this adventure, it was his wont to tell 
 her upon a stormy night that it was a great com- 
 fort to him to think those bones, to whomso- 
 ever they might have once belonged, were not 
 bleaching in the troubled air, but were moulder- 
 ing away with the dust of their own kith and 
 kindred in a quiet grave. 
 
 FURTHER PARTICULARS OF MASTER 
 HUMPHREY'S VISITOR. 
 
 Being very full of ]\Ir. Pickwick's application, 
 and highly pleased with the compliment he 
 had paid me, it will be readily supposed that 
 long before our next night of meeting I com- 
 municated it to my three friends, who unani- 
 mously voted his admission into our body. We 
 all looked forward with some impatience to the 
 occasion which would enrol him among us, but 
 I am greatly mistaken if Jack Redburn and 
 myself were not by many degrees the most 
 impatient of the party. 
 
 At length the night came, and a few minutes 
 after ten Mr. Pickwick's knock was heard at the 
 street-door. He was shown into a lower room, 
 and I directly took my crooked stick and went 
 to accompany him up-stairs, in order that he 
 might be presented with all honour and for- 
 mality. 
 
 " Mr. Pickwick," said I on entering the room, 
 " I am rejoiced to see you — rejoiced to believe 
 that this is but the opening of a long series of 
 visits to this house, and but the beginning of a 
 close and lasting friendship." 
 
 That gentleman made a suitable reply with a 
 cordiality and frankness peculiarly his own, and 
 glanced with a smile towards two persons behind 
 the door, whom I had not at first observed, and 
 whom 1 immediately recognised as Mr. Samuel 
 Wellcr and his father. 
 
 It was a warm evening, but the elder INIr. 
 Weller was attired notwithstanding in a most 
 capacious great-coat, and his chin enveloped in 
 a large speckled shawl, such as is usually Avorn 
 by stage-coachmen on active service. He looked 
 very rosy and very stout, especially about the 
 legs, which appeared to have been compressed 
 
MA\ WELLER SENIOR HAS A QUESTION 10 ASK. 
 
 into his top-boots with some difficulty. His 
 broad-brimmed hat he held under his left arm, 
 and with the forefinger of his right hand he 
 touched his forehead a great many times, in 
 acknowledgment of my presence. 
 
 " I am very glad to see you in such good 
 health, Mr. Wellcr," said I. 
 
 "Why, thankee, sir," returned Mr. Weller, 
 "the axle an't broke yet. We keeps up a steady 
 pace, — not too sewere, but vith a moderate de- 
 gree o' friction, — and the consekens is that ve're 
 still a runnin' and comes in to the timereg'lar. — 
 My son Samivel, sir, as you may have read on 
 in history," added Mr. Weller, introducing his 
 first-born. 
 
 I received Sam very graciously, but, before he 
 could say a word, his father struck in again. 
 
 '' Samivel Veller, sir," said the old gentleman, 
 "has con-ferred upon me the ancient title o' 
 grandfather, vich had long laid dormouse, and 
 wos s'posed to be nearly hex-tinct in our family, 
 Sammy, relate a anecdote o' vun o' them boys, — 
 that 'ere little anecdote about young Tonysayin' 
 as he vould smoke a pipe unbeknown to his 
 mother." 
 
 " Be quiet, can't you ? " said Sam. " I never 
 see such a old magpie — never." 
 
 " That 'ere Tony is the blessedest boy," said 
 Mr. Weller, heedless of this rebuff, " the bless- 
 edest boy as ever /see in 7ny days ! Of all the 
 charmin'est infants as ever I heerd tell on, in- 
 cludin' them as was kivered over by the robin 
 redbreasts arter they'd committed sooicide with 
 blackberries, there never wos any like that 'ere 
 little Tony. He's alvays a playin' vith a quart 
 pot, that boy is ! To see him a settin' down on 
 the door-step pretending to drink out of it, and 
 fetching a long breath artervards, and smoking 
 a bit of fire-vood, and sayin', ' Now I'm grand- 
 father,' — to see him a doin' that at two year old 
 is better than any play as wos ever wrote. ' Now 
 I'm grandfather ! ' He wouldn't take a pint pot 
 if you wos to make him a present on it, but he 
 gets his quart, and then he says, ' Now I'm 
 grandfather ! ' " 
 
 ]Mr. Weller was so overpowered by this picture 
 that he straightway fell into a most alarming fit 
 of coughing, which must certainly have been at- 
 tended with some fatal result but for the dex- 
 terity and promptitude of Sam, who, taking a 
 firm grasp of the shawl just under his father's 
 chin, shook him to and fro with great violence, 
 at the same time administering some smart blows 
 between his shoulders. By this curious mode of 
 treatment Mr. Weller was finally recovered, but 
 with a very crimson face, and in a state of great 
 exhaustion. 
 
 " He'll do now, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, who 
 had been in some alarm himself 
 
 " He'll do, sir !" cried Sam, looking reproach- 
 fully at his parent. " Yes, he will do one o' 
 these days, — he'll do for hisself, and then he'll 
 wish he hadn't. Did anybody ever see sich a 
 inconsiderate old file, — laughing into conwul- 
 sions afore company, and stamping on the 
 floor as if he'd brought his own carpet vith 
 him, and wos under a wager to punch the pat- 
 tern out in a given time ? He'll begin again in 
 a minute. There — he's a-goin' off — I said he 
 would ! " 
 
 In fact, Mr. Weller, whose mind was still run- 
 ning upon his precocious grandson, was seen to 
 shake his head from side to side, while a laugh, 
 working like an earthquake, below' the surface, 
 produced various extraordinary appearances in 
 his face, chest, and shoulders, — the more alarm- 
 ing because unaccompanied by any noise what- 
 ever. These emotions, however, gradually sub- 
 sided, and after three or four short relapses he 
 wiped his eyes with the cuff of his coat, and 
 looked about him with tolerable composure. 
 
 " Afore the governor vith-draws," said Mr. 
 Weller, " there is a pint respecting vich Sammy 
 has a qvestion to ask. Vile that qvestion is 
 a perwadin this here conwersation, p'raps the 
 gen'l'men vill permit me to re-tire." 
 
 " Wot are you goin' away for ? " demanded 
 Sam, seizing his father by the coat-tail. 
 
 " I never see such a undootiful boy as you, 
 Samivel," returned INIr. Weller. " Didn't you 
 make a solemn promise, amountin' almost to a 
 speeches o' wow, that you'd put that 'ere qves- 
 tion on my account } " 
 
 " Well, I'm agreeable to do it," said Sam, " but 
 not if you go cuttin' away like that, as the bull 
 turned round and mildly observed to the drover 
 ven they wos a goadin' him into the butcher's 
 door. The fact is, sir," said Sam, addressing 
 me, " that he wants to know somethin' respectin' 
 that 'ere lady as is housekeeper here." 
 
 " Ay. What is that ? " 
 
 " Vy, sir," said Sam, grinning still more, " he 
 wishes to know vether she " 
 
 " In short," interposed old Mr. Weller de- 
 cisively, a perspiration breaking out upon his 
 forehead, " vether that 'ere old creetur is or is 
 not a widder." 
 
 Mr. Pickwick laughed heartily, and so did I, 
 as I replied decisively, that "my housekeeper 
 was a spinster." 
 
 " There ! " cried Sam, " now you're satisfied. 
 You hear she's a spinster." 
 
 "A wot? " said his father with deep scorn. 
 
 " A spinster," replied Sam. 
 
288 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 Mr. Weller looked very hard at his son for a 
 minute or two, and then said : 
 
 " Never mind vether she makes jokes or not, 
 that's no matter. Wot I say is, is that 'ere 
 female a widder, or is she not ? " 
 
 "Wot do you mean by her making jokes?" 
 demanded Sam, quite aghast at the obscurity of 
 his parent's speech. 
 
 " Never you mind, Samivel," returned Mr. 
 Weller gravely ; " puns may be wery good 
 things, or they may be wery bad 'uns, and a 
 female may be none the better, or she may be 
 none the vurse, for making of 'em ; that's got 
 nothing to do vith widders." 
 
 " Wy now," said Sam, looking round, " would 
 anybody believe as a man at his time o' life could 
 be running his head agin spinsters and punsters 
 being the same thing ? " 
 
 " There an't a straw's difference between 'em," 
 said Mr. Weller. " Your father didn't drive a 
 coach for so many years, not to be ekal to his 
 own langvidge as far as that goes, Sammy." 
 
 Avoiding the question of etymology, upon 
 which the old gentleman's mind was quite made 
 up, he was several times assured that the house- 
 keeper had never been married. He expressed 
 great satisfaction on hearing this, and apolo- 
 gised for the question, remarking that he had 
 been greatly terrified by a widow not long before, 
 and that his natural timidity was increased in 
 consequence. 
 
 " It wos on the rail," said Mr. Weller with 
 strong emphasis. " I was a-goin' down to Bir- 
 mingham by the rail, and I wos locked up in a 
 close carriage vith a living widder. Alone we 
 wos ; the widder and me wos alone ; and I be- 
 lieve it wos only because we wos alone, and 
 there was no clerg>'man in the conwayance, that 
 that 'ere widder didn't niarry me afore ve reached 
 the half-way station. Ven I think how she began 
 a screaming as we wos a-goin' under them tun- 
 nels in the dark,— how she kept on a faintin' 
 and ketchin' hold o' me, — and how I tried to 
 bust open the door as was tight-locked and per- 
 
 wented all escape Ah ! It was a awful 
 
 thing, most awful !" 
 
 Mr. Weller was so very much overcome by 
 this retrospect that he was unable, until he had 
 wiped his brow several times, to return any 
 reply to the question whether he approved of 
 railway communication, notwithstanding that it 
 would appear, from the answer which he ulti- 
 mately gave, that he entertained strong opinions 
 on the subject. 
 
 " I con-sider," said Mr. Weller, "that the rail 
 is unconstitootional and an inwasero' priwileges, 
 and I should wery much like to know what that 
 
 'ere old Carter as once stood up for our liberties, 
 and wun 'em too, — I should like to know wot he 
 vouldsay,ifhewos alive now, to Englishmen being 
 locked up vith widders or with anybody again 
 their wills. Wot a old Carter wouhl have said, 
 a old Coachman may say, and I as-sert that in 
 that pint o' view alone, the rail is an inwaser. 
 As to the comfort, vere's the comfort o' sittin' in 
 a harm-cheer lookin' at brick walls or heaps o' 
 mud, never comin' to a public-house, never seein' 
 a glass o' ale, never goin' through a pike, never 
 meetin' a change o' no kind (horses or other- 
 vise), but alvays comin' to a place, ven you come 
 to one at all, the wery picter o' the last, vith 
 the same p'leesemen standing about, the same 
 blessed old bell a ringin', the same unfort'nate 
 people standing behind the bars a waitin' to be 
 let in; and everythin' the same except the name, 
 vich is wrote up in the same sized letters as the 
 last name, and vith the same colours ? As to the 
 //onour and dignity o' travellin', vere can that be 
 vithout a coachman ; and wot's the rail to sich 
 coachmen and guards as is sometimes forced to 
 go by it, but a outrage and a insult ? As to 
 the pace, wot sort o' pace do you think I, Tony 
 Veller, could have kept a coach goin' at, for five 
 hundred thousand pound a mile, paid in ad- 
 wance afore the coach was on the road ? And 
 as to the ingein, — a nasty, wheezin', creakin', 
 gaspin', puffin', bustin' monster, alvays out o' 
 breath, with a shiny green-and-gold back, like a 
 unpleasant beetle in that 'ere gas magnifier, — as 
 to the ingein as is alvays a pourin' out red-hot 
 coals at night, and black smoke in the day, the 
 sensiblest thing it does, in my opinion, is ven 
 there's somethin' in the vay, and it sets up that 
 'ere frightful scream vich seems to say, ' Now 
 here's two hundred and forty passengers in the 
 wery greatest extremity o' danger, and here's 
 their two hundred and forty screams in vun ! ' ", 
 By this time I began to fear that my friends 
 would be rendered impatient by my protracted 
 absence. I therefore begged ]\Ir. Pickwick to 
 accompany me up-stairs, and left the two Mr. 
 Wellers in the care of the housekeeper, laying 
 strict injunctions upon her to treat them with all 
 possible hospitality. 
 
 IV. 
 THE CLOCK. 
 
 AS we were going upstairs, Mr. Pickwick 
 put on his spectacles, which he had held 
 in his hand hitheo-to ; arranged his neckerchief, 
 smoothed down his waistcoat, and made many 
 other like preparations of that kind which men 
 
MR, PICKWICK INTRODUCED TO THE CLUB. 
 
 289 
 
 are accustomed to be mindful of, when they are 
 going among strangers for the first time, and are 
 anxious to impress them pleasantly. Seeing that 
 I smiled, he smiled too, and said that if it had 
 occurred to him before he left home, he would 
 certainly have presented himself in pumps and 
 silk stockings. 
 
 " I would, indeed, my dear sir," he said very 
 seriously ; " I would have shown my respect for 
 the society by laying aside my gaiters." 
 
 "You may rest assured," said I, " that they 
 would have regretted your doing so very much, 
 for they are quite attached to them." 
 
 " No, really ! " cried Mr. Pickwick with mani- 
 fest pleasure. " Do you think they care about 
 my gaiters ? Do you seriously think that they 
 identify me at all with my gaiters ? " 
 
 " I am sure they do," I replied. 
 
 " Well, now," said Mr. Pickwick, "that is one 
 of the most changing and agreeable circum- 
 stances that could possibly have occurred to me !" 
 
 I should not have written down this short 
 conversation, but that it developed a slight point 
 in Mr. Pickwick's character, with which I was 
 not previously acquainted. He has a secret 
 pride in his legs. The manner in which he 
 spoke, and the accompanying glance he be- 
 stowed upon his tights, convince me that Mr. 
 Pickwick regards his legs with much innocent 
 vanity. 
 
 " But here are our friends," said I, opening 
 the door and taking his arm in mine ; " let them 
 speak for themselves. — Gentlemen, I present to 
 you Mr. Pickwick." 
 
 Mr. Pickwick and I must have been a good 
 contrast just then. I, leaning quietly on my 
 crutch-stick, with something of a careworn, 
 patient air ; he having hold of my arm, and 
 bowing in every direction with the most elastic 
 politeness, and an expression of face whose 
 sprightly cheerfulness and good-humour knew 
 no bounds. The difference between us must 
 have been more striking yet, as we advanced 
 towards the table, and the amiable gentleman, 
 adapting his jocund step to my poor tread, had 
 his attention divided between treating my in- 
 firmities with the utmost consideration, and 
 affecting to be wholly unconscious that 1 re- 
 quired any. 
 
 I made him personally known to each of my 
 friends in turn. First, to the deaf gentleman, 
 whom he regarded with much interest, and 
 accosted with great frankness and cordiality. 
 He had evidently some vague idea, at the mo- 
 ment, that my friend, being deaf, must be dumb 
 also; for, when the latter opened his lips to 
 express the pleasure it afforded him to know 
 Edwin Drood, Etc, 19. 
 
 a gentleman of whom he had heard so much, 
 Mr. Pickwick was so extremely disconcerted, 
 that I was obliged to step in to his relief. 
 
 His meeting with Jack Redburn was quite a 
 treat to see. Mr. Pickwick smiled and shook 
 hands, and looked at him through his spectacles, 
 and under them, and over them, and nodded 
 his head approvingly, and then nodded to me, 
 as much as to say, "This is just the man ; you 
 were quite right;" and then turned to Jack and 
 said a few hearty words, and then did and said 
 everything over again with unimpaired vivacity. 
 As to Jack himself, he was quite as much de- 
 lighted with Mr. Pickwick as Mr. Pickwick could 
 possibly be with him. Two people never can 
 have met together since the world began, who 
 exchanged a warmer or more enthusiastic greet- 
 ing. 
 
 It was amusing to observe the difference be- 
 tween this encounter and that which succeeded, 
 between Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Miles. It was 
 clear that the latter gentleman viewed our new 
 member as a kind of rival in the affections of 
 Jack Redburn, and, besides this, he had more 
 than once hinted to me, in secret, that although 
 he had no doubt Mr. Pickwick was a very worthy 
 man, still he did consider that some of his ex- 
 ploits were unbecoming a gentleman of his years 
 and gravity. Over and above these grounds of 
 distrust, it is one of his fixed opinions, that the 
 law never can by possibility do anything wrong ; 
 he therefore looks upon Mr. Pickwick as one 
 who has justly suffered in purse and peace for a 
 breach of his plighted faith to an unprotected 
 female, and holds that he is called upon to regard 
 him with some suspicion on that account. These 
 causes led to a rather cold and formal reception ; 
 which Mr. Pickwick acknowledged with the same 
 stateliness and intense politeness as was dis- 
 played on the other side. Indeed, he assumed 
 an air of such majestic defiance, that I was fear- 
 ful he might break out into some solemn pro- 
 test or declaration, and therefore inducted him 
 into his chair without a moment's delay. 
 
 This piece of generalship was perfectly suc- 
 cessful. The instant he took his seat, Mr. Pick- 
 wick surveyed us all with a most benevolent 
 aspect, and was taken with a fit of smiling full 
 five minutes long. His interest in our cere- 
 monies was immense. They are not very nume- 
 rous or complicated, and a description of them 
 may be comprised in very few words. As our 
 transactions have already been, and must neces- 
 sarily continue to be, more or less anticipated 
 by being presented in these pages at different 
 times, and under various forms, they do not 
 require a detailed account. 
 
890 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 Our first proceeding when we are assembled 
 is to shake hands all round, and greet each other 
 with cheerful and pleasant looks. Remember- 
 ing that we assemble not only for the promotion 
 of our happiness, but with the view of adding 
 something to the common stock, an air of lan- 
 guor or indifference in any member of our body 
 would be regarded by the others as a kind of 
 treason. We have never had an offender in 
 this respect ; but, if we had, there is no doubt 
 that he would be taken to task pretty severely. 
 
 Our salutation over, the venerable piece of 
 antiquity from which we take our name is wound 
 up in silence. This ceremony is always per- 
 formed by Master Humphrey himself (in treat- 
 ing of the club, I may be permitted to assume 
 the historical style, and speak of myself in 
 the third person), who mounts upon a chair 
 for the purpose, armed with a large key. While 
 it is in progress, Jack Redburn is required to 
 keep at the farther end of the room under the 
 guardianship of Mr. Miles, for he is known to 
 entertain certain aspiring and unhallowed 
 thoughts connected v/ith the clock, and has 
 even gone so far as to state that, if he might 
 take the works out for a day or two, he thinks 
 he could improve them. We pardon him his 
 presumption in consideration of his good inten- 
 tions, and his keeping this respectful distance, 
 which last penalty is insisted on, lest by secretly 
 wounding the object of our regard in some 
 tender part, in the ardour of his zeal for its 
 improvement, he should fill us with dismay and 
 consternation. 
 
 This regulation afforded Mr. Pickwick the 
 highest delight, and seemed, if possible, to exalt 
 Jack in his good opinion. 
 
 The next ceremony is the opening of the 
 clock-case (of which Master Humphrey has 
 likewise the key), the taking from it as many 
 papers as will furnish forth our evening's enter- 
 tainment, and arranging in the recess such new- 
 contributions as have been provided since our 
 last meeting. This is always done with peculiar 
 solemnity. The deaf gentleman then fills and 
 lights his pipe, and we once more take our seats 
 round the table before mentioned, Master Hum- 
 phrey acting as president, — if we can be said to 
 have any president, where all are on the same 
 social footing, — and our friend Jack as secre- 
 tary. Our preliminaries being now concluded, 
 we fall into any train of conversation that hap- 
 pens to suggest itself, or proceed immediately to 
 one of our readings. In the latter case, the 
 paper selected is consigned to Master Hum- 
 phrey, who flattens it carefully on the table, and 
 makes dog's ears in the corner of every page. 
 
 ready for turning over easily; Jack Redburn 
 trims the lamp with a small machine of his own 
 invention, which usually puts it out ; Mr. Miles 
 looks on with great approval notwithstanding ; 
 the deaf gentleman draws in his chair, so that 
 he can follow the words on the paper or on 
 Master Humphrey's lips as he pleases ; and 
 Master Humphrey himself, looking round with 
 mighty gratification, and glancing up at his old 
 clock, begins to read aloud. 
 
 Mr. Pickwick's face, wliile his tale was being 
 read, would have attracted the attention of the 
 dullest man alive. The complacent motion of 
 his head and forefinger as he gently beat time, 
 and corrected the air with imaginary punctua- 
 tion, the smile that mantled on his features at 
 every jocose passage, and the sly look he stole 
 around to observe its effect, the calm manner 
 in which he shut his eyes and listened when 
 there was some little piece of description, the 
 changing expression with which he acted the 
 dialogue to himself, his agony that the deaf 
 gentleman should know what it was all about, 
 and his extraordinary anxiety to correct the 
 reader when he hesitated at a word in the 
 manuscript, or substituted a wrong one, were 
 alike worthy of remark. And when at last, 
 endeavouring to communicate with the deaf 
 gentleman by means of the finger alphabet, with 
 which he constructed such words as are un- 
 known in any civilised or savage language, he 
 took up a slate and wrote in large text, one 
 word in a line, the question, " How — do — you 
 — like — it ? " — when he did this, and handing it 
 over the table awaited the reply, with a counte- 
 nance only brightened and improved by his 
 great excitement, even Mr. Miles relaxed, and 
 could not forbear looking at him for the moment 
 with interest and favour. 
 
 " It has occurred to me," said the deaf gen- 
 tleman, who had watched Mr. Pickwick and 
 everybody else with silent satisfaction — " it has 
 occurred to me," said the deaf gentleman, taking 
 his pipe from his lips, " that now is our time for 
 filling our only empty chair." 
 
 As our conversation had naturally turned 
 upon the vacant seat, we lent a willing ear to 
 this remark, and looked at our friend inquir- 
 ingly. 
 
 "I feel sure," said he, " that Mr. Pickwick 
 must be acquainted with somebody who would 
 be an acquisition to us ; that he must know the 
 man we want. Pray let us not lose any time, 
 but set this question at rest. Is it so, Mr- 
 Pickwick ? " 
 
 The gentleman addressed was about to return 
 a verbal reply, but, remembering our friend's 
 
A NEW MEMBER PROPOSED. 
 
 291 
 
 infirmity, he substituted for this kind of answer 
 some fitly nods. Then taking up the slate, and 
 printing on it a gigantic " Yes," he handed it 
 across the table, and, rubbing his hands as he 
 looked round upon our faces, protested that he 
 and the deaf gentleman quite understood each 
 other already. 
 
 "The person I have in my mind," sa'ia Mr. 
 Pickwick, " and whom I should not have pre- 
 sumed to mention to you until some time hence, 
 but for the opportunity you have given me, is a 
 ^•ery strange old man. His name is Bamber." 
 
 " Bamber ! " said Jack. " I have certainly 
 heard the name before." 
 
 " I have no doubt, then," returned Mr. Pick- 
 wick, " that you remember him in those adven- 
 tures of mine (the Posthumous Papers of our 
 old Club, I mean), although he is only inci- 
 dentally mentioned ; and, if I remember right, 
 appears but once.'' 
 
 " That's it," said Jack. " Let me see. He 
 is the ])erson who has a grave interest in old 
 mouldy chambers and the Inns of Court, and 
 who relates some anecdotes having reference to 
 his favourite theme, — and an odd ghost story, — 
 is that the man ? " 
 
 " The very same. Now," said Mr. Pickwick, 
 lowering his voice to a mysterious and confi- 
 dential tone, " he is a very extraordinary and 
 remarkable person ; living, and talking, and look- 
 ing like some strange spirit, whose delight is to 
 haunt old buildings ; and absorbed in that one 
 subject which you have just mentioned, to an 
 extent which is quite wonderful. When I retired 
 into private life, I sought him out, and I do 
 assure you that, the more I see of him, the more 
 strongly I am impressed with the strange and 
 dreamy character of his mind." 
 
 " Where does he live?" I inquired. 
 
 " He lives," said Mr. Pickwick, " in one of 
 those dull, lonely old places with which his 
 thoughts and stories are all connected ; quite 
 alone, and often shut up close for several weeks 
 together. In this dusty solitude he broods upon 
 the fancies he has so long indulged, and when he 
 goes into the Avorld, or anybody from the world 
 without goes to see him, they are still present to 
 his mind and still his favourite topic. I may 
 say, I believe, that he has brought himself to 
 entertain a regard for me, and an interest in my 
 visits ; feelings which I am certain he would 
 extend to Master Humphrey's Clock, if he were 
 once tempted to join us. All I wish you to 
 understand is, that he is a strange secluded 
 visionary ; in the world, but not of it ; and as 
 unlike anybody here as he is unlike anybody 
 elsewhere that I have ever met or known." 
 
 Mr, Miles received this account of our pro- 
 posed companion with rather a wry face, and, 
 after murmuring that perhaps he was a little mad, 
 inquired if he were rich. 
 
 " I never asked him," said Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 " You might know, sir, for all that," retorted 
 Mr. Miles sharply. 
 
 '- Perhaps so, sir," said Mr. Pickwick, no less 
 sharply than the other, " but I do not. Indeed," 
 he added, relapsing into his usual mildness, " I 
 have no means of judging. He lives poorly, 
 but that would seem to be in keeping with his 
 character. I never heard him allude to his cir- 
 cumstances, and never fell into the society of 
 any man who had the slightest acquaintance 
 with them. I have really told you all I know 
 about him, and it rests with you to say whethor 
 you wish to know more, or know quite enougk 
 already." 
 
 We were unanimously of opinion that we 
 would seek to know more ; and, as a sort of 
 compromise with Mr. Miles (who, although he 
 said " Yes — oh ! certainly — he should like to 
 know more about the gentleman — he had no 
 right to put himself in opposition to the general 
 wish," and so forth, shook his head doubtfully, 
 and hemmed several times with peculiar gravity), 
 it was arranged that Mr. Pickwick should carry 
 me with him on an evening visit to the subject 
 of our discussion, for which purpose an early 
 appointment between that gentleman and my- 
 self was immediately agreed upon ; it being 
 understood that I was to act upon my own 
 responsibility, and to invite him to join us or 
 not, as I might think proper. This solemn 
 question determined, we returned to the clock- 
 case (where we have been forestalled by the 
 reader), and between its contents, and the con- 
 versation they occasioned, the remainder of our 
 time passed very quickly. 
 
 When we broke up, Mr. Pickwick took me 
 aside to tell me that he had spent a most charm- 
 ing and delightful evening. Having made this 
 communication with an air of the strictest secrecy, 
 he took Jack Redburn into another corner to 
 tell him the same, and then retired into another 
 corner with the deaf gentleman and the slate, to 
 repeat the assurance. It was amusing to observe 
 the contest in his mind w^hether he should extend 
 his confidence to Mr. Miles, or treat him with 
 dignified reserve. Half-a-dozen times he stepped 
 up behind him with a friendly air, and as often 
 stepped back again without saying a word ; at 
 last, when he was close at that gentleman's ear, 
 and upon the very point of whispering some- 
 thing conciliating and agreeable, Mr, Miles 
 happened suddenly to turn his head, upon 
 
9^2 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 which Mr. Pickwick skipped away, and said, 
 with some fierceness, " Good night, sir — I was 
 about to say good night, sir, — nothing more ; " 
 and so made a bow and left him. 
 
 " Now, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick when he 
 had got down-stairs. 
 
 " All right, sir," replied Mr. Weller. " Hold 
 hard, sir ! Right arm fust — now the left — now 
 one strong conwulsion, and the great-coat's on, 
 , sir." 
 
 Mr. Pickwick acted upon these directions, 
 and being further assisted by Sam, who pulled 
 at one side of the collar, and Mr. Weller, who 
 pulled hard at the other, was speedily enrobed. 
 Mr. Weller, senior, then produced a full-sized 
 stable lantern, which he had carefully deposited 
 in a remote corner on his arrival, and inquired 
 whether Mr. Pickwick would have " the lamps 
 alight." 
 
 " I think not to-night," said Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 '' Then, if this here lady vill per-mit," re- 
 joined Mr. Weller, " we'll leave it here, ready 
 for next journey. This here lantern, mum," 
 said Mr. Weller, handing it to the housekeeper, 
 " vunce belonged to the celebrated Bill Blinder 
 as is now at grass, as all on us vill be in our 
 turns. Bill, mum, wos the hostler as had charge 
 o' them two veil-known piebald leaders that run 
 in the Bristol fast coach, and vould never go to 
 no other tune but a sutherly vind and a cloudy 
 sky, which wos consekvently played incessant 
 by the guard, wenever they wos on duty. He 
 wos took wery bad one arternoon, arter having 
 been off his feed and wery shaky on his legs for 
 some veeks ; and he says to his mate, ' Matey,' 
 he says, * I think I'm a-goin' the wrong side o' 
 the post, and that my foot's wery near the 
 bucket. Don't say I an't,' he says, ' for I know 
 I am, and don't let me be interrupted,' he says, 
 * for I've saved a little money, and I'm a-goin' 
 into the stable to make my last vill and testy- 
 mint.' ' I'll take care as nobody interrupts,' 
 says his mate, ' but you on'y hold up your head, 
 and shake your ears a bit, and you're good for 
 twenty years to come.' Bill Blinder makes him 
 no answer, but he goes avay into the stable, 
 and there he soon artervards lays himself down 
 a'tween the two piebalds, and dies, — prevously 
 a writin' outside the corn-chest, * This is the last 
 vill and testymint of Villiam BUnder.' They 
 wos nat' rally wery much amazed at this, and 
 arter looking among the litter, and up in the 
 loft, and vere not, they opens the corn-chest, 
 and finds that he'd been and chalked his vill 
 inside the lid ; so the lid wos obligated to be 
 took off the hinges, and sent up to Doctor 
 Commons to be proved, and under that 'ere 
 
 wery instrument this here lantern was passed to 
 Tony Veller ; vich circumstarnce, mum, gives 
 it a wally in my eyes, and makes me rekvest, if 
 you vill be so kind, as to take partickler care 
 on it." 
 
 The housekeeper graciously promised to keep 
 the object of Mr. Weller's regard in the safest 
 possible custody, and Mr. Pickwick, with a 
 laughing face, took his leave. The body-guard 
 followed, side by side ; old Mr. Weller but- 
 toned and wrapped up from his boots to his 
 chin ; and Sam with his hands in his pockets 
 and his hat half off his head, remonstrating 
 with his father, as he went, on his extreme 
 loquacity. 
 
 I was not a litde surprised, on turning to go 
 up-stairs, to encounter the barber in the passage 
 at that late hour ; for his attendance is usually 
 confined to some half-hour in the morning. 
 But Jack Redburn, who finds out (by instinct, I 
 think) everything that happens in the house, 
 informed me, with great glee, that a society in 
 imitation of our own had been that night formed 
 in the kitchen, under the title of " Mr. Weller's 
 Watch," of which the barber was a member ; 
 and that he could pledge himself to find means 
 of making me acquainted with the whole of its 
 future proceedings, which I begged him, both 
 on my own account and that of my readers, by 
 no means to neglect doing. 
 
 [Old Curiosity Shop is continued here, completing 
 No. IV.] 
 
 V. 
 MR. WELLER'S WATCH. 
 
 !^T seems that the housekeeper and 
 the two Mr. Wellers were no sooner 
 left together, on the occasion of 
 their first becoming acquainted, 
 than the housekeeper called to her 
 assistance Mr. Slithers the barber, 
 who had been lurking in the kitchen in 
 expectation of her summons ; and, with 
 many smiles and much sweetness, introduced 
 him as one who would assist her in the respon- 
 sible office of entertaining her distinguished 
 visitors. 
 
 " Indeed," said she, " without Mr. Slithers I 
 should have been placed in quite an awkward 
 situation." 
 
 " There is no call for any hock'erdness, mum," 
 said Mr. Weller with the utmost politeness ; " no 
 
AN ENTHUSIASTIC BARBER. 
 
 293 
 
 call wotsumever. A lady," added the old gen- 
 tleman, looking about him with the air of one 
 who establishes an incontrovertible position, — 
 " a lady can't be hock'erd. Natur' has other- 
 wise purwidetl." 
 
 The housekeeper inclined her head, and smiled 
 yet more sweetly. The barber, who had been 
 fluttering about Mr, Weller and Sam in a state 
 of great anxiety to improve their acquaintance, 
 rubbed his hands and cried, " Hear, hear ! Very 
 true, sir ; " whereupon Sam turned about, and 
 steadily regarded him for some seconds in 
 silence. 
 
 " I never knew," said Sam, fixing his eyes in 
 a ruminative manner upon the blushing barber, 
 — " I never knew but vun o' your trade, but he 
 wos worth a dozen, and wos indeed dewoted to 
 his callin' ! " 
 
 " Was he in the easy shaving way, sir," in- 
 quired Mr. Slithers ; " or in the cutting and 
 curling line ? " 
 
 " Both," replied Sam ; " easy shavin' was his 
 natur', and cuttin' and curlin' was his pride and 
 glory. His whole delight wos in his trade. He 
 spent all his money in bears, and run in debt 
 for 'em besides, and there they wos a growling 
 avay down in the front cellar all day long, and 
 ineffectooally gnashing their teeth, vile the grease 
 o' their relations and friends wos being re-tailed 
 in gallipots in the shop above, and the first-floor 
 winder wos ornamented vith their heads; not to 
 speak o' the dreadful aggrawation it must have 
 been to 'em to see a man alvays a walkin' up 
 and down the pavement outside, vith the portrait 
 of a bear in his last agonies, and underneath in 
 large letters, ' Another fine animal wos slaugh- 
 tered yesterday at Jinkinson's ! ' Hows'ever, 
 there they wos, and there Jinkinson wos, till he 
 wos took wery ill with some in'ard disorder, lost 
 the use of his legs, and wos confined to his bed, 
 vere he laid a wery long time, but sich wos his 
 pride in his profession, even then, that, wenever 
 he wos worse than usual, the doctor used to go 
 down-stairs and say, ' Jinkinson's wery low this 
 mornin' ; we must give the bears a stir ; ' and as 
 sure as ever they stirred 'em up a bit, and made 
 'em roar, Jinkinson opens his eyes if he wos 
 ever so bad, calls out, ' There's the bears ! ' and 
 rewives agin." 
 
 " Astonishing ! " cried the barber. 
 
 " Not a bit," said Sam ; " human natur' neat 
 as imported. Vun day the doctor happenin' to 
 say, ' I shall look in as usual to-morrow mornin',' 
 Jinkinson catches hold of his hand, and says, 
 'Doctor,' he says, 'will you grant me one favour?' 
 * I will, Jinkinson,' says the doctor. ' Then, 
 doctor,' says Jinkinson, ' vill you come unshaved, 
 
 and let me shave you ? ' * I will,' says the doctor. 
 ' God bless you ! ' says Jinkinson. Next day the 
 doctor came, and arter he'd been shaved all 
 skilful and reg'lar, he says, * Jinkinson,' he says, 
 ' it's wery plain this does you good. Now,' he 
 says, * I've got a coachman as has got a beard 
 that it 'ud warm your heart to work on, and 
 though the footman,' he says, * hasn't got much 
 of a beard, still he's a trying it on vith a pair o' 
 viskers to that extent that razors is Christian 
 charity. If they take it in turns to mind the 
 carriage when it's a waitin' below,' he says, 
 ' wot's to hinder you from operatin' on both of 
 'em ev'ry day as well as upon me? You've got 
 six children,' he says ; ' wot's to hinder you from 
 shavin' all their heads, and keepin' 'em shaved ? 
 You've got two assistants in the shop down- 
 stairs ; wot's to hinder you from cuttin' and 
 curlin' them as often as you like? Do this,' 
 he says, 'and you're a man agin.' Jinkinson 
 squeedged the doctor's hand, and begun that 
 wery day ; he kept his tools upon the bed, and 
 wenever he felt hisself gettin' worse, he turned 
 to at vun o' the children who wos a runnin' 
 about the house vith heads like clean Dutch 
 cheeses, and shaved him agin. Vun day the 
 lawyer come to make his vill ; all the time he 
 wos a takin' it down, Jinkinson was secretly a 
 clippin' avay at his hair vith a large pair of 
 scissors. ' Wot's that 'ere snippin' noise ? ' says 
 the lawyer every now and then. ' It's like a 
 man havin' his hair cut.' ' It is wery like a man 
 havin' his hair cut,' says poor Jinkinson, hidin' 
 the scissors, and lookin' quite innocent. By the 
 time the lawyer found it out, he was wery nearly 
 bald. Jinkinson wos kept alive in this vay for 
 a long time, but at last vun day he has in all the 
 children vun arter another, shaves each on 'em 
 wery clean, and gives him vun kiss on the crown 
 o' his head ; then he has in the two assistants, 
 and arter cuttin' and curlin' of 'em in the first 
 style of elegance, says he should like to hear the 
 woice o' the greasiest bear, vich rekvest is imme- 
 detly complied with ; then he says that he feels 
 wery happy in his mind, and vishes to be left 
 alone ; and then he dies, previously cuttin' his 
 own hair and makin' one flat curl in the wery 
 middle of his forehead." 
 
 This anecdote produced an extraordinary 
 eff"ect, not only upon Mr. Slithers, but upon the 
 housekeeper also, who evinced so much anxiety 
 to please and be pleased, that Mr. Weller, with 
 a manner betokening some alarm, conveyed a 
 whispered inquiry to his son whether he had 
 gone " too fur.'' 
 
 " Wot do you mean by too fur ? " demanded 
 Sam. 
 
294 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 " In that 'ere little compliment respectin' the 
 want of hock'erdness in ladies, Sammy," replied 
 his father. 
 
 " You don't think she's fallen in love with 
 you in consekens o' that, do you ? " said Sam. 
 
 " More unlikelier things have come to pass, 
 my boy," replied Mr. Weller in a hoarse whis- 
 per ; " I'm always afeard of inadwertent capti- 
 wation, Sammy. If I knowed how to make 
 myself ugly or unpleasant, I'd do it, Samivel, 
 rayther than live in this here state of perpetival 
 terror ! " 
 
 Mr. Weller had, at that time, no further op- 
 portunity of dwelling upon the apprehensions 
 which beset his mind, for the immediate occasion 
 of his fears proceeded to lead the way down- 
 stairs, apologising as they went for conducting 
 him into the kitchen, which apartment, however, 
 she was induced to proffer for his accommoda- 
 tion in preference to her own little room, the 
 rather as it afforded greater facilities for smoking, 
 and was immediately adjoining the ale-cellar. 
 The preparations which were already made suffi- 
 ciently proved that these were not mere words of 
 course, for on the deal table were a sturdy ale- 
 jug and glasses, flanked with clean pipes and 
 a plentiful supply of tobacco for the old gentle- 
 man and his son, while on a dresser hard by was 
 goodly store of cold meat and other eatables. 
 At sight of these arrangements Mr. Weller was 
 at first distracted between his love of joviality, 
 and his doubts whether they were not to be con- 
 sidered as so many evidences of captivation 
 having already taken place ; but he soon yielded 
 to his natural impulse, and took his seat at the 
 table with a very jolly countenance. 
 
 " As to imbibin' any o' this here flagrant veed, 
 mum, in the presence of a lady," said Mr. Weller, 
 taking up a pipe and laying it down again, " it 
 couldn't be. Samivel, total abstinence, if yoii 
 please." 
 
 " But I like it of all things," said the house- 
 keeper. 
 
 " No," rejoined Mr. Weller, shaking his head, 
 — " no." 
 
 " Upon my word I do," said the housekeeper. 
 "Mr. Slithers knows I do." 
 
 Mr. Weller coughed, and, notwithstanding 
 the barber's confirmation of the statement, said 
 " No " again, but more feebly than before. The 
 housekeeper lighted a piece of paper, and in- 
 sisted on applying it to the bowl of the pipe 
 with her own fair hands ; Mr. Weller resisted ; 
 the housekeeper cried that her fingers would be 
 burnt; Mr. Weller gave way. The pipe was 
 ignited, Mr. Weller drew a long puff of smoke, 
 and, detecting himself in tlie very act of smiling 
 
 on the housekeeper, put a sudden constraint 
 upon his countenance, and looked sternly at the 
 candle, with a determination not to captivate 
 himself, or encourage thoughts of captivation in 
 others. From this iron frame of mind he was 
 roused by the voice of his son. 
 
 " I don't think," said Sam, who was smoking 
 with great composure and enjoyment, " that if 
 the lady wos agreeable, it 'ud be wery far out o' 
 the vay for us four to make up a club of our own 
 like the governors does up-stairs, and let him," 
 Sam pointed with the stem of his pipe towards 
 his parent, " be the president." 
 
 The housekeeper affably declared that it was 
 the very thing she had been thinking of. The 
 barber said the same. Mr. Weller said nothing, 
 but he laid down his pipe as if in a fit of in- 
 spiration, and performed the following ma- 
 noeuvres. 
 
 Unbuttoning the three lower buttons of his 
 waistcoat, and pausing for a mom.ent to enjoy 
 the easy flow of breath consequent upon this 
 process, he laid violent hands upon his watch- 
 chain, and slowly and with extreme diflRculty 
 drew from his fob an immense double-cased 
 silver watch, which brought the lining of the 
 pocket with it, and was not to be disentangled 
 but by great exertions and an amazing redness 
 of face. Having fairly got it out at last, he de- 
 tached the outer case, and wound it up with a 
 key of corresponding magnitude ; then put the 
 case on again, and, having applied the watch to 
 his ear to ascertain that it was still going, gave 
 it some half-dozen hard knocks on the table to 
 improve its performance. 
 
 " That," said Mr. Weller, laying it on the 
 table with its face upwards, " is the title and 
 emblem o' this here society. Sammy, reach 
 them two stools this vay for the wacant cheers. 
 Ladies and genTmen, Mr. Weller's Watch is 
 vound up and now a-goin'. Order ! " 
 
 By way of enforcing this proclamation, Mr. 
 Weller, using the watch after the manner of a 
 president's hammer, and remarking with great 
 pride that nothing hurt it, and that falls and 
 concussions of all kinds materially enhanced the 
 excellence of the works and assisted the regu- 
 lator, knocked the table a great many times, and 
 declared the association formally constituted. 
 
 " And don't let's have no grinnin' at the 
 cheer, Samivel," said Mr. Weller to his son, "or 
 I shall be committin' you to the cellar, and 
 then p'raps we may get into what the 'Merrikins 
 call a fix, and the English a qvestion o' privi- 
 leges." 
 
 Having uttered this friendly caution, the Pre- 
 sident settled himself in his chair with great dig- 
 
THE ROMANCE OF HAIRDRESSING. 
 
 295 
 
 nity, and requested that Mr. Samuel would 
 relate an anecdote. 
 
 " I've told one," said Sam. 
 
 " Wery good, sir ; tell another," returned the 
 chair. 
 
 "We wos a talking jist now, sir," said Sam, 
 turning to Slithers, " about barbers. Pursuing 
 that 'ere fruitful theme, sir, I'll tell you in a wery 
 few words a romantic little story about another 
 barber as p'raps you may never have heerd." 
 
 " Samivel ! " said Mr. Weller, again bringing 
 his watch and the table into smart collision, 
 " address your obserwations to the cheer, sir, and 
 not to priwate indiwiduals ! " 
 
 "And if I might rise to order," said the 
 barber in a soft voice, and looking round him 
 with a conciliatory smile as he leant over the 
 table, with the knuckles of his left hand resting 
 upon it — " if I might rise to order, I would sug- 
 gest that ' barbers ' is not exactly the kind of 
 language which is agreeable and soothing to our 
 feelings. You, sir, will correct me if I'm wrong, 
 but I believe there is such a word in the dic- 
 tionary as hairdressers." 
 
 " Well, but suppose he wasn't a hairdresser?" 
 suggested Sam. 
 
 " Wy, then, sir, be parliamentary, and call him 
 vun all the more," returned his father. " In the 
 same vay as ev'ry gen'l'man in another place is 
 a /honourable, ev'ry barber in this place is a 
 hairdresser. Ven you read the speeches in the 
 papers, and see as vun gen'l'man says of another, 
 * the /honourable member, if he vill allow me to 
 call him so,' you vill understand, sir, that that 
 means,' if he vill allow me to keep up that 'ere 
 pleasant and uniwersal fiction.'" 
 
 It is a common remark, confirmed by history 
 and experience, that great men rise with the 
 circum.stances in which they are placed. Mr. 
 Weller came out so strong in his capacity of 
 chairman, that Sam was for some time prevented 
 from speaking by a grin of surprise, which held 
 his faculties enchained, and at last subsided in a 
 long whistle of a single note. Nay, the old 
 gentleman appeared even to have astonished 
 himself, and that to no small extent, as was 
 demonstrated by the vast amount of chuckling 
 in which he indulged after the utterance of these 
 lucid remarks. 
 
 " Here's the story," said Sam. " Vunce upon 
 a time there wos a young hairdresser as opened 
 a wery smart little shop with four wax dummies 
 in the winder, two gen'l'men and two ladies — 
 the gen'l'men vith blue dots for their beards, 
 wery large viskers, oudacious heads of hair, un- 
 common clear eyes, and nostrils of amazin' pink- 
 ness ; the ladies vith their heads o' one side, 
 
 their right forefingers on their lips, and their 
 forms deweloped beautiful, in vich last respect 
 they had the adwantage over the gen'l'men, as 
 wasn't allowed but wery little shoulder, and 
 terminated rayther abrupt in fancy drapery. He 
 had also a many hair-brushes and tooth-brushes 
 bottled up in the winder, neat glass cases on the 
 counter, a floor-clothed cuttin'-room up-stairs, 
 and a weighin' macheen in the shop, right oppo- 
 site the door. But the great attraction and orna- 
 ment wos the dummies, which this here young 
 hairdresser was constantly a runnin' out in the 
 road to look at, and constantly a runnin' in agin 
 to touch up and polish ; in short, he wos so 
 proud on 'em, that ven Sunday come, he wos 
 always wretched and mis'rable to think they wos 
 behind the shutters, and looked anxiously for 
 Monday on that account. Vun o' these dum- 
 mies wos a fav'rite vith him beyond the others ; 
 and ven any of his acquaintance asked him wy 
 he didn't get married — as the young ladies he 
 knowed, in partickler, often did — he used to 
 say, ' Never ! I never vill enter into the bonds 
 of vedlock,' he says, ' until I meet vith a young 
 'ooman as realises my idea 'o that 'ere fairest 
 dummy vith the light hair. Then, and not till 
 then,' he says, ' I vill approach the altar.' All 
 the young ladies he knowed as had got dark 
 hair iold him this wos wery sinful, and that he 
 wos wurshippin' a idle ; but them as wos at all 
 near the same shade as the dummy coloured up 
 wery much, and wos observed to think him a 
 wery nice young man." 
 
 " Samivel," said Mr. Weller gravely, " a mem- 
 ber o' this associashun bein' one o' that 'ere 
 tender sex which is now immedelly referred to, 
 I have to rekvest that you vill make no re- 
 flections." 
 
 " I ain't a makin' any, am I ?" inquired Sam. 
 
 " Order, sir ! " rejoined Mr. Weller with severe 
 dignity. Then, sinking the chairman in the 
 father, he added, in his usual tone of voice : 
 " Samivel, drive on ! " 
 
 Sam interchanged a smile with the house- 
 keeper, and proceeded : 
 
 " The young hairdresser hadn't been in the 
 habit o' makin' this avowal above six months, 
 ven he en-countered a young lady as wos the 
 wery picter o' the fairest dummy. ' Now,' he 
 says, ' it's all up. I am a slave ! ' The young 
 lady wos not only the picter o' the fairest 
 dummy, but she was wery romantic, as the 
 young hairdresser was, too, and he says, * Oh ! ' 
 he says, ' here's a community o' feelin', here's a 
 flow o' soul ! ' he says, ' here's a interchange o' 
 sentiment !' The young lady didn't say much, 
 o' course, but she expressed herself agreeable, 
 
296 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 and shortly artervards vent to see him vith a 
 mutual friend. The hairdresser rushes out to 
 meet her, but d'recily she sees the dummies she 
 changes colour and falls a tremblin' wiolently. 
 'Look up, my love,' says the hairdresser; 'be- 
 hold your imige in my winder, but not correcter 
 than in my art ! ' ' My imige !' she says. 'Youm!' 
 replies the hairdresser. 'But whose imige is 
 Viat i ' she says, a pinting at vun o' the gen'l'men. 
 * No vun'fj, my love,' he says ; * it is but a idea.' 
 
 * A idea ! ' she cries : * it is a portrait, I feel it is a 
 portrait, and that 'ere noble face must be in the 
 millingtary ! ' 'Wot do I hear? ' says he, a crum- 
 plin' his curls. ' Villiam Gibbs,' she says, quite firm, 
 ' never renoo the subject. I respect you as a 
 friend,' she says, ' but my afiections is set upon 
 that manly brow,' ' This,' says the hairdresser, 
 ' is a reg'lar blight, and in it I perceive the hand 
 of Fate. Farevell ! ' Vith these vords he rushes 
 into the shop, breaks the dummy's nose vith a 
 
 "VITH THESE VORDS HE RUSHES INIU THii, SHOP, BREAKS THK DUAiAU S NUSK VliH A BLOW OK HIS 
 CURLIN'-IRONS, melts him down at the parlour fire, and never SMILES ARTERVARDS." 
 
 blow of his curlin'-irons, melts him down at the 
 parlour fire, and never smiles artervards." 
 
 "The young lady, Mr. Weller?" said the 
 housekeeper. 
 
 " Why, ma'am," said Sam, " finding that Fate 
 had a spite agin her, and everybody she come 
 into contact vith, she never smiled neither, but 
 read a deal o' poetry and pined avay, — by ray- 
 ther slow degrees, for she ain't dead yet. It 
 took a deal o' poetry to kill the hairdresser, and 
 some people say, arter all, that it was more the 
 
 gin-and-water as caused him to be run over; 
 l^'raps it was a little o' both, and came o' mixing 
 the two." 
 
 The barber declared that Mr. Weller had 
 related one of the most interesting stories that 
 had ever come within his knowledge, in which 
 opinion the housekeeper entirely concurred. 
 
 " Are you a married man, sir ? " inquired Sam. 
 
 The barber replied that he had not that 
 honour. 
 
 " I s'pose you mean to be ? " said Sam. 
 
MR. WELLER'S GALLANTRY. 
 
 297 
 
 "Well," replied the barber, rubbing his hands 
 smirkingly, "I don't know; I don't think it's 
 very likely." 
 
 " That's a bad sign," said Sam ; *' if you'd 
 said you meant to be vun o' these days, I 
 should ha' looked upon you as bein' safe. 
 You're in a wery precarious state." 
 
 " I am not conscious of any danger, at all 
 events," returned the barber. 
 
 " No more wos I, sir," said the elder Mr. 
 Weller, interposing ; " those vere my symptoms, 
 exactly. I've been took that vay twice. Keep 
 your vether eye open, my friend, or you're 
 gone." 
 
 There was something so very solemn about 
 this admonition, both in its matter and manner, 
 and also in the way in which Mr. Weller still 
 kept his eye fixed upon the unsuspecting victim, 
 that nobody cared to speak for some little time, 
 and might not have cared to do so for some 
 time longer, if the housekeeper had not hap- 
 pened to sigh, which called off the old gentle- 
 man's attention, and gave rise to a gallant 
 inquiry whether " there wos anythin' wery 
 piercin' in that 'ere little heart?" 
 
 " Dear me, Mr. Weller ! " said the house- 
 keeper, laughing. 
 
 " No, but is there anythin' as agitates it ? " 
 pursued the old gentleman. "Has it always 
 been obderrate, always opposed to the happi- 
 ness o' human creeturs ? Eh ? Has it ? " 
 
 At this critical juncture for her blushes and 
 confusion, the housekeeper discovered that 
 more ale was wanted, and hastily withdrew into 
 the cellar to draw the same, followed by the 
 barber, who insisted on carrying the candle. 
 Having looked after her with a very complacent 
 expression of face, and after him with some 
 disdain, Mr. Weller caused his glance to travel 
 slowly round the kitchen, until at length it 
 rested on his son. 
 
 " Sammy," said Mr. Weller, " I mistrust that 
 barber." 
 
 "Wot for?" returned Sam. "Wot's he got 
 to do with you ? You're a nice man, you are, 
 arter pretendin' all kinds o' terror, to go a 
 payin' compliments, and talkin' about hearts 
 and piercers." 
 
 The imputation of gallantry appeared to 
 afford Mr. Weller the utmost delight, for he 
 replied, in a voice choked by suppressed 
 laughter, and with the tears in his eyes : 
 
 " Wos I a talkin' about hearts and piercers, — 
 wos I though, Sammy, eh ? " 
 
 " Wos you ? Of course you wos." 
 
 " She don't know no better, Sammy ; there 
 ain't no harm in it, — no danger, Sammy ; she's 
 
 only a punster. She seemed pleased, though, 
 didn't she ? O' course, she wos pleased ; it's 
 nat'ral she should be, wery nat'ral." 
 
 " He's wain of it ! " exclaimed Sam, joining 
 in his father's mirth. " He's actually wain ! " 
 
 " Hush ! " replied Mr. Weller, composing his 
 features, "they're a-comin' back, — the little 
 heart's a-comin' back. But mark these wurds 
 o' mine once more, and remember 'em ven your 
 father says he said 'em. Samivel, I mistrust 
 that 'ere deceitful barber." 
 
 [Old Curiosity Shop is continued to the end of the 
 number.] 
 
 VI. 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY FROM HIS 
 CLOCK-SIDE IN THE CHIMNEY- 
 CORNER. 
 
 ^^■0 or three evenings after the in- 
 stitution of Mr. Weller's Watch, I 
 thought I heard, as I walked in the 
 garden, the voice of Mr. Weller him- 
 self at no great distance ; and, stop- 
 ping once or twice to listen more atten- 
 rtively, I found that the sounds proceeded 
 from my housekeeper's little sitting-room, 
 which is at the back of the house, I took no 
 further notice of the circumstance at that time, 
 but it formed the subject of a conversation be- 
 tween me and my friend Jack Redburn next morn- 
 ing, when I found that I had not been deceived 
 in my impression. Jack furnished me with the 
 following particulars ; and, as he appeared to 
 take extraordinary pleasure in relating them, I 
 have begged him in future to jot down any such 
 domestic scenes or occurrences that may please 
 his humour, in order that they may be told in 
 his own way. I must confess that, as Mr. Pick- 
 wick and he are constantly together, I have been 
 influenced, in making this request, by a secret 
 desire to know something of their proceedings. 
 
 On the evening in question, the housekeeper's 
 room was arranged with particular care, and the 
 housekeeper herself was very smartly dressed. 
 The preparations, however, were not confined 
 to mere showy demonstrations, as tea was pre- 
 pared for three persons, with a small display of 
 preserves and jams and sweet cakes, which 
 heralded some uncommon occasion. Miss Ben- 
 ton (my housekeeper bears that name) was in 
 a state of great expectation, too, frequently going 
 to the front-door and looking anxiously down 
 
29S 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 the lane, and more than once observing to the 
 
 servant-girl that she expected company, and 
 hoped no accident had happened to delay them. 
 
 A modest ring at the bell at length allayed 
 her fears, and Miss Benton hurrying into her 
 own room and shutting herself up, in order that 
 she might preserve that appearance of being 
 taken by surprise which is so essential to the 
 polite reception of visitors, awaited their coming 
 with a smiling countenance. 
 
 " Good ev'nin', mum," said the older Mr. 
 Weller, looking in at the door after a prefatory 
 tap. " I'm afeard we've come in rayther arter 
 the time, mum, but the young colt, being full o' 
 wice, has been a boltin' and shyin' and gettin' 
 his leg over the traces to sich a extent that 
 if he an't wery soon broke in, he'll wex me into 
 a broken heart, and then he'll never be brought 
 out no more except to learn his letters from the 
 writin' on his grandfather's tombstone." 
 
 With these pathetic words, which were ad- 
 dressed to something outside the door about two 
 feet six from the ground, Mr. Weller introduced 
 a very small boy firmly set upon a couple of 
 very sturdy legs, who looked as if nothing could 
 ever knock him down. Besides having a very 
 round face strongly resembling Mr. Weller's, and 
 a stout little body of exactly his build, this young 
 gentleman, standing with his little legs very wide 
 apart, as if the top-boots were familiar to them, 
 actually winked upon the housekeeper with his 
 infant eye, in imitation of his grandfather. 
 
 " There's a naughty boy, mum," said Mr. 
 Weller, bursting with delight ; " there's a im- 
 moral Tony ! Wos there ever a little chap o' 
 four year and eight months old as vinked his eye 
 at a strange lady afore ? " 
 
 As little affected by this observation as by 
 the former appeal to his feelings, ]Master Weller 
 elevated in the air a small model of a coach 
 whip which he carried in his hand, and address- 
 ing the housekeeper with a shrill " Ya — hip ! " 
 inquired if she was " going down the road;" at 
 which happy adaptation of a lesson he had been 
 taught from infancy, Mr. Weller could restrain 
 his feelings no longer, but gave him twopence 
 on the spot. 
 
 " It's in wain to deny it, mum," said Mr. 
 Weller, *' this here is a boy arter his grandfather's 
 own heart, and beats out all the boys as ever 
 wos or will be. Though at the same time, 
 mum," added Mr. Weller, trying to look gravely 
 down upon his favourite, " it was wery wrong on 
 him to want to over all the posts as we come 
 .along, and wery cruel on him to force poor 
 grandfather to lift him cross-legged over every 
 vun of 'em. He wouldn't pass vun single blessed 
 
 post, mum, and at the top o' the lane there's 
 seven-and-forty on 'em all in a row, and wery 
 close together." 
 
 Here Mr. Weller, whose feelings were in a 
 perpetual conflict between pride in his grand- 
 son's achievements and a sense of his own re- 
 sponsibility, and the importance of impressing 
 him with moral truths, burst into a fit of laughter, 
 and, suddenly checking himself, rem.arked in a 
 severe tone that little boys as made their grand- 
 fathers put 'em over posts never went to heaven 
 at any price. 
 
 By this time the housekeeper had made tea, 
 and little Tony, placed on a chair beside her, 
 with his eyes nearly on a level with the top of 
 the table, was provided with various delicacies 
 which yielded him extreme contentment. The 
 housekeeper (who seemed rather afraid of the 
 child, notwithstanding her caresses) then patted 
 him on the head, and declared that he was the 
 finest boy she had ever seen. 
 
 " Wy, mum," said Mr. Weller, " I don't think 
 you'll see a many sich, and that's the truth. But 
 if my son Samivel vould give me my vay, mum, 
 
 and only dis-pense with his Might I wen- 
 
 ter to say the vurd ? " 
 
 " What word, Mr. Weller ? " said the house- 
 keeper, blushing slightly. 
 
 " Petticuts, mum," returned that gentleman, 
 laying his hand upon the garments of his grand- 
 son. " If my son Samivel, mum, vould only dis- 
 pense vith these here, you'd see such a alteration 
 in his appearance as the imagination can't de- 
 picter." 
 
 " But what would you have the child wear 
 instead, Mr. Weller ? " said the housekeeper. 
 
 " I've offered my son Samivel, mum, agen 
 and agen," returned the old gentleman, " to 
 punvide him at my own cost vitli a suit o' clothes 
 as 'ud be the makin' on him, and form his mind 
 in infancy for those pursuits as I hope the family 
 o' the Vellers.vill alvays dewote themselves to. 
 Tony, my boy, tell the lady wot them clothes 
 are, as grandfather says father ought to let you 
 vear." 
 
 " A little white hat and a little sprig weskut 
 and little knee cords and little top-boots and a 
 little green coat with little bright buttons and 
 a little welwet collar," replied Tony, with great 
 readiness and no stops. 
 
 " That's the cos-toom, mum," said Mr. Weller, 
 looking proudly at the housekeeper. " Once 
 make sich a model on him as that, and you'd 
 say he luos a angel ! " 
 
 Perhaps the housekeeper thought that in such 
 a guise young Tony would look more like the 
 angel at Islington than anything else of that 
 
A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK, 
 
 299 
 
 name, or perhaps she was disconcerted to find 
 her previously -conceived ideas disturbed, as 
 angels are not commonly represented in top- 
 boots and sprig waistcoats. She coughed doubt- 
 fully, but said nothing. 
 
 " How many brothers and sisters have you, 
 my dear?" she asked after a short silence. 
 
 " One brother and no sister at all," replied 
 Tony. " Sam his name is, and so's my father's. 
 Do you know my father ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, I know him ! " said the housekeeper 
 graciously. 
 
 " Is my father fond of you ? " pursued Tony. 
 
 " I hope so," rejoined the smiling house- 
 keeper. 
 
 Tony considered a moment, and then said, 
 *•■ Is my grandfather fond of you ? " 
 
 This would seem a very easy question to 
 answer, but, instead of replying to it, the house- 
 keeper smiled in great confusion, and said that 
 really children did ask such extraordinary ques- 
 tions that it was the most difficult thing in the 
 ivorld to talk to them. Mr. Weller took upon 
 himself to reply that he was very fond of the 
 lady ; but the housekeeper entreating that he 
 would not put such things into the child's head, 
 Mr. Weller shook his own while she looked 
 another way, and seemed to be troubled with a 
 misgiving that captivation was in progress. It 
 was, perhaps, on this account that he changed 
 the subject precipitately. 
 
 " It's wery wrong in little boys to make game 
 o' their grandfathers, an't it, mum ? " said Mr. 
 Weller, shaking his head waggishly until Tony 
 looked at him, when he counterfeited the deepest 
 dejection and sorrow. 
 
 " Oh, very sad ! " assented the housekeeper. 
 ■" But I hope no little boys do that ? " 
 
 " There is vun young Turk, mum," said Mr. 
 Weller, " as havin' seen his grandfather a little 
 overcome vith drink on the occasion of a friend's 
 birthday, goes a reelin' and staggerin' about the 
 house, and makin' believe that he's the old 
 genTm'n." 
 
 "Oh, quite shocking!" cried the house- 
 keeper. 
 
 " Yes, mum," said Mr. Weller ; " and pre- 
 viously to so doin', this here young traitor that 
 I'm a speakin' of, pinches his little nose to make 
 it red, and then he gives a hiccup and says, 
 ' I'm all right,' he says ; ' give us another song ! ' 
 Ha, ha ! ' Give us another song ! ' he says. 
 Ha, ha, ha ! " 
 
 In his excessive delight, Mr. Weller was quite 
 unmindful of his moral responsibility, until little 
 Tony kicked up his legs, and, laughing immo- 
 derately, cried, " That was me, that was ;" where- 
 
 upon the grandfather, by a great eflfort, became 
 
 extremely solemn. 
 
 " No, Tony, not you," said Mr. Weller. " I 
 hope it warn't you, Tony. It must ha' been 
 that 'ere naughty little chap as comes sometimes 
 out o' the empty watch-box round the corner, — 
 that same little chap as wos found standing on 
 the table afore the looking-glass, pretending to 
 shave himself vith a oyster knife." 
 
 " He didn't hurt himself, I hope ? " observed 
 the housekeeper. 
 
 " Not he, mum," said Mr. Weller proudly ; 
 " bless your heart, you might trust that 'ere boy 
 vith a steam-engine a'most, he's such a knowing 
 
 young " But suddenly recollecting himself, 
 
 and observing that Tony perfectly understood 
 and appreciated the compliment, the old gentle- 
 man groaned, and observed that " it wos all wery 
 shockin' — wery." 
 
 " Oh, he's a bad 'un ! " said Mr. Weller, " is that 
 'ere watch-box boy, makin' such a noise and litter 
 in the back-yard, he does, waterin' wooden horses 
 and feedin' of 'em vith grass, and perpetivally 
 spillin' his little brother out of a veelbarrow and 
 frightenin' his mother out of her vits, at the 
 v/ery moment wen she's expectin' to increase his 
 stock of happiness vith another playfeller. Oh, 
 he's a bad one ! He's even gone so far as to 
 put on a pair of paper spectacles as he got his 
 father to make for him, and walk up and down, 
 the garden vith his hands behind him in imita- 
 tion of Mr. Pickwick, — but Tony don't do sich 
 things, oh no ! " 
 
 " Oh no ! " echoed Tony. 
 
 " He knows better, he does," said Mr. Weller. 
 " He knows that if he wos to come sich games 
 as these nobody wouldn't love him, and that 
 his grandfather in partickler couldn't abear the 
 sight on him ; for vich reasons Tony's always 
 good." 
 
 "Always good," echoed Tony; and his 
 grandfather immediately took him on his knee 
 and kissed him, at the same time, with ihany 
 nods and winks, slily pointing at the child's 
 head with his thumb, in order that the house- 
 keeper, otherwise deceived by the admirable 
 manner in which he (Mr. Weller) had sustained 
 his character, might not suppose that any other 
 young gentleman was referred to, and might 
 clearly understand that the boy of the watch- 
 box was but an imaginary creation, and a fetch 
 of Tony himself, invented for his improvement 
 and reformation. 
 
 Not confining himself to a mere verbal de- 
 scription of his grandson's abilities, Mr. Weller, 
 when tea was finished, invited him by various 
 gifts of pence and halfpence to smoke imaginary 
 
300 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 pipes, drink visionary beer from real pots, imi- 
 tate his grandfather without reserve, and in par- 
 ticular to go through the drunken scene, which 
 threw the old gentleman into ecstasies, and filled 
 the housekeeper with wonder. Nor was Mr. 
 Wellers pride satisfied with even this display, 
 for when he took his leave he carried the child, 
 like some rare and astonishing curiosity, first to 
 the barber's house, and afterwards to the tobac- 
 conist's, at each of which places he repeated his 
 performances with the utmost effect to applaud- 
 ing and delighted audiences. It was half-past 
 nine o'clock when Mr. Weller was last seen 
 carrying him home upon his shoulder, and it 
 has been whispered abroad that at that time the 
 infant Tony was rather intoxicated.'' 
 
 [Master Humphrey is revived thus, at the close of the 
 Old Curiosity Shop, merely to introduce Barnaby 
 Rudge. 
 
 I was musing the other evening upon the 
 characters and incidents with which I had been 
 so long engaged ; wondering how I could ever 
 have looked forward with pleasure to the com- 
 pletion of my tale, and reproaching myself for 
 having done so, as if it were a kind of cruelty to 
 those companions of my solitude whom I had 
 now dismissed, and could never again recall; 
 when my clock struck ten. Punctual to the 
 hour, my friends appeared. 
 
 On our last night of meeting we had finished 
 the story which the reader has just concluded. 
 Our conversation took the same current as the 
 meditations which the entrance of my friends 
 had interrupted, and The Old Curiosity Shop 
 was the staple of our discourse. 
 
 I may confide to the reader now, that in con- 
 nection with this little history I had something 
 upon my mind ; something to communicate 
 which I had all along with difficulty repressed ; 
 something I had deemed it, during the progress 
 of the story, necessary to its interest to disguise, 
 and which, now that it was over, I wished, and 
 was yet reluctant, to disclose. 
 
 To conceal anything from those to Avhom I 
 am attached is not in my nature. I can never 
 close my lips where I have opened my heart. 
 This temper, and the consciousness of having 
 done some violence to it in my narrative, laid 
 me under a restraint which I should have had 
 great difficulty in overcoming, but for a timely 
 remark from Mr. Miles, who, as I hinted in a 
 former paper, is a gentleman of business habits, 
 and of great exactness and propriety in all his 
 transactions. 
 
 * Old Curiosity Shop is continued from here to the 
 end without farther break. 
 
 "I could have wished," my friend objected, 
 "that we had been made acquainted with the 
 single gentleman's name. I don't like his with- 
 holding his name. It made me look upon him 
 at first with suspicion, and caused me to doubt 
 his moral character, I assure you. I am fully 
 satisfied by this time of his being a worthy 
 creature ; but in this respect he certainly would 
 not appear to have acted at all like a man of 
 business." 
 
 " My friends," said I, drawing to the table, at 
 which they were by this time seated in their 
 usual chairs, " do you remember that this story 
 bore another title besides that one we have so 
 often heard of late ? " 
 
 Mr. Miles had his pocket-book out in an 
 instant, and referring to an entry therein, re- 
 joined, " Certainly. Personal Adventures of 
 Master Humphrey. Here it is. I made a note 
 of it at the time." 
 
 I was about to resume what I had to tell them, 
 when the same Mr. Miles again interrupted me, 
 observing that the narrative originated in a per- 
 sonal adventure of my own, and that was no 
 doubt the reason for its being thus designated. 
 
 This led me to the point at once. 
 
 " You will one and all forgive me," I returned, 
 " if, for the greater convenience of the story, and 
 for its better introduction, that adventure was 
 fictitious. I had my share, indeed, — no light or 
 trivial one, — in the pages we have read, but it 
 was not the share I feigned to have at first. The 
 younger brother, the single gentleman, the name- 
 less actor in this little drama, stands before you 
 now." 
 
 It was easy to see they had not expected this 
 disclosure. 
 
 " Yes ! " I pursued. " I can look back upon 
 my part in it with a calm, half-smiling pity for 
 myself, as for some other man. But I am he, 
 indeed ; and now the chief sorrows of my life 
 are yours." 
 
 I need not say what true gratification I de- 
 rived from the sympathy and kindness with 
 which this acknowledgment was received ; nor 
 how often it had risen to my lips before ; nor 
 how difficult I had found it — how impossible, 
 when I came to those passages which touched 
 me most, and most nearly concerned me — to 
 sustain the character I had assumed. It is 
 enough to say that I replaced in the clock-case 
 the record of so many trials, — sorrowfully, it is 
 true, but with a softened sorrow which was 
 almost pleasure ; and felt that in living through 
 the past again, and communicating to others the 
 lesson it had helped to teach me, I had been a 
 happier man. 
 
THE HEART OF LONDON. 
 
 301 
 
 We lingered so long over the leaves from which 
 I had read, that, as I consigned them to their 
 former resting-place, the hand of my trusty clock 
 pointed to twelve, and there came towards us 
 upon the wind the voice of the deep and distant 
 bellof St. Paul'sasit struck the hour of midnight. 
 
 " This," said I, returning with a manuscript I 
 had taken at the moment from the same reposi- 
 tory, " to be opened to such music, should be 
 a tale where London's face by night is darkly 
 seen, and where some deed of such a time as 
 this is dimly shadowed out. Which of us here 
 has seen the working of that great machine 
 whose voice has just now ceased?" 
 
 Mr. Pickwick had, of course, and so had Mr. 
 Miles. Jack and my deaf friend were in the 
 minority. 
 
 I had seen it but a few days before, and could 
 not help telling them of the fancy I had about it. 
 
 I paid my fee of twopence upon entering, to 
 one of the money-changers who sit within the 
 Temple ; and falling, after a few turns up and 
 down, into the quiet train of thought which such 
 a place awakens, paced the echoing stones like 
 some old monk whose present world lay all 
 within its walls. As I looked afar up into the 
 lofty dome, I could not help wondering what 
 were his reflections whose genius reared that 
 mighty pile, when, the last small wedge of timber 
 fixed, the last nail driven into its home for many 
 centuries, the clang of hammers and the hum of 
 busy voices gone, and the Great Silence whole 
 years of noise had helped to make, reigning un- 
 disturbed around, he mused, as I did now, upon 
 his work, and lost himself amid its vast extent. 
 I could not quite determine whether the con- 
 templation of it would impress him with a sense 
 of greatness or of insignificance ; but when I re- 
 membered how long a time it had taken to erect, 
 m how short a space it might be traversed even 
 to its remotest parts, for how brief a term he, or 
 any of those who cared to bear his name, would 
 live to see it, or know of its existence, I ima- 
 gined him far more melancholy than proud, and 
 looking with regret upon his labour done. With 
 these thoughts in my mind, I began to ascend, 
 almost unconsciously, the flight of steps leading 
 to the several wonders of the building, and found 
 myself before a barrier where another money- 
 taker sat, who demanded which among them I 
 would choose to see. There were the stone 
 gallery, he said, and the whispering gallery, the 
 geometrical staircase, the room of models, the 
 
 clock The clock being quite in my way, 
 
 I stopped him there, and chose that sight from 
 all the rest. 
 
 I groped my way into the Turret which it 
 
 occupies, and saw before me, in a kind of loft, 
 what seemed to be a great, old oaken press with 
 folding doors. These being thrown back by the 
 attendant (who was sleeping when I came upon 
 him, and looked a drowsy fellow, as though liis 
 close companionship with Time had made him 
 quite indifferent to it), disclosed a complicated 
 crowd of wheels and chains in iron and brass, — 
 great, sturdy, rattling engines, — suggestive of 
 breaking a finger put in here or there, and grind- 
 ing the bone to powder, — and these were the 
 Clock ! Its very pulse, if I may use the word, 
 was like no other clock. It did not mark the 
 flight of every moment with a gentle second 
 stroke, as though it would check old Time, and 
 have him stay his pace in pity, but measured it 
 with one sledge-hammer beat, as if its business 
 were to crush the seconds as they came trooping 
 on, and remorselessly to clear a path before the 
 Day of Judgment. 
 
 I sat down opposite to it, and hearing its re- 
 gular and never-changing voice, that one deep 
 constant note, uppermost amongst all the noise 
 and clatter in the streets below, — marking that, 
 let that tumult rise or fall, go on, or stop, — let it 
 be night or noon, to-morrow or to-day, this year 
 or next, — it still performed its functions with the 
 same dull constancy, and regulated the progress 
 of the life around, the fancy came upon me that 
 this was London's Heart, and that when it should 
 cease to beat, the City would be no more. 
 
 -It is night. Calm and unmoved amidst the 
 scenes that darkness favours, the great heart of 
 London throbs in its Giant breast. Wealth and 
 beggary, vice and virtue, guilt and innocence, re- 
 pletion and the direst hunger, all treading on 
 each other and crowding together, are gathered 
 round it. Draw but a little circle above the 
 clustering housetops, and you shall have within 
 its space everything, with its opposite extreme 
 and contradiction, close beside. Where yonder 
 feeble light is shining, a man is but this moment 
 dead. The taper at a {^\n yards' distance is 
 seen by eyes that have this instant opened on 
 the world. There are two houses separated 
 by but an inch or two of wall. In one, there 
 are quiet minds at rest ; in the other, a waking 
 conscience that one might think would trouble 
 the very air. In that close corner, where the 
 roofs shrink down and cower together as if to 
 hide their secrets from the handsome street 
 hard by, there are such dark crimes, such miseries 
 and horrors, as could be hardly told in whis- 
 pers. In the handsome street there are folks 
 asleep who have dwelt there all their lives, and 
 have no more knowledge of these things than if 
 they had never been, or were transacted at the 
 
302 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 remotest limits of the world, — who, if they were 
 hinted at, would shake their heads, look wise, 
 and frown, and say they were impossible, and 
 out of Nature, — as if all great towns were not. 
 Does not this Heart of London, that nothing 
 moves, nor stops, nor quickens, — that goes on 
 the same let what will be done, — does it not 
 express the City's character well ? 
 
 The day begins to break, and soon there is 
 the hum and noise of life. Those who have spent 
 the night on door-steps and cold stones crawl 
 off to beg \ they who have slept in beds come 
 forth to their occupation, too, and business is 
 astir. The fog of sleep rolls slowly off, and 
 London shines awake. The streets are filled 
 with carriages, and people gaily clad. The gaols 
 are full, too, to the throat, nor have the work- 
 houses or hospitals much room to spare. The 
 courts of law are crowded. Taverns have their 
 regular frequenters by this time, and every mart 
 of traffic has its throng. Each of these places is 
 a world, and has its own inhabitants ; each is 
 distinct from, and almost unconscious of, the 
 existence of any other. There are some few 
 people well to do, who remember to have heard 
 it said that numbers of men and women — 
 thousands, they think it was — get up in London 
 every day, unknowing where to lay their heads 
 at night ; and that there are quarters of the town 
 where misery and famine always are. They 
 don't believe it quite, — there may be some truth 
 in it, but it is exaggerated, of course. So, each 
 of these thousand worlds goes on, intent upon 
 itself, until night comes again, — first with its 
 lights and pleasures, and its cheerful streets ; 
 then with its guilt and darkness. 
 
 Heart of London, there is a moral in thy every 
 stroke ! As I look on at thy indomitable work- 
 ing, which neither death, nor press of life, nor 
 grief, nor gladness out of doors will influence 
 one jot, I seem to hear a voice within thee which 
 sinks into my heart, bidding me, as I elbow my 
 way among the crowd, have some thought for 
 the meanest wretch that passes, and, being a 
 man, to turn away with scorn and pride from 
 none that bear the human shape. 
 
 I am by no means sure that I might not have 
 been tempted to enlarge upon the subject, had 
 not the papers that lay before me on the table 
 been a silent reproach for even this digression. 
 I took them up again when I had got thus far, 
 and seriously prepared to read. 
 
 The handwriting was strange to me, for the 
 manuscript had been fairly copied. As it is 
 against our rules, in such a case, to inquire into 
 the authorship until the reading is concluded, I 
 
 could only glance at the different faces round 
 me, in search of some expression which should 
 betray the writer. Whoever he might be, he 
 was [)repared for this, and gave no sign for my 
 enlightenment. 
 
 I had the papers in my hand, when my deaf 
 friend interposed with a suggestion. 
 
 "It has occurred to me," he said, " bearing in 
 mind your sequel to the tale we have finished, 
 that if such of us as have anything to relate of our 
 own lives could interweave it with our contribu- 
 tion to the Clock, it would be well to do so. This 
 need be no restraint upon us, either as to time, 
 or place, or incident, since any real passage of 
 this kind may be surrounded by fictitious cir- 
 cumstances, and represented by fictitious cha- 
 racters. What if we make this an article of 
 agreement among ourselves ?" 
 
 The proposition was cordially received, but 
 the difficulty appeared to be that here was a 
 long story written before we had thought of it. 
 
 " Unless," said I, " it should have happened 
 that the writer of this tale — which is not impos- 
 sible, for men are apt to do so when they write 
 — has actually mingled with it something of his 
 own endurance and experience." 
 
 Nobody spoke, but I thought I detected in 
 one quarter that this was really the case. 
 
 "If I have no assurance to the contrary,'" I 
 added, therefore, " I shall take it for granted 
 that he has done so, and that even these papers 
 come within our new agreement. Everybody 
 being mute, we hold that understanding, if you 
 please." 
 
 And here I was about to begin again, when 
 Jack informed us softly, that during the progress 
 of our last narrative, Mr. Wellefs Watch had 
 adjourned its sittings from the kitchen, and re- 
 gularly met outside our door, where he had no 
 doubt that august body would be found at the 
 present moment. As this was for the convenience 
 of listening to our stories, he submitted that 
 they might be suffered to come in, and hear 
 them more pleasantly. 
 
 To this we one and all yielded a ready assent, 
 and the party being discovered, as Jack had 
 supposed, and invited to walk in, entered (though 
 not without great confusion at having been de- 
 tected), and were accommodated with chairs at a 
 little distance. 
 
 Then, the lamp being trimmed, the fire well 
 stirred and burning brightly, the hearth clean 
 swept, the curtains closely drawn, the clock 
 wound up, we entered on our new story, — 
 Barnaby Rudge. 
 
PLEASANT FANCTES. 
 
 303 
 
 [This is, as indicated, the final appearance of Master 
 Humphrey's Clock. It forms the conclusion of Biunaby 
 Rudge.] 
 
 It is again midnight. My fire burns cheer- 
 fully ; the room is filled with my old fi-iend's 
 sober voice ; and I am left to muse upon the 
 ' story we have just now finished. 
 
 It makes me smile, at such a time as this, to 
 think if there were any one to see me sitting in 
 my easy-chair, my grey head hanging down, my 
 eyes bent thoughtfully upon the glowing embers, 
 and my crutch — emblem of my helplessness — 
 lying upon the hearth at my feet, how solitary I 
 should seem. Yet, though I am the sole tenant 
 of this chimney-corner, though I am childless 
 and old, I have no sense of loneliness at this 
 hour ; but am the centre of a silent group whose 
 company I love. 
 
 Thus, even age and weakness have their con- 
 solations. If I were a younger man, if I were 
 more active, more strongly bound and tied to 
 life, these visionary friends would shun me, or I 
 should desire to fly from them. Being what I 
 am, I can court their society, and delight in it ; 
 and pass whole hours in picturing to myself the 
 shadows that perchance flock every night into 
 this chamber, and in imagining with pleasure 
 what kind of interest they have in the frail, 
 feeble mortal who is its sole inhabitant. 
 
 All the friends I have ever lost I find again 
 among these visitors. I love to fancy their 
 spirits hovering about me, feeling still some 
 earthly kindness for their old companion, and 
 watching his decay. " He is weaker, he de- 
 clines apace, he draws nearer and nearer to us, 
 and will soon be conscious of our existence." 
 What is there to alarm me in this ? It is en- 
 couragement and hope. 
 
 These thoughts have never crowded on me 
 half so fast as they have done to-night. Faces 
 I had long forgotten have become familiar to 
 me once again ; traits I had endeavoured to 
 recall for years have come before me in an 
 instant ; nothing is changed but me ; and even 
 I can be my former self at will. 
 
 Raising my eyes but now to the face of my 
 old clock, I remember, quite involuntarily, the 
 veneration, not unmixed with a sort of childish 
 awe, with which I used to sit and watch it as 
 it ticked, unheeded in a dark staircase corner. 
 I recollect looking more grave and steady when 
 I met its dusty face, as if, having that strange 
 kind of life within it, and being free from all 
 excess of vulgar appetite, and warning all the 
 house by night and day, it were a sage. How 
 often have I listened to it as it told the beads 
 of time, and wondered at its constancy ! How 
 
 often watched it slowly pointing round the dial, 
 and, while I panted for the eagerly-expected 
 hour to come, admired, despite myself, its 
 steadiness of purpose and lofty freedom from 
 all human strife, impatience, and desire ! 
 
 I thought it cruel once. It was very hard of 
 heart, to my mind, I remember. It was an old 
 servant even then ; and I felt as though it ought 
 to show some sorrow; as though it wanted 
 sympathy with us in our distress, and were a 
 dull, heartless, mercenary creature. Ah ! how 
 soon I learnt to know that in its ceaseless going 
 on, and in its being checked or stayed by 
 nothing, lay its greatest kindness, and the only 
 balm for grief and wounded peace of mind ! 
 
 To-night, to-night, when this tranquillity and 
 calm are on my spirits, and memory presents so 
 many shifting scenes before me, I take my quiet 
 stand at will by many a fire that has been long 
 extinguished, and mingle with the cheerful 
 group that cluster round it. If I could be sor- 
 rowful in such a mood, I should grow sad to 
 think what a poor blot I was upon their youth 
 and beauty once, and now how few remain to 
 put me to the blush ; I should grow sad to 
 think that such among them as I sometimes 
 meet with in my daily walks are scarcely less 
 infirm than I ; that time has brought us to a 
 level; and that all distinctions fade and vanish 
 as we take our trembling steps towards the 
 grave. 
 
 But memory was given us for better purposes 
 than this, and mine is not a torment, but a 
 source of pleasure. To muse upon the gaiety 
 and youth I have known suggests to me glad 
 scenes of harmless mirth that may be passing 
 now. From contemplating them apart, I soon 
 become an actor in these Httle dramas, and, 
 humouring my fancy, lose myself among the 
 beings it invokes. 
 
 When my fire is bright and high, and a warm 
 blush mantles in the walls and ceiling of this 
 ancient room ; when my clock makes cheerful 
 music, like one of those chirping insects who 
 delight in the warm hearth, and are sometimes, 
 by a good superstition, looked upon as the har- 
 bingers of fortune and plenty to that household 
 in whose mercies they put their humble trust; 
 when everything is in a ruddy genial glow, and 
 there are voices in the crackling flame, and 
 smiles in its flashing light, other smiles and 
 other voices congregate around me, invading, 
 with their pleasant harmony, the silence of the 
 time. 
 
 For then a knot of youthful creatures gather 
 round my fireside, and the room re-echoes to 
 their merry voices. My solitary chair no longer 
 
304 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 holds its ample place before the fire, but is 
 wheeled into a smaller corner, to leave more 
 room for the broad circle formed about the 
 cheerful hearth. I have sons, and daughters, 
 and grandchildren, and we are assembled on 
 some occasion of rejoicing common to us all. 
 It is a birthday, perhaps, or perhaps it may be 
 Christmas-time _; but, be it what it may, there is 
 rare holiday among us ; we are full of glee. 
 
 In the chimney-corner, opposite myself, sits 
 one who has grown old beside me. She is 
 changed, of course ; much changed ; and yet I 
 recognise the girl even in that grey hair and 
 wrinkled brow. Glancing from the laughing 
 child who half hides in her ample skirts, and 
 half peeps out, — and from her to the little 
 matron of twelve years old, who sits so womanly 
 and so demure at no great distance from me, — 
 and from her, again, to a fair girl in the full 
 bloom of early womanhood, the centre of the 
 group, who has glanced more than once towards 
 the opening door, and by whom the children, 
 whispering and tittering among themselves, will 
 leave a vacant chair, although she bids them 
 not, — I see her image thrice repeated, and feel 
 how long it is before one form and set of fea- 
 tures wholly pass away, if ever, from among the 
 living. While I am dwelling upon this, and 
 tracing out the gradual change from infancy to 
 youth, from youth to perfect growth, from that 
 to age, and thinking, with an old man's pride, 
 that she is comely yet, I feel a slight thin hand 
 upon my arm, and, looking down, see seated at 
 my feet a crippled boy, — a gentle, patient child, 
 — whose aspect I know well. He rests upon a 
 little crutch, — I know it too, — and, leaning on 
 it as he climbs my footstool, whispers in my 
 ear, " I am hardly one of these, dear grand- 
 father, although I love them dearly. They are 
 very kind to me, but you will be kinder still, I 
 know." 
 
 I have my hand upon his neck, and stoop 
 to kiss him, when my clock strikes, my chair is 
 in its old spot, and I am alone. 
 
 What if I be ? What if this fireside be tenant- 
 less, save for the presence of one weak old man ? 
 From my housetop I can look upon a hundred 
 homes, in every one of which these social com- 
 panions are matters of reality. In my daily 
 walks I pass a thousand men whose cares are all 
 forgotten, whose labours are made light, whose 
 dull routine of work from day to day is cheered 
 and brightened by their glimpses of domestic joy 
 at home. Amid the struggles of this struggling 
 town what cheerful sacrifices are made ; what 
 toil endured with readiness; what patience shown, 
 and fortitude displayed, for the mere sake of 
 
 home and its affections ! Let me thank Heaven 
 that I can people my fireside with shadows such 
 as these ; with shadows of bright objects that 
 exist in crowds about me ; and let me say, " I 
 am alone no more." 
 
 I never was less so — I write it with a grateful 
 heart— than I am to-night. Recollections of 
 the past and visions of the present come to bear 
 me company ; the meanest man to whom I have 
 ever given alms appears, to add his mite of peace 
 and comfort to my stock ; and whenever the fire 
 within me shall grow cold, to light my path upon 
 this earth no more, I pray that it may be at such 
 an hour as this, and when I love the world as 
 well as I do now. 
 
 THE DEAF GENTLEMAN FROM HIS OWN 
 APARTMENT. 
 
 Our dear friend laid down his pen at the end 
 of the foregoing paragraph, to take it uj) no more. 
 I little thought ever to employ mine upon so 
 sorrowful a task as that which he has left me, 
 and to which I now devote it. 
 
 As he did not appear among us at his usual 
 hour next morning, we knocked gently at his 
 door. No answer being given, it was softly 
 opened; and then, to our surprise, we saw 
 him seated before the ashes of his fire, with 
 a little table I was accustomed to set at his 
 elbow when I left him for the night at a short 
 distance from him, as though he had pushed it 
 away with the idea of rising and retiring to his 
 bed. His crutch and footstool lay at his feet as 
 usual, and he was dressed in his chamber-gown, 
 which he had put on before I left him. He was 
 reclining in his chair, in his accustomed posture, 
 with his face towards the fire, and seemed ab- 
 sorbed in meditation ; indeed, at first, we almost 
 hoped he was. 
 
 Going up to him, we found him dead. I have 
 often, very often, seen him sleeping, and always 
 peacefully, but I never saw him look so calm 
 and tranquil. His face wore a serene, benign 
 expression, which had impressed me very strongly 
 when we last shook hands ; not that he had ever 
 had any other look, God knows ; but there was 
 something in this so very spiritual, so strangely 
 and indefinably allied to youth, although hia 
 head was grey and venerable, that it was new 
 even in him. It came upon me all at once when 
 on some slight pretence he called me back upon 
 the previous night to take me by the hand again, 
 and once more say, " God bless you ! " 
 
 A bell-rope hung within his reach, but he had 
 not moved towards it ; nor had he stirred, we 
 all agreed, except, as I have said, to push away 
 
THE WILL. 
 
 305 
 
 his table, which he could have done, and no 
 doubt did, with a very slight motion of his hand. 
 He had relapsed for a moment into his late train 
 of meditation, and, with a thoughtful smile upon 
 liis face, had died. 
 
 I had long known it to be his wish, that 
 whenever this event should come to pass, we 
 might be all assembled in the house. I therefore 
 lost no time in sending for Mr. Pickwick and 
 for Mr. Miles, both of whom arrived before the 
 messenger's return. 
 
 It is not my purpose to dilate upon the sorrow 
 and affectionate emotions of which I was at once 
 the witness and the sharer. But I may say, of 
 the humbler mourners, that his faithful house- 
 keeper was fairly heart-broken ; that the poor 
 barber would not be comforted ; and that I shall 
 respect the homely tmth and warmth of heart of 
 Mr. Weller and his son to the last moment of 
 my life. 
 
 "And the sweet old creetur, sir," said the 
 elder Mr. Weller to me in the afternoon, " has 
 bolted. Him as had no wice, and was so free 
 from temper that a infant might ha' drove him, 
 has been took at last with that 'ere unawoidable 
 fit o' staggers as we all must come to, and gone 
 off" his feed for ever ! I see him," said the old 
 gentleman, with a moisture in his eye which 
 could not be mistaken, — " I see him gettin', 
 every journey, more and more groggy ; I says to 
 Samivel, ' My boy ! the Grey's a-goin' at the 
 knees;' and now my predilictions is fatally 
 werified, and him as I could never do enough to 
 serve, or show my likin' for, is up the great uni- 
 wersal spout o' natur'." 
 
 I was not the less sensible of the old man's 
 attachment because he expressed it in his pecu- 
 liar manner. Indeed, I can truly assert, of both 
 him and his son, that notwithstanding the ex- 
 traordinary dialogues they held together, and 
 the strange commentaries and corrections with 
 which each of them illustrated the other's speech, 
 I do not think it possible to exceed the sincerity 
 of their regret ; and that I am sure their tliought- 
 fulness and anxiety in anticipating the discharge 
 of many little offices of sympathy would have 
 done honour to the most delicate-minded per- 
 sons. 
 
 Our friend had frequently told us that his will 
 would be found in a box in the Clock-case, the 
 key of which was in his writing-desk. As he 
 had told us also that he desired it to be opened 
 immediately after his death, whenever that 
 should happen, we met together that night for 
 the fulfilment of his request. 
 
 We found it where he had told us, wrapped 
 in a sealed paper, and with it a codicil of recent 
 Edwin Drood, Etc, 20. 
 
 date, in which he named Mr. Miles and Mr. 
 Pickwick his executors, — as having no need of 
 any greater benefit from his estate than a generous 
 token (which he bequeathed to them) of his 
 friendship and remembrance. 
 
 After pointing out the spot in which he wished 
 his ashes to repose, he gave to " his dear old 
 friends," Jack Redburn and myself, his house, 
 his books, his furniture, — in short, all that his 
 house contained ; and with this legacy more 
 ample means of maintaining it in its present state 
 tlian we, with our habits and at our terms of life, 
 can ever exhaust. Besides these gifts, he left to 
 us, in trust, an annual sum of no insignificant 
 amount, to be distributed in charity among his 
 accustomed pensioners — they are a long list — 
 and such other claimants on his bounty as might, 
 from time to time, present themselves. And, as 
 true charity not only covers a multitude of sins, 
 but includes a multitude of virtues, such as for- 
 giveness, liberal construction, gentleness and 
 mercy to the faults of others, and the remem- 
 brance of our own imperfections and advantages, 
 he bade us not inquire too closely into the venial 
 errors of the poor, but, finding that they were 
 \ioox, first to relieve, and then endeavour — at an 
 advantage — to reclaim them. 
 
 To the housekeeper he left an annuity, suffi- 
 cient for her comfortable maintenance and sup- 
 port througli life. For the barber, who had 
 attended him many years, he made a similar pro- 
 vision. And I may make two remarks in this 
 place : first, that I think this pair are very likely 
 to club their means together, and make a match 
 of it ; and secondly, that I think my friend had 
 this result in his mind, for I have heard him say, 
 more than once, that he could not concur with 
 the generality of mankind in censuring equal 
 marriages made in later life, since there were 
 man}' cases in which such unions could not fail 
 to be a wise and rational source of happiness to 
 both parties. 
 
 The elder Mr. Weller is so far from viewing 
 this prospect with any feelings of jealousy, that 
 he appears to be very much relieved by its con- 
 templation ; and his son, if I am not mistaken, 
 participates in this feeling. We are all of opinion, 
 however, that the old gentleman's danger, even 
 at its crisis, was very slight, and that he merely 
 laboured under one of those transitory weak- 
 nesses to wliich persons of his temperament are 
 now and then liable, and wliich become less 
 and less alarming at every return, until they 
 wholly subside. I have no doubt he will remain 
 a jolly old widower for the rest of his life, as he 
 has already infjuired of me, with much gravity, 
 whether a writ of habeas corpus would enable 
 
3o6 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 him to settle his property upon Tony beyond 
 the possibihty of recall ; and has, in my pre- 
 sence, conjured his son, with tears in his eyes, 
 that in the event of his ever becoming amorous 
 again, he will put him in a strait waistcoat until 
 the fit is past, and distinctly inform the lady 
 that his property is " made over." 
 
 Although I have very little doubt that Sam 
 would dutifully comply with these injunctions in 
 a case of extreme necessity, and that he would 
 do so with perfect composure and coolness, I 
 do not apprehend things will ever come to that 
 pass, as the old gentleman seems perfectly happy 
 in the society of his son, his pretty daughter-in- 
 law, and his grandchildren, and has solemnly 
 announced his determination to "take arter the 
 old 'un in all respects ; " from which I infer that 
 it is his intention to regulate his conduct by the 
 model of Mr. Pickwick, who will certainly set 
 him the example of a single life. 
 
 I have diverged for a moment from the sub- 
 ject with which I set out, for I know that my 
 friend was interested in these little matters, and 
 1 have a natural tendency to linger upon any 
 topic that occupied his thoughts, or gave him 
 pleasure and amusement. His remaining wishes 
 are very briefly told. He desired that we would 
 make him the frequent subject of our conversa- 
 tion ; at the same time, that we would never 
 speak of him with an air of gloom or restraint, 
 but frankly, and as one whom we still loved 
 and hoped to meet again. He trusted that the 
 old house would wear no aspect of mourning, 
 but that it would be lively and cheerful ; and 
 that we would not remove or cover up his pic- 
 ture, which hangs in our dining-room, but make 
 it our companion as he had been. His own 
 room, our place of meeting, remains, at his de- 
 sire, in its accustomed state ; our seats are 
 placed about the table as of old ; his easy-chair, 
 his desk, his crutch, his footstool, hold their 
 accustomed places ; and the clock stands in its 
 familiar corner. We go into the chamber at 
 stated times to see that all is as it should be, 
 and to take care that the light and air are not 
 
 shut out, for on that point he expressed a strong 
 solicitude. But it was his fancy that the apart- 
 ment should not be inhabited ; that it should be 
 religiously preserved in this condition, and that 
 the voice of his old companion should be heard 
 no more. 
 
 My own history may be summed up in very 
 few words ; and even those I should have spared 
 the reader but for my friend's allusion to me 
 some time since. I have no deeper sorrow than 
 the loss of a child, — an only daughter, who is 
 living, and who fled from her father's house but 
 a few weeks before our friend and I first met. I 
 had never spoken of this even to him, because 
 I have always loved her, and I could not bear 
 to tell him of her error until I could tell him 
 also of her sorrow and regret. Happily I was 
 enabled to do so some time ago. And it will 
 not be long, with Heaven's leave, before she is 
 restored to me ; before I find in her and her 
 husband the support of my declining years. 
 
 For my pipe, it is an old relic of home, a 
 thing of no great worth, a poor trifle, but sacred 
 to me for her sake. 
 
 Thus, since the death of our venerable friend, 
 Jack Redburn and I have been the sole tenants 
 of the old house ; and, day by day, have lounged 
 together in his favourite walks. ^lindful of his 
 injunctions, we have long been able to speak of 
 him with ease and cheerfulness, and to remem- 
 ber him as he would be remembered. From 
 certain allusions which Jack has dropped to his 
 having been deserted and cast oft' in early life, 
 I am inclined to believe that some passages of 
 his youth may possibly be shadowed out in the 
 history of Mr. Chester and his son ; but, seeing 
 that he avoids the subject, I have not pur- 
 sued it. 
 
 My task is done. The chamber in which we 
 have whiled away so many hours — not, I hope, 
 without some pleasure and some profit' — is de- 
 serted ; our happy hour of meeting strikes no 
 more ; the chimney-corner has grown old ; and 
 Master Humphrey's Clock, has stopped for 
 ever. 
 
 THE END OF MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. 
 
HUNTED DOWN. 
 
 [i860.] 
 
 'OST of us see some romances in life. 
 In my capacity as Chief Manager of 
 a Life Assurance Ofifice, I think I 
 have within the last thirty years seen 
 more romances than the generality 
 of men, however unpromising the 
 opportunity may, at first sight, seem. 
 As I have retired, and live at my ease, 
 I possess the means that I used to want, of con- 
 sidering what I have seen, at leisure. My ex- 
 periences have a more remarkable aspect, so 
 reviewed, than they had when they were in pro- 
 gress. I have come home from the Play now, 
 and can recall the scenes of the Drama upon 
 which the curtain has fallen, free from the glare, 
 bewilderment, and bustle of the Theatre. 
 
 Let me recall one of these Romances of the 
 real world. 
 
 There is nothing truer than physiognomy, 
 taken in connection with manner. The art of 
 reading that book of which Eternal Wisdom 
 obliges every human creature to present his or 
 her own page with the individual character 
 written on it, is a difficult one, perhaps, and is 
 little studied. It may require some natural 
 aptitude, and it must require (for everything 
 does) some patience and some pains. That 
 these are not usually given to it,— that numbers 
 of people accept a few stock commonplace ex- 
 pressions of the face as the whole list of charac- 
 teristics, and neither seek nor know the refine- 
 ments that are truest, — that You, for instance, 
 give a great deal of time and attention to the 
 reading of music, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, 
 
3o8 
 
 HUNTED DOWN. 
 
 Hebrew, if you please, and do not qualify your- 
 self to read the face of the master or mistress 
 looking over your shoulder teaching it to you, — 
 I assume to be five hundred times more probable 
 than improbable. Perhaps a little self-sufficiency 
 may be at the bottom of this ; facial expression 
 requires no study from you, you think ; it comes 
 by nature to you to know enough about it, and 
 you are not to be taken in. 
 
 I confess, for my part, that I have been taken 
 in, over and over again. I have been taken in 
 by acquaintances, and I have been taken in (of 
 course) by friends ; far oftener by friends than by 
 any other class of persons. How came I to 
 be so deceived? Had I quite misread their 
 faces ? 
 
 No. Believe me, my first impression of those 
 people, founded on face and manner alone, was 
 invariably true. My mistake was in suffering 
 them to come nearer to me, and explain them- 
 selves away. 
 
 II. 
 
 The partition which separated my own office 
 from our general outer office in the City was of 
 thick plate glass, I could see through it what 
 passed in the outer office, without hearing a 
 word. I had it put up in place of a wall that 
 had been there for years,^ — ever since the house 
 was built. It is no matter whether I did or did 
 not make the change in order that I might 
 derive my first impression of strangers, who 
 came to us on business, from their faces alone, 
 without being influenced by anything they said. 
 Enough to mention that I turned my glass par- 
 tition to that account, and that a I>ife Assurance 
 Office is at all times exposed to be practised 
 upon by the most crafty and cruel of the human 
 race. 
 
 It was through my glass partition that I first 
 saw the gentleman whose story I am going to 
 tell. 
 
 He had come in without my observing it, and 
 had put his hat and umbrella on the broad 
 counter, and was bending over it to take some 
 papers from one of the clerks. He was about 
 forty or so, dark, exceedingly well dressed in 
 black, — being in mourning, — and the hand he 
 extended, with a polite air, had a particularly 
 well-fitting black kid glove upon it. His hair, 
 which was elaborately brushed and oiled, was 
 parted straight up the middle ; and he presented 
 this parting to the clerk, exactly (to my thinking) 
 as if he had said, in so many words : " You 
 must take me, if you please, my friend, just as I 
 show myself. Come straight up here, follow 
 
 the gravel path, keep off the grass, I allow no 
 trespassing." 
 
 I conceived a very great aversion to that man 
 the moment I thus saw him. 
 
 He had asked for some of our printed forms, 
 and the clerk was giving them to him and ex- 
 plaining them. An obliged and agreeable smile 
 was on his face, and his eyes met those of the 
 clerk with a sprightly look. (I have known a 
 vast (][uantity of nonsense talked about bad men 
 not looking you in the face. Don't trust that 
 conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty 
 out of countenance, any day in the week, if there 
 is anything to be got by it.) 
 
 I saw, in the corner of his eyelash, that he 
 became aware of my looking at him. Imme- 
 diately he turned the parting in his hair toward 
 the glass partition, as if he said to me with a 
 sweet smile, "Straight up here, if you please. 
 Off the grass ! " 
 
 In a few moments he had put on his hat and 
 taken up his umbrella, and was gone. 
 
 I beckoned the clerk into my room, and 
 asked, " Who was that?" 
 
 He had the gentleman's card in his hand. 
 '• Mr. Julius Slinkton, Middle Temple." 
 
 " A barrister, Mr. Adams ? " 
 
 " I think not, sir." 
 
 " I should have thought him a clergyman, but 
 for his having no Reverend here," said I. 
 
 " Probably, from his appearance," Mr. Adams 
 replied, " he is reading for orders." 
 
 I should mention that he wore a dainty white 
 cravat, and dainty linen altogether. 
 
 " What did he want, Mr. Adams ? " 
 
 " Merely a form of proposal, sir, and form of 
 reference." 
 
 " Recommended here ? Did he say ? " 
 
 " Yes, he said he was recommended here by 
 a friend of yours. He noticed you, but said 
 that, as he had not the pleasure of your per- 
 sonal acquaintance, he would not trouble you." 
 
 " Did he know my name ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, sir ! He said, ' There is Mr. Samp- 
 son, I see ! ' " 
 
 " A well-spoken gentleman, apparently ? " 
 
 " Remarkably so, sir." 
 
 " Insinuating manners, apparently?" 
 
 " Very much so, indeed, sir." 
 
 " Hah ! " said I. " I want nothing at present, 
 Mr. Adams." 
 
 Within a fortnight of that day I went to dine 
 with a friend of mine, a merchant, a man of 
 taste, who buys pictures and books ; and the 
 first man I saw among the company was Mr. 
 Julius Slinkton. There he was, standing before 
 the fire, with good large eyes and an open ex- 
 
MR. SLINKTON. 
 
 309 
 
 pression of face ; but still (I thought) requiring 
 everybody to come at him by the prepared way 
 he ofl'ered, and by no other. 
 
 I noticed him ask my friend to introduce him 
 to Mr. Sampson, and my friend did so. Mr. 
 Slinkton was very happy to see me. Not too 
 happy ; there was no overdoing of the matter ; 
 happy in a thoroughly well-bred, perfectly un- 
 meaning way. 
 
 " I thought you had met," our host observed. 
 
 " No," said Mr. SHnkton. " I did look in at 
 Mr. Sampson's office, on your recommendation ; 
 but I really did not feel justified in troubling Mr. 
 Sampson himself, on a point in the every-day 
 routine of an ordinary clerk." 
 
 I said I should have been glad to show him 
 any attention on our friend's introduction. 
 
 " I am sure of that," said he, " and am much 
 obliged. At another time, perhaps, I may be 
 less delicate. Only, however, if I have real 
 business ; for I know, Mr. Sampson, how 
 precious business time is, and what a vast 
 number of impertinent people there are in the 
 world." 
 
 I acknowledged his consideration with a 
 slight bow. " You were thinking," said I, " of 
 effecting a policy on your life." 
 
 " Oh dear no ! I am afraid I am not so 
 prudent as you pay me the compliment of sup- 
 posing me to be, Mr. Sampson. I merely 
 inquired for a friend. But you know what 
 friends are in such matters. Nothing may ever 
 come of it. I have the greatest reluctance to 
 trouble men of business with inquiries for 
 friends, knowing the probabilities to be a thou- 
 sand to one that the friends will never follow 
 them up. People are so fickle, so selfish, so 
 inconsiderate. Don't you, in your business, 
 find them so every day, Mr. Sampson ? " 
 
 I was going to give a qualified answer ; but 
 he turned his smooth, white parting on me, with 
 its " Straight up here, if you please ! " and I 
 answered "Yes." 
 
 "I hear, Mr. Sampson," he resumed pre- 
 sently, for our friend had a new cook, and 
 dinner was not so punctual as usual, " that 
 your profession has recently suffered a great 
 loss." 
 
 " In money?" said I. 
 
 He laughed at my ready association of loss 
 with money, and replied, " No, in talent and 
 vigour." 
 
 Not at once following out his allusion, I 
 considered for a moment. " Has it sustained 
 a loss of that kind ? " said I. "I was not aware 
 of it." 
 
 "Understand me, Mr. Sampson. I don't 
 
 imagine that you have retired. It is not so 
 bad as that. But Mr. Mcltham " 
 
 "Oh, to be sure!" said I. "Yes! Mr. 
 Meltham, the young actuary of the ' Inestima- 
 ble.' " 
 
 " Just so," he returned in a consoling way. 
 
 " He is a great loss. He was at once the 
 most profound, the most original, and the most 
 energetic man I have ever known connected 
 with Life Assurance." 
 
 I spoke strongly; for I had a high esteem 
 and admiration for Meltham \ and my gentle- 
 man had indefinitely conveyed to me some 
 suspicion that he wanted to sneer at him. He 
 recalled me to my guard by presenting that 
 trim pathway up his head, with its infernal 
 " Not on the grass, if you please — the gravel." 
 
 " You knew him, Mr. Slinkton ? " 
 
 " Only by reputation. To have known him 
 as an acquaintance, or as a friend, is an honour 
 I should have sought if he had remained in 
 society, though I might never have had the 
 good fortune to attain it, being a man of far 
 inferior mark. He was scarcely above thirty, 
 I suppose ? " 
 
 " About thirty." 
 
 " Ah ! " he sighed in his former consoling 
 way. " What creatures we are ! To break up, 
 Mr. Sampson, and become incapable of busi- 
 ness at that time of life ! — Any reason assigned 
 for the melancholy fact ? " 
 
 (" Humph ! " thought I as I looked at him. 
 " But I won't go up the track, and I will go 
 on the grass.") 
 
 " What reason have you heard assigned, Mr« 
 Slinkton ? " I asked point-blank. 
 
 " Most likely a false one. You know what 
 Rumour is, Mr. Sampson. I never repeat what 
 I hear ; it is the only way of paring the nails 
 and shaving the head of Rumour. But, when 
 you ask me what reason I have heard assigned 
 for Mr. Meltham's passing away from among 
 men, it is another thing. I am not gratifying 
 idle gossip then. I was told, Mr. Sampson, 
 that Mr. Meltham had reUnquished all his avo- 
 cations and all his prospects, because he was, 
 in fact, broken-hearted. A disappointed at- 
 tachment I heard, — though it hardly seems 
 probable, in the case of a man so distinguished 
 and so attractive." 
 
 " Attractions and distinctions are no armour 
 against death," said I. 
 
 " Oh, she died ? Pray pardon me. I did 
 not hear that. That, indeed, makes it very, 
 very sad. Poor Mr. Meltham ! She died ? 
 Ah, dear me I Lamentable, lamentable ! " 
 
 I still thought his pity was not quite genuine. 
 
JIO 
 
 HUNTED DOWN. 
 
 and I still suspected an unaccountable sneer 
 under all this, until he said, as we were parted, 
 like the other knots of talkers, by the announce- 
 ment of dinner : 
 
 " Mr. Sampson, you are surprised to see me 
 so moved on behalf of a man whom I have never 
 known. I am not so disinterested as you may 
 suppose. I have suftered, and recently too, 
 from death myself. I have lost one of two 
 charming nieces, who were my constant com- 
 panions. She died young — barely three-and- 
 twenty; and even her remaining sister is far 
 from strong. The world is a grave ! " 
 
 He said this with deep feeling, and I felt 
 reproached for the coldness of my manner. 
 Coldness and distrust had been engendered in 
 me, I knew, by my bad experiences ; they were 
 not natural to me; and I often thought how 
 much I had lost in life, losing trustfulness, and 
 how little I had gained, gaining hard caution. 
 This state of mind being habitual to me, I 
 troubled myself more about this conversation 
 than I might have troubled myself about a 
 greater matter. I listened to his talk at dinner, 
 and observed how readily other men responded 
 to it, and with what a graceful instinct he 
 adapted his subjects to the knowledge and 
 habits of those he talked with. As, in talking 
 with me, he had easily started the subject I 
 might be supposed to understand best, and to 
 be the most interested in, so, in talking with 
 others, he guided himself by the same rule. 
 The company was of a varied character; but 
 he was not at fault, that I could discover, with 
 any member of it. He knew just as much of 
 each man's pursuit as made him agreeable to 
 that man in reference to it, and just as little as 
 made it natural in him to seek modestly for 
 information when the theme was broached. 
 
 As he talked and talked — but really not too 
 much, for the rest of us seemed to force it upon 
 him — I became quite angry with myself I took 
 his face to pieces in my mind, like a watch, and 
 examined it in detail. I could not say much 
 against any of his features separately ; I could 
 say even less against them when they were put 
 together. " Then is it not monstrous," I asked 
 myself, " that because a man happens to part 
 his hair straight up the middle of his head, I 
 should permit myself to suspect, and even to 
 detest him ? " 
 
 (I may stop to remark that this was no proof 
 ef my sense. An observer of men who finds 
 hirnself steadily repelled by some apparently 
 trifling thing in a stranger is right to give it 
 great weight. It may be the clue to the whole 
 mystery. A hair or two will show where a lion 
 
 is hidden. A very little key will open a very 
 heavy door.) 
 
 I took my part in the conversation with him 
 after a time, and we got on remarkably well. 
 In the drawing-room I asked the host how long 
 he had known Mr. Slinkton. He answered, not 
 many months ; he had met him at the house of 
 a celebrated painter then present, who had known 
 him well when he was travelling with his nieces 
 in Italy for their health. His plans in life being 
 broken by the death of one of them, he was 
 reading with the intention of going back to col- 
 lege as a matter of form, taking his degree, and 
 going into orders. I could not but argue with 
 myself that here was the true explanation of his 
 interest in poor Meltham, and that I had been 
 almost brutal in my distrust on that simple 
 head. 
 
 III. 
 
 On the very next day but one I was sitting 
 behind my glass partition, as before, when he 
 came into the outer othce, as before. The 
 moment I saw him again without hearing him, I 
 hated him worse than ever. 
 
 It was only for a moment that I had this 
 opportunity ; for he waved his tight-fitting black 
 glove the instant I looked at him, and came 
 straight in. 
 
 "Mr. Sampson, good day ! I presume, you 
 see, upon your kind permission to intrude upon 
 you. I don't keep my word in being justified 
 by business, for my business here — if I may so 
 abuse the word — is of the slightest nature." 
 
 I asked, was it anything I could assist him in ? 
 
 " I thank you, no. I merely called to inquire 
 outside whether my dilatory friend had been so 
 false to himself as to be practical and sensible. 
 But, of course, he has done nothing. I gave 
 him your papers with my own hand, and he was 
 hot upon the intention, but of course he has 
 done nothing. Apart from the general human 
 disinclination to do anything that ought to be 
 done, I dare say there is a specialty about 
 assuring one's Ufe. You find it like will-making. 
 People are so superstitious, and take it for 
 granted they will die soon afterwards." 
 
 " Up here, if you please ; straight up here, 
 Mr. Sampson, Neither to the right nor to the 
 left." I almost fancied I could hear him breathe 
 the words as he sat smiling at me, with that in- 
 tolerable parting exactly opposite the bridge of 
 my nose. 
 
 " There is such a feeling sometimes, no doubt," 
 I replied; " but I don't think it obtains to any 
 great extent." 
 
 " Well," said he with a shrug and a smile, " I 
 
MR. SLINKTON ANSWERS A FEW QUESTIONS. 
 
 3" 
 
 wish some good angel would influence my friend 
 in the right direction. I rashly promised his 
 mother and sister in Norfolk to see it done, and 
 he promised them that he would do it. But I 
 suppose he never will." 
 
 He spoke for a minute or two on different 
 topics, and went away. 
 
 I had scarcely unlocked the drawers of my 
 writing-table next morning, when he reappeared. 
 I noticed that he came straight to the door in 
 the glass partition, and did not pause a single 
 moment outside. 
 
 " Can you spare me two minutes, my dear 
 Mr. Sampson ? " 
 
 *' By all means." 
 
 " Much obliged," laying his hat and umbrella 
 on the table. " I came early, not to interrupt 
 you. The fact is, I am taken by surprise in 
 reference to this proposal my friend has made." 
 
 " Has he made one ? " said I, 
 
 " Ye-es," he answered, deliberately looking at 
 me; and then a bright idea seemed to strike 
 him — " or he only tells me he has. Perhaps 
 that may be a new way of evading the matter. 
 By Jupiter, I never thought of that ! " 
 
 Mr. Adams was opening the morning's letters 
 in the outer office. " What is the name, Mr. 
 Shnkton ? " I asked. 
 
 " Beckwith." 
 
 I looked out at the door, and requested Mr. 
 Adams, if there were a proposal in that name, 
 to bring it in. He had already laid it out of his 
 hand on the counter. It was easily selected 
 from the rest, and he gave it me. Alfred Beck- 
 with. Proposal to effect a policy with us for 
 two thousand pounds. Dated yesterday. 
 
 " From the Middle Temple, I see, Mr. 
 Slinkton." 
 
 " Yes. He lives on the same staircase with 
 me ; his door is opposite. I never thought he 
 would make me his reference, though." 
 
 " It seems natural enough that he should." 
 
 " Quite so, Mr. Sampson ; but I never thought 
 of it. Let me see." He took the printed paper 
 from his pocket. " How am I to answer all these 
 questions ? " 
 
 " According to the truth, of course," said I. 
 
 " Oh, of course ! " he answered, looking up 
 from the paper with a smile. " I meant they 
 were so many. But you do right to be par- 
 ticular. It stands to reason that you must be 
 particular. Will you allow me to use your pen 
 and ink ? " 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "And your desk ?" 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 He had been hovering about between his hat | 
 
 and his umbrella for a place to write on. He 
 now sat down in my chair, at my blotting-paper 
 and inkstand, with the long walk up his head in 
 accurate perspective before me, as I stood with 
 my back to the fire. 
 
 Before answering each question he ran it over 
 aloud, and discussed it. How long had he 
 known Mr. Alfred Beckwith? That he had to 
 calculate by years upon his fingers. What were 
 his habits? No difficulty about them; tem- 
 perate in the last degree, and took a little too 
 much exercise, if anything. All the answers 
 were satisfactory. When he had written them 
 all, he looked them over, and finally signed them 
 in a very pretty hand. He supposed he had 
 now done with the business. I told him he was 
 not likely to be troubled any farther. Should 
 he leave the papers there ? If he pleased. Much 
 obliged. Good morning. 
 
 I had had one other visitor before him ; not 
 at the office, but at my own house. That visitor 
 had come to my bedside when it was not yet 
 daylight, and had been seen by no one else but 
 my faithful confidential servant. 
 
 A second reference paper (for we required 
 always two) was sent down into Norfolk, and 
 was duly received back by post. This, likewise, 
 was satisfactorily answered in every respect. Our 
 forms were all complied with ; we accepted the 
 proposal, and the premium for one year was 
 paid. 
 
 IV. 
 
 For six or seven months I saw no more of Mr. 
 Slinkton. He called once at my house, but I 
 was not at home ; and he once asked me to dine 
 with him in the Temple, but I was engaged. 
 His friend's assurance was effected in March. 
 Late in September, or early in October, I was 
 down at Scarborough for a breath of sea air, 
 where I met him on the beach. It was a hot 
 evening ; he came toward me with his hat in his 
 hand ; and there was the walk I felt so strongly 
 disinclined to take in perfect order again, exactly 
 in front of the bridge of my nose. 
 
 He was not alone, but had a young lady on 
 his arm. 
 
 She was dressed in mourning, and I looked 
 at her with great interest. She had the appear- 
 ance of being extremely delicate, and her face 
 was remarkably pale and melancholy; but she 
 was very pretty. He introduced her as his 
 niece, Miss Niner. 
 
 " Are you strolling, Mr. Sampson ? Is it 
 possible you can be idle ? " 
 
 It 7vas possible, and I was strolling. 
 
 " Shall we stroll together ? " 
 
312 
 
 HUNTED DOWN. 
 
 " With pleasure." 
 
 The young lady walked between us, and we 
 walked on the cool sea-sand, in the direction of 
 Filey. 
 
 " There have been wheels here," said Mr. 
 Slinkton. "And now I look again, the wheels 
 of a hand-carriage ! Margaret, my love, your 
 shadow, without doubt ! " 
 
 " Miss Niner's shadow ? " I repeated, looking 
 down at it on the sand. 
 
 " Not that one," Mr, Slinkton returned, laugh- 
 ing. " Margaret, my dear, tell Mr. Sampson." 
 
 " Indeed," said the young lady, turning to 
 me, " there is nothing to tell— except that I 
 constantly see the same invalid old gentleman 
 at all times, wherever I go. I have mentioned 
 it to my uncle, and he calls the gentleman my 
 shadow." 
 
 " Does he live in Scarborough ? " I asked. 
 
 " He is staying here." 
 
 " Do you live in Scarborough ? " 
 
 " No, I am staying here. My uncle has placed 
 me with a family here, for my health.'' 
 
 " And your shadow ? " said I, smiling. 
 
 " My shadow," she answered, smiling too, " is 
 — like myself — not very robust, I fear; for I 
 lose my shadow sometimes, as my shadow loses 
 me at other times. We both seem hable to 
 confinement to the house. I have not seen my 
 shadow for days and days; but it does oddly 
 happen, occasionally, that wherever I go, for 
 many days together, this gentleman goes. We 
 have come together in the most unfrequented 
 nooks on this shore." 
 
 " Is this he ? " said I, pointing before us. 
 
 The wheels had swept down to the water's 
 edge, and described a great loop on the sand in 
 turning. Bringing the loop back towards us, and 
 spinning it out as it came, was a hand-carriage, 
 drawn by a man. 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Niner, " this really is my 
 shadow, uncle." 
 
 As the carriage approached us, and we ap- 
 proached the carriage, I saw within it an old 
 man, whose head was sunk on his breast, and 
 who was enveloped in a variety of wrappers. 
 He was drawn by a very quiet but very keen- 
 looking man, with iron-grey hair, who was 
 slightly lame. They had passed us, when the 
 carriage stopped, and the old gentleman within, 
 putting out his arm, called to me by my name. 
 I went back, and was absent from Mr. Slinkton 
 and his niece for about five minutes. 
 
 When I rejoined them Mr. Slinkton was the 
 first to speak. Indeed, he said to me in a 
 raised voice, before I came uj) with him : 
 
 " It is well you have not been longer, or my 
 
 niece might have died of curiosity to know who 
 her shadow is, Mr. Samjjson." 
 
 " An old East India Director," said I. " An 
 intimate friend of our friend's, at whose house 
 I first had the pleasure of meeting you. A 
 certain Major Banks. You have heard of 
 him ? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " Very rich, Miss Niner ; but very old, and 
 very crippled. An amiable man, sensible — 
 much interested in you. He has just been 
 expatiating on the affection that he has ob- 
 served to exist between you and your uncle." 
 
 Mr. Slinkton was holding his hat again, and 
 he passed his hand up the straight walk, as if he 
 himself went up it serenely after me. 
 
 "Mr. Sampson," he said, tenderly pressing 
 his niece's arm in his, " our affection was always 
 a strong one, for we have had but few near ties. 
 We have still fewer now. We have associations 
 to bring us together, that are not of this world, 
 Margaret." 
 
 " Dear uncle ! " murmured the young lady, 
 and turned her face aside to hide her tears. 
 
 " My niece and I have such remembrances 
 and regrets in common, Mr. Sampson," he feel- 
 ingly pursued, " that it would be strange indeed 
 if the relations between us were cold or indif- 
 ferent. If I remember a conversation we once 
 had together, you will understand the reference 
 I make. Cheer up, dear Margaret. Don't 
 droop, don't droop. My Margaret ! I cannot 
 bear to see you droojD ! " 
 
 The poor young lady was very much affected, 
 but controlled herself. His feelings, too, were 
 very acute. In a word, he found himself under 
 such great need of a restorative, that he pre- 
 sently went away, to take a bath of sea-water,, 
 leaving the young lady and me sitting by a 
 point of rock, and probably presuming — but 
 that you will say was a pardonable indulgence 
 in a luxury — that she would praise him with all 
 her heart. 
 
 She did, poor thing ! With all her confiding 
 heart, she praised him to me, for his care of her 
 dead sister, and for his untiring devotion in her 
 last illness. The sister had wasted away very 
 slowly, and wild and terrible fantasies had come 
 over her toward the end, but he had never been 
 impatient with her, or at a loss ; had always 
 been gentle, watchful, and self-possessed^ The 
 sister had known him, as she had known him,, 
 to be the best of men, the kindest of men, 
 and yet a man of such admirable strength cf 
 character, as to be a very tower for the support 
 of their weak natures while their poor lives 
 endured. 
 
THE SHADOW IN JEOPARDY. 
 
 313 
 
 " I shall leave him, Mr. Sampson, very soon," 
 said the young lady ; " I know my life is draw- 
 ing to an end ; and, when I am gone, I hope 
 he will marry and be happy. I am sure he has 
 lived single so long, only for my sake, and for 
 my poor, poor sister's." 
 
 The little hand-carriage had made another 
 great loop on the damp sand, and was coming 
 back again, gradually spinning out a slim figure 
 of eight, half a mile long. 
 
 " Young lady," said I, looking around, laying 
 my hand upon her arm, and speaking in a low 
 voice, " time presses. You hear the gentle 
 murmur of that sea ? " 
 
 She looked at me with the utmost wonder 
 and alarm, saying : 
 
 " Yes ! " 
 
 " And you know what a voice is in it when the 
 storm comes ? " 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 " You see how quiet and peaceful it lies before 
 us, and you know what an awful sight of power 
 without pity it might be, this very night ?" 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 " But if you had never heard or seen it, or 
 heard of it in its cruelty, could you believe that 
 it beats every inanimate thing in its way to 
 pieces without mercy, and destroys life without 
 remorse ? " 
 
 " You terrify me, sir, by these questions ! " 
 
 " To save you, young lady, to save you ! For 
 God's sake, collect your strength and collect 
 your firmness ! If you were here alone, and 
 hemmed in by the rising tide on the flow to fifty 
 feet above your head, you could not be in 
 greater danger than the danger you are now to 
 be saved from." 
 
 The figure on the sand was spun out, and 
 straggled off" into a crooked little jerk that ended 
 at the cliff" very near us. 
 
 " As I am, before Heaven and the Judge of 
 all mankind, your friend, and your dead sister's 
 friend, I solemnly entreat you, Miss Niner, with- 
 out one moment's loss of time, to come to this 
 gentleman with me ! " 
 
 If the little carriage had been less near to us, 
 I doubt if I could have got her away ; but it 
 was so near that we were there before she had 
 recovered the hurry of being urged from the 
 rock. I did not remain there with her two 
 minutes. Certainly within five, I had the inex- 
 pressible satisfaction of seeing her — from the 
 point we had sat on, and to which I had re- 
 turned — half supported and half carried up 
 some rude steps notched in the cliff", by the 
 figure of an active man. "With that figure beside 
 her I knew she was safe anywhere. 
 
 I sat alone on the rock, awaiting Mr. Slink- 
 ton's return. The twilight was deepening and 
 the shadows were heavy, when he came round 
 the point, with his hat hanging at his button- 
 hole, smoothing his wet hair with one of his 
 hands, and picking out the old path with the 
 other and a pocket-comb. 
 
 " My niece not here, Mr. Sampson ? " he said, 
 looking about. 
 
 " Miss Niner seemed to feel a chill in the air 
 after the sun was down, and has gone home." 
 
 He looked surprised, as though she were not 
 accustomed to do anything without him ; even 
 to originate so slight a proceeding. 
 
 " I persuaded Miss Niner," I explained. 
 
 " Ah ! " said he. " She is easily persuaded — 
 for her good. Thank you, Mr. Sampson ; she 
 is better within doors. The bathing-place was 
 farther than I thought, to say the truth." 
 
 " Miss Niner is very delicate," I observed. 
 
 He shook his head and drew a deep sigh. 
 " Very, very, very. You may recollect my say- 
 ing so. The time that has since intervened has 
 not strengthened her. The gloomy shadow 
 that fell upon her sister so early in life seems, in 
 my anxious eyes, to gather over her, ever darker, 
 ever darker. Dear Margaret, dear Margaret! 
 But we must hope." 
 
 The hand-carriage was spinning away before 
 us at a most indecorous pace for an invalid 
 vehicle, and was making most irregular curves 
 upon the sand. Mr. Slinkton, noticing it after 
 he had put his handkerchief to his eyes, said : 
 
 " If I may judge from appearances, your friend 
 will be upset, Mr. Sampson." 
 
 " It looks probable, certainly," said I. 
 
 " The servant must be drunk." 
 
 " The servants of old gentlemen will get 
 drunk sometimes," said I. 
 
 " The major draws very light, Mr. Sampson." 
 
 "The major does draw light," said I. 
 
 By this time the carriage, much to my relief, 
 was lost in the darkness. We walked on for a. 
 little, side by side over the sand, in silence. 
 After a short while he said, in a voice still 
 affected by the emotion that his niece's state of 
 health had awakened in him : 
 
 " Do you stay here long, Mr. Sampson .? " 
 
 " "Why, no. I am going away to-night." 
 
 "So soon? But business always holds you 
 in request. Men like Mr. Sampson are too im- 
 portant to others to be spared to their own need 
 of relaxation and enjoyment." 
 
 " I don't know about that," said I. " How- 
 ever, I am going back." 
 
 " To London ? " 
 
 " To London." 
 
314 
 
 HUNTED DOWN. 
 
 " I shall be there, too, soon after you." 
 
 I knew that as well as he did. But I did not 
 tell him so. Any more than I told him what 
 defensive weapon my right hand rested on in 
 my pocket, as I walked by his side. Any more 
 than I told him why I did not walk on the sea 
 side of him with the night closing in. 
 
 We left the beach, and our ways diverged. 
 We exchanged good night, and had parted in- 
 deed, when he said, returning : 
 
 " Mr. Sampson, )nay I ask ? Poor Aleltham, 
 whom we spoke of, — dead yet ? " 
 
 " Not when I last heard of him ; but too 
 broken a man to live long, and hopelessly lost 
 to his old caUing." 
 
 "Dear, dear, dear!" said he with great feel- 
 ing. " Sad, sad, sad ! The world is a grave ! " 
 And so went his way. 
 
 It was not his fault if the world were not a 
 grave ; but I did not call that observation after 
 him, any more than I had mentioned those 
 other things just now enumerated. He went 
 his way, and I went mine with all expedition. 
 This happened, as I have said, either at the end 
 of September or beginning of October. The 
 next time I saw him, and the last time, was late 
 in November. 
 
 V. 
 
 I HAD a very particular engagement to breakfast 
 in the Temple. It was a bitter north-easterly 
 morning, and the sleet and slush lay inches deep 
 in the streets. I could get no conveyance, and 
 was soon wet to the knees ; but I should have 
 been true to that appointment, though I had to 
 wade to it up to my neck in the same impedi- 
 ments. 
 
 The appointment took me to some chambers 
 in the Temple. They were at the top of a 
 lonely corner house overlooking the river. The 
 name, Mr. Alfred Beckwith, was painted on 
 the outer door. On the door opposite, on the 
 same landing, the name Mr. Julius Slinkton. 
 The doors of both sets of chambers stood open, 
 so that anything said aloud in one set could be 
 heard in the other. 
 
 I had never been in those chambers before. 
 They were dismal, close, unwholesome, and 
 oppressive : the furniture, originally good, and 
 not yet old, was faded and dirty ; the rooms 
 were in great disorder ; there v/as a strong pre- 
 vailing smell of opium, brandy, and tobacco ; 
 the grate and fire-irons were splashed all over 
 with unsightly blotches of rust ; and on a sofa 
 by the fire, in the room where breakfast had 
 been prepared, lay the host, Mr. Beckwith, a 
 man with all the appearances of the worst kind 
 
 of drunkard, very far advanced upon his shame- 
 ful way to death. 
 
 " Slinkton is not come yet," said this creature, 
 staggering up when I went in ; " I'll call him. — 
 Halloa ! Julius Caisar ! Come and drink ! " As 
 he hoarsely roared this out, he beat the poker 
 and tongs together in a mad way, as if that were 
 his usual manner of summoning his associate. 
 
 The voice of Mr. Slinkton was heard through 
 the clatter from the opposite side of the stair- 
 case, and he came in. He had not expected 
 the pleasure of meeting me. I have seen several 
 artful men brought to a stand, but I never saw a 
 man so aghast as he was when his eyes rested 
 on mine. 
 
 "Julius Caesar," cried Beckwith, staggering 
 between us, " Mist' Sampson ! Mist' Sampson, 
 Julius Caesar ! Julius, Mist' Sampson, is the 
 friend of my soul. Julius keeps me plied with 
 liquor, morning, noon, and night. Julius is a 
 real benefactor. Julius threw the tea and cofl'ee 
 out of window when I used to have any. Julius 
 empties all the water jugs of their contents, and 
 fills 'em with spirits. Julius winds me up and 
 keeps me going. — Boil the brandy, Julius ! " 
 
 There was a rusty and furred saucepan in the 
 ashes, — the ashes looked like the accumulation 
 of weeks, — and Beckwith, rolling and staggering 
 between us as if he were going to plunge head- 
 long into the fire, got the saucepan out, and 
 tried to force it into Slinkton's hand. 
 
 " Boil the brandy, Julius Cresar ! Come ! 
 Do your usual oftice. Boil the brandy ! " 
 
 He became so fierce in his gesticulations with 
 the saucepan, that I expected to see him lay 
 open Slinkton's head with it. I therefore put 
 out my hand to check him. He reeled back to 
 the sofa, and sat there panting, shaking, and 
 red-eyed, in his rags of dressing-gown, looking 
 at us both. I noticed then that there was 
 nothing to drink on the table but brandy, and 
 nothing to eat but salted herrings, and a hor, 
 sickly, highly-peppered stew. 
 
 " At all events, Mr. Sampson," said Slinkton, 
 offering me the smooth gravel path for the last 
 time, " I thank you for interfering between me 
 and this unfortunate man's violence. However 
 you came here, Mr. Sampson, or with whatever 
 motive you came here, at least I thank you for 
 that." 
 
 "Boil the brandy," muttered Beckwith. 
 
 Without gratifying his desire to know how I 
 came there, I said quietly, " How is your niece, 
 Mr. Slinkton ? " 
 
 He looked hard at me, and I looked hard at 
 him. 
 
 " I am sorry to say, Mr. Sampson, that my 
 
BROUGHl^ TO BAY. 
 
 315 
 
 niece has proved treacherous and ungrateful to 
 her best friend. She left me without a word of 
 notice or explanation. She was misled, no 
 doubt, by some designing rascal. Perhaps you 
 may have heard of it ? " 
 
 " I did hear that she was misled by a de- 
 signing rascal. In fact, I have proof of it." 
 " Are you sure of that ? " said he. 
 " Quite." 
 
 "Boil the brandy," muttered Beckwith. 
 " Company to breakfast, Julius C?esar. Do 
 your usual office, — provide the usual breakfast, 
 dinner, tea, and supper. Boil the brandy!" 
 
 The eyes of Slinkton looked from him to me, 
 and he said, after a moment's consideration : 
 
 " Mr. Sampson, you are a man of the world, 
 and so am I. I will be plain with you." 
 
 " Oh no, you won't ! " said I, shaking my 
 head. 
 
 " I tell you, sir, I will be plain with you." 
 " And I tell you you will not," said I. " I 
 know all about you. Yoii plain with any one .-* 
 Nonsense, nonsense ! " 
 
 " I plainly tell you, Mr. Sampson," he went 
 on, with a manner almost composed, '' that I 
 understand your object. You want to save 
 your funds, and escape from your liabilities ; 
 these are old tricks of trade with you Office 
 gentlemen. But you will not do it, sir ; you 
 will not succeed. You have not an easy ad- 
 versary to play against, when you play against 
 me. We shall have to inquire, in due time, 
 when and how Mr. Beckwith fell into his pre- 
 sent habits. With that remark, sir, I put this 
 poor creature, and his incoherent wanderings of 
 speech, aside, and wish you a good morning 
 and a better case next time." 
 
 While he was saying this, Beckwith had filled 
 a half-pint glass with brandy. At this moment, 
 he threw the brandy at his face, and threw the 
 glass after it. Slinkton put his hands up, half 
 blinded with the spirit, and cut with the glass 
 across the forehead. At the sound of the 
 breakage, a fourth person came into the room, 
 closed the door, and stood at it. He was a 
 very quiet, but very keen-looking man, with iron- 
 grey hair, and slightly lame. 
 
 Slinkton pulled out his handkerchief, as- 
 suaged the pain in his smarting eyes, and dabbled 
 the blood on his forehead. He was a long 
 time about it, and I saw that in the doing of it 
 a tremendous change came over him, occasioned 
 by the change in Beckwith, — who ceased to 
 pant and tremble, sat upright, and never took 
 his eyes off him. I never in my life saw a face 
 in which abhorrence and determination were so 
 forcibly painted as in Beckwith's then. 
 
 " Look at me, you villain," said Beckwith, 
 " and see me as I really am ! I took these 
 rooms to make them a trap for you. I came 
 into them as a drunkard, to bait the trap for you. 
 You fell into the trap, and you will never leave 
 it alive. On the morning when you last went 
 to Mr. Sampson's office, 1 had seen him first. 
 Your plot has been known to both of us all 
 along, and you have been counter-plotted all 
 along. What ! Having been cajoled into put- 
 ting that prize of two thousand pounds in your 
 power, I was to be done to death with brandy, 
 and, brandy not proving quick enough, with 
 something quicker? Have I never seen you, 
 when you thought my senses gone, pouring from 
 your little bottle into my glass ? Why, you 
 Murderer and Forger, alone here with you in 
 the dead of night, as I have so often been, I 
 have had my hand upon the trigger of a pistol, 
 twenty times, to blow your brains out ! " 
 
 This sudden starting up of the thing that he 
 had supposed to be his imbecile victim into a 
 determined man, with a settled resolution to 
 hunt him down and be the death of him, merci- 
 lessly expressed from head to foot, was, in the 
 first shock, too much for him. Without any 
 figure of speech, he staggered under it. But 
 there is no greater mistake than to suppose that 
 a man who is a calculating criminal is, in any 
 phase of his guilt, otherwise than true to himself, 
 and perfectly consistent with his whole charac- 
 ter. Such a man commits murder, and murder 
 is the natural culmination of his course ; such a 
 man has to out-face murder, and will do it with 
 hardihood and effrontery. It is a sort of fashion 
 to express surprise that any notorious criminal, 
 having such crime upon his conscience, can so 
 brave it out. Do you think that if he had it on 
 his conscience at all, or had a conscience to 
 have it upon, he would ever have committed 
 the crime "^ 
 
 Perfectly consistent with himself, as I believe 
 all such monsters to be, this Slinkton recovered 
 himself, and showed a defiance that was suffi- 
 ciently cold and quiet. He was white, he was 
 haggard, he was changed ; but only as a sharper 
 who had played for a great stake, and had been 
 outwitted and had lost the game. 
 
 " Listen to me, you villain," said Beckwith, 
 "and let every word you hear me say be a stab 
 in your wicked heart. When I took these 
 rooms, to throw myself in your way and lead 
 you on to the scheme that I knew my appear- 
 ance and supposed character and habits would 
 suggest to such a devil, how did I know that ? 
 Because you were no stranger to me. I knew 
 you well. And I knew you to be the cruel 
 
3i6 
 
 HUNTED DOWN. 
 
 wretch who, for so much money, had killed one 
 innocent girl while she trusted him implicitly, 
 and who was by inches killing another." 
 
 Slinkton took out a snuff-box, took a pinch of 
 snuff, and laughed. 
 
 " But see here," said Bcckwith, never looking 
 away, never raising his voice, never relaxing his 
 face, never unclenching his hand. " See what a 
 dull wolf you have been, after all ! Tlie infatu- 
 ated drunkard who never drank a fiftieth part of 
 the liquor you plied him with, but poured it 
 away, here, there, everywhere— almost before 
 your eyes ; who bouglit over tlie fellow you set 
 to watch him and to ply him, by outbidding you 
 in his bribe, before he had been at his work 
 three days — with whom you have observed no 
 caution, yet who was so bent on ridding the 
 earth of you as a wild beast, that he would 
 have defeated you if you had been ever so pru- 
 dent — that drunkard whom you have, many a 
 time, left on the floor of this room, and who has 
 even let you go out of it, alive and undeceived, 
 when you have turned him over with your foot 
 — has, almost as often, on the same night, within 
 an hour, within a few minutes, watched you 
 awake, had his hand at your pillow when you 
 were asleep, turned over your papers, taken 
 samples from your bottles and packets of 
 powder, changed their contents, rifled every 
 secret of your life ! " 
 
 He had had another pinch of snuff in his 
 hand, but had gradually let it drop from be- 
 tween his fingers to the floor ; where he now 
 smoothed it out with his foot, looking down at 
 it the while. 
 
 " That drunkard," said Beckwith, " who had 
 free access to your room.s at all times, that he 
 might drink the strong drinks that you left in 
 his way, and be the sooner ended, holding no 
 more terms with you than he would hold with a 
 tiger, has had his master key for all your locks, 
 his tests for all your poisons, his clue to your 
 cipher-writing. He can tell you, as well as you 
 can tell him, how long it took to complete that 
 deed, what doses there were, what intervals, 
 what signs of gradual decay upon mind and 
 body ; what distempered fancies were produced, 
 what observable changes, what physical pain. 
 He can tell you, as well as you can tell him, 
 that all this was recorded day by day, as a lesson 
 of experience for future service. He can tell 
 you, better than you can tell him, where that 
 journal is at this moment." 
 
 Slinkton stopped the action of his foot, and 
 looked at Beckwith. 
 
 " No," said the latter, as if answering a ques- 
 tion from him. " Not in the drawer of the 
 
 writing-desk that opens with a spring ; it is 
 not there, and it never will be there again." 
 
 "Then you are a thief! " said Slinkton. 
 
 Without any change whatever in the inflexible 
 purpose, which it was quite terrific even to me 
 to contemplate, and from the power of which I 
 had always felt convinced it was impossible for 
 this wretch to escape, Beckwith returned : 
 
 " And I am your niece's shadow, too." 
 
 With an imprecation Slinkton put his hand to 
 his head, tore out some hair, and flung it to the 
 ground. It was the end of the smooth walk ; 
 he destroyed it in the action, and it will soon 
 be seen that his use for it was past. 
 
 Beckwith went on : " Whenever you left here, 
 I left here. Although I understood that you 
 found it necessary to pause in the completion of 
 that purpose, to avert suspicion, still I watched 
 you close, with the poor confiding girl. When 
 I had the diary, and could read it word by word, 
 — it was only about the night before your last 
 visit to Scarborough, — you remember the night ? 
 you slept with a small flat vial tied to your 
 wrist, — I sent to Mr. Sampson, who was kept 
 out of view. This is Mr. Sampson's trusty ser- 
 vant standing by the door. We three saved 
 your niece among us." 
 
 Slinkton looked at us all, took an uncertain 
 step or two from the place where he had stood, 
 returned to it, and glanced about him in a very 
 curious way, — as one of the meaner reptiles 
 might, looking for a hole to hide in. I noticed, 
 at the same time, that a singular change took 
 place in the figure of the man, — as if it col- 
 lapsed within his clothes, and they consequently 
 became ill-shapen and ill-fitting. 
 
 " You shall know," said Beckwith, " for I hope 
 the knowledge will be bitter and terrible to you, 
 why you have been pursued by one man, and 
 why, when the whole interest that Mr. Sampson 
 represents would have expended any money in 
 hunting you down, you have been tracked to 
 death at a single individual's charge. I hear you 
 have had the name of Meltham on your lips 
 sometimes ? " 
 
 I saw, in addition to those other changes, 
 a sudden stoppage come upon his breath- 
 ing. 
 
 " When you sent the sweet girl whom you 
 murdered (you know with what artfully made- 
 out surroundings and probabilities you sent her) 
 to Meltham's ofiice, before taking her abroad to 
 originate the transaction that doomed her to the 
 grave, it fell to Meltham's lot to see her and to 
 speak with her. It did not fall to his lot to 
 save her, though I know he would freely give 
 his own life to have done it. He admired her ; 
 
A FITTING END, 
 
 zn 
 
 — I would say he loved her deeply, if I thought 
 it possible that you coukl understand the word. 
 When she was sacrificed, he was thoroughly as- 
 sured of your guilt. Having lost her, he had 
 but one object left in life, and that was to 
 avenge her and ilestroy you." 
 
 I saw the villain's nostrils rise and fall 
 convulsively ; but I saw no moving at his 
 mouth. 
 
 "That man Meltham,'' Beckwith steadily 
 pursued, '' was as absolutely certain that you 
 could never elude him in this world, if he 
 devoted himself to your destruction with his 
 utmost fidelity and earnestness, and if he 
 divided the sacred duty with no other duty in 
 life, as he was certain that in achieving it he 
 would be a poor instrument in the hands of 
 Providence, and would do well before Heaven 
 in striking you out from among living men. I 
 am that man, and I thank (jod that I have 
 done my work ! " 
 
 If Slinkton had been running for his life from 
 swift-footed savages, a dozen miles, he could 
 not have shown more emphatic signs of being 
 oppressed at heart and labouring for breath 
 than he showed now, when he looked at the 
 pursuer who had so relentlessly hunted him 
 down. 
 
 '' You never saw me under my right name 
 before ; you see me under my right name now. 
 You shall see me once again in the body, when 
 you are tried for your life. You shall see me 
 once again in the spirit, when the cord is 
 round your neck, and the crowd are crying 
 against you ! " 
 
 When Meltham had spoken these last words, 
 the miscreant suddenly turned away his face, 
 aHd seemed to strike his mouth with his open 
 
 hand. At the same instant, the room was filled 
 with a new and powerful odour, and, almost at 
 the same instant, he broke into a crooked run, 
 leaj), start, — I have no name for the spasm, — 
 and fell, with a dull weight that shook the heavy 
 old doors and windows in their frames. 
 
 That was the fitting end of him. 
 
 When we saw that he was dead, we drew 
 away from the room, and Meltham, giving me 
 his hand, said, with a weary air : 
 
 " I have no more work on earth, my friend. 
 But I shall see her again elsewhere." 
 
 It was in vain that I tried to rally him. He 
 might have saved her, he said ; he had not 
 saved her, and he reproached himself; lie had 
 lost her, and he was broken-hearted. 
 
 " The purpose that sustained me is over, 
 Sampson, and there is nothing now to hold me 
 to life, I am not fit for life ; I am weak and 
 spiritless ; I have no hope and no object ; my 
 day is done." 
 
 In truth, I could hardly have believed that 
 the broken man who then spoke to me was the 
 man who had so strongly and so difterently im- 
 pressed me when his purpose was before him. 
 I used such entreaties with him as I could ; but 
 he still said, and always said, in a patient, unde- 
 monstrative way, — nothing could avail him, — he 
 was broken-hearted. 
 
 He died early in the next spring. He was 
 buried by the side of the poor young lady for 
 whom he had cherished those tender and un- 
 happy regrets ; and he left all he had to her 
 sister. She lived to be a happy wife and 
 mother ; she married my sister's son, who suc- 
 ceeded poor Meltham ; she is living now, and 
 her children ride about the garden on my walk- 
 ing-stick when I go to see her. 
 
 THE END OF HUNTED DOWN. 
 
HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 
 
 IN FOUR PARTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ROMANCE FROM THE PEN OF 
 WILLIAM TINKLING, ESQ.* 
 
 T^HIS beginning-part is not made out of any- 
 
 "^ body's head, you know. It's real. You 
 
 must believe this beginning-part more than what 
 
 comes after, else you won't understand how 
 
 • Aged eight. 
 
 what comes after came to be A\Titten. You 
 must believe it all ; but you must believe this 
 most, please. I am the editor of it. Bob Red- 
 forth (he's my cousin, and shaking the table 
 on purpose) wanted to be the editor of it ; but 
 I said he shouldn't, because he couldn't. He 
 has no idea of being an editor. 
 
 Nettie Ashford is my bride. We were married 
 in the right-hand closet in the corner of the 
 
A COURT-MARTIAL. 
 
 319 
 
 dancing school, where first we met, with a ring 
 (a green one) from Wilkingwater's toy-shop. / 
 owed for it out of my pocket money. When 
 the rapturous ceremony was over, we all four 
 went up the lane, and let oft" a cannon (brought 
 loaded in Bob Redforth's waistcoat pocket) to 
 announce our nuptials. It flew right up when 
 it went off, and turned over. Next day, Lieut. - 
 Col. Robin Redforth was united, with similar 
 ceremonies, to Alice Rainbird. This time the 
 cannon burst with a most terrific explosion, and 
 made a puppy bark. 
 
 My peerless bride was, at the period of which 
 we now treat, in captivity at Miss Grimmer's. 
 Drowvey and Grimmer is the partnership, and 
 opinion is divided which is the greatest beast. 
 The lovely bride of the colonel was also immured 
 in the dungeons of the same establishment. A 
 vow was entered into, between the colonel and 
 myself, that we would cut them out on the 
 following Wednesday when walking two and 
 two. 
 
 Under the desperate circumstances of the 
 case, the active brain of the colonel, combining 
 with his lawless pursuit (he is a pirate), suggested 
 an attack with fireworks. This, however, from 
 motives of humanity, was abandoned as too 
 expensive. 
 
 Lightly armed with a paper knife buttoned up 
 under his jacket, and waving the dreaded black 
 flag at the end of a cane, the colonel took com- 
 mand of me at two p.m. on the eventful and 
 appointed day. He had drawn out the plan of 
 attack on a piece of paper, which was rolled up 
 round a hoop-stick. He showed it to me. My 
 position and my full-length portrait (but my real 
 ears don't stick out horizontal) was behind a 
 corner lamp-post, with written orders to remain 
 there till I should see Miss Drowvey fall. The 
 Drowvey who was to fall was the one in spec- 
 tacles, not the one with the large lavender bon- 
 net. At that signal I was to rush forth, seize 
 my bride, and fight my way to the lane. There 
 a junction would be effected between myself and 
 the colonel ; and putting our brides behind us, 
 between ourselves and the paHngs, we were to 
 conquer or die. 
 
 The enemy appeared — approached. Waving 
 his black flag, the colonel attacked. Confusion 
 ensued. Anxiously I awaited my signal ; but my 
 signal came not. So far from falling, the hated 
 Drowvey in spectacles appeared to me to have 
 mufiled the colonel's head in his outlawed ban- 
 ner, and to be pitching into him with a parasol. 
 The one in the lavender bonnet also performed 
 prodigies of valour with her fists on his back. 
 Seeing that all was for the moment lost, I fought 
 
 my desperate way hand to hand to the lane. 
 Through taking the back-road, I was so fortu- 
 nate as to meet nobody, and arrived there unin- 
 terrupted. 
 
 It seemed an age ere the colonel joined me. 
 He had been to the jobbing tailor's to be sewn 
 up in several places, and attributed our defeat 
 to the refusal of the detested Drowvey to fall. 
 Finding her so obstinate, he had said to her, 
 " Die, recreant ! " but had found her no more 
 open to reason on that point than the other. 
 
 My blooming bride appeared, accompanied 
 by the colonel's bride, at the dancing school 
 next day. What ! Was her face averted from 
 me ? Hah ! Even so. With a look of scorn, 
 she put into my hand a bit of paper, and took 
 another partner. On the paper was pencilled, 
 " Heavens ! Can I write the word ? Is my 
 husband a cow ? " 
 
 In the first bewilderment of my heated brain, 
 I tried to think what slanderer could have traced 
 my family to the ignoble animal mentioned above. 
 Vain were my endeavours. At the end of that 
 dance I whispered the colonel to come into the 
 cloak-room, and I showed him the note. 
 
 " There is a syllable wanting," said he with a 
 gloomy brow. 
 
 " Hah ! What syllable ? " was my inquir)'. 
 " She asks, can she write the word ? And 
 no ; you see she couldn't," said the colonel, 
 pointing out the passage. 
 
 " And the word was ? " said I. 
 "Cow — cow — coward," hissed the pirate- 
 colonel in my ear, and gave me back the note. 
 
 Feeling that I must for ever tread the earth a 
 branded boy, — person, I mean, — or that I must 
 clear up my honour, I demanded to be tried by 
 a court-martial. The colonel admitted my right 
 to be tried. Some difficulty was found in com- 
 posing the court, on account of the Emperor of 
 France's aunt refusing to let him come out. He 
 was to be the president. Ere yet we had ap- 
 pointed a substitute, he made his escape over 
 the back-wall, and stood among us, a free 
 monarch. 
 
 The court was held on the grass by the pond. 
 I recognised, in a certain admiral among my 
 judges, my deadliest foe. A cocoa-nut had 
 given rise to language that I could not brook ; 
 but confiding in my innocence, and also in the 
 knowledge that the President of the United 
 States (who sat next him) owed me a knife, I 
 braced myself for the ordeal. 
 
 It was a solemn spectacle, that court. Two 
 executioners with pinafores reversed led me in. 
 Under the shade of an umbrella I perceived my 
 bride, supported by the bride of the pirate- 
 
320 
 
 HOLIDA V ROMANCE. 
 
 colonel. The president, having reproved a little 
 female ensign for tittering on a matter of life or 
 death, called upon me to plead, " Coward or no 
 coward, guilty or not guilty ? " I pleaded in a 
 firm tone, " No coward, and not guilty." (The 
 little female ensign being again rejiroved by the 
 president lor misconduct, mutinied, left the court, 
 and threw stones.) 
 
 My implacable enemy, the admiral, conducted 
 the case against me. The colonel's bride was 
 called to i)rove that I had remained behind the 
 corner lamp -post during the engagement. I 
 might have been spared the anguish of my own 
 bride's being also made a witness to the same 
 point, but the admiral knew where to wound 
 me. Be still, my soul, no matter. The colonel 
 was then brought forward with his evidence. 
 
 It was for this point that I had saved myself 
 up, as the turning-point of my case. Shaking 
 myself free of my guards, — who had no busi- 
 ness to hold me, the stupids, unless I was found 
 guilty, — I asked the colonel what he considered 
 the first duty of a soldier ? Ere he could reply, 
 the President of the United States rose and in- 
 formed the court that my foe, the admiral, had 
 suggested " Bravery," and that prompting a wit- 
 ness wasn't fair. The president of the court 
 immediately ordered the admiral's mouth to be 
 filled with leaves, and tied up with string. I had 
 the satisfaction of seeing the sentence carried 
 into effect before the proceedings went further. 
 
 I then took a paper from my trousers pocket, 
 and asked, " What do you consider, Col. Red- 
 forth, the first duty of a soldier? Is it obe- 
 dience?" 
 
 " It is," said the colonel. 
 
 " Is that paper — please to look at it — in 
 your hand ? " 
 
 " It is," said the colonel. 
 
 " Is it a military sketch ? " 
 
 " It is," said the colonel. 
 
 " Of an engagement ? " 
 
 " Quite so," said the colonel. 
 
 '* Of the late engagement ? " 
 
 '•' Of the late engagement." 
 
 " Please to describe it, and then hand it to 
 the president of the court." 
 
 From that triumphant moment my sufferings 
 and my dangers were at an end. The court 
 rose up and jumped, on discovering that I had 
 strictly obeyed orders. My foe, the admiral, 
 who, though muzzled, was malignant yet, con- 
 trived to suggest that I was dishonoured by 
 having quitted the field. But the colonel him- 
 self had done as much, and gave his opinion, 
 upon his word and honour as a pirate, that 
 when all was lost the field might be quitted 
 
 without disgrace. I was going to be found 
 " No coward, and not guilty," and my blooming 
 bride was going to be publicly restored to my 
 arms in a procession, when an unlooked-for 
 event disturbed the general rejoicing. This was 
 no other than the Emperor of France's aunt 
 catching hold of his hair. The proceedings 
 abruptly terminated, and the court tumultuously 
 dissolved. 
 
 It was when the shades of the next evening 
 but one were beginning to fall, ere yet the silver 
 beams of Luna touched the earth, that four 
 forms might have been descried slowly advanc- 
 ing towards the weeping willow on the borders 
 of the pond, the now deserted scene of the day 
 before yesterday's agonies and triumphs. On a 
 nearer approach, and by a practised eye, these 
 might have been identified as the forms of the 
 pirate-colonel with his bride, and of the day 
 before yesterday's gallant prisojier with his 
 bride. 
 
 On the beauteous faces of the Nymphs dejec- 
 tion sat enthroned. All four reclined under the 
 willow for some minutes without speaking, till 
 at length the bride of the colonel poutingly 
 observed, " It's of no use pretending any more, 
 and we had better give it up." 
 
 " Hah !" exclaimed the pirate. "Pretending?" 
 
 " Don't go on like that; you worry me," re- 
 turned his bride. 
 
 The lovely bride of Tinkling echoed the in- 
 credible declaration. The two warriors ex- 
 changed stony glances. 
 
 " If," said the bride of the pirate-colonel, 
 " grown-up people won't do what they ought to 
 do, and will put us out, what comes of our 
 pretending ? " 
 
 " We only get into scrapes," said the bride of 
 Tinkling. 
 
 " You know very well," pursued the colonel's 
 bride, " that Miss Drowvey wouldn't fall. You 
 complained of it yourself And you know how 
 disgracefully the court-martial ended. As to our 
 marriage, would my people acknowledge it at 
 home ? " 
 
 " Or would my people acknowledge ours ? " 
 said the bride of Tinkling. 
 
 Again the two waniors exchanged stony 
 glances. 
 
 " If you knocked at the door and claimed 
 me, after you were told to go away," said the 
 colonel's bride, " you would only have your 
 hair pulled, or your ears, or your nose." 
 
 " If you persisted in ringing at the bell and 
 claiming me," said the bride of Tinkling to that 
 gentleman, " you would have things dropped on 
 your head from the window over the handle. 
 
DISSATISFACTION OF THE COLONEL. 
 
 321 
 
 or you -would be played upon by the garden 
 engine." 
 
 " And at }our own homes,'"' resumed the bride 
 of the colonel, " it would be just as bad. You 
 would be sent to bed, or something equally un- 
 dignified. Again, how would you support us?" 
 
 The pirate-colonel replied in a courageous 
 voice, " By rapine ! " But his bride retorted, 
 " Suppose the grown-up people wouldn't be 
 rapined?" "Then," said the colonel, "they 
 should pay the penalty in blood." — " But sup- 
 pose they should object," retorted his bride, 
 " and wouldn't pay the penalty in blood or 
 anything else ? " 
 
 A mournful silence ensued. 
 
 " Then do you no longer love me, Alice ? '' 
 asked the colonel. 
 
 " Redforth ! I am ever thine," returned his 
 bride. 
 
 "Then do you no longer love me, Nettie?" 
 asked the present writer. 
 
 " Tinkling ! I am ever thine,'' returned my 
 bride. 
 
 We all four embraced. Let me not be mis- 
 understood b}- the giddy. The colonel em- 
 braced his own bride, and I embraced mine. 
 But two times two make four. 
 
 '■' Nettie and I," said Alice mournfully, "have 
 been considering our position. The grown-up 
 people are too strong for us. They make us 
 ridiculous. Besides, they have changed the 
 times. William Tinkling's baby brother was 
 christened yesterday. What took place ? Was 
 any king present? Answer, William." 
 
 I said No, unless disguised as Great-uncle 
 Chopper. 
 
 " Any queen ? " 
 
 There had been no queen that I knew of at 
 our house. There might have been one in the 
 kitchen: but I didn't think so, or the servants 
 would have mentioned it. 
 
 " Any fairies? " 
 
 None that were visible. 
 
 " We had an idea among us, I think," said 
 Alice with a melancholy smile, " we four, that 
 Miss Grimmer would prove to be the wicked 
 fairy, and would come in at the christening with 
 her crutch-stick, and give the child a bad gift. 
 Was there anything of that sort ? Answer, 
 William." 
 
 I said that ma had said afterwards (and so 
 she had) that Great-uncle Chopper's gift was a 
 shabby one ; but she hadn't said a bad one. 
 She had called it shabby, electrotyped, second- 
 hand, and below his income. 
 
 " It must be the grown-up people who have 
 changed all this," said Alice. " Wc couldn't 
 Edwin Drood, Etc., 21. 
 
 have changed it, if we had been so inclined, 
 and we never should have been. Or perhaps 
 Miss Grimmer is a wicked fairy after all, and 
 won't act up to it because the grown-up people 
 have persuaded her not to. Either way, they 
 would make us ridiculous if we told them what 
 we expected." 
 
 " Tyrants ! " muttered the pirate-colonel. 
 
 "Nay, my Redforth," said Alice, "say not 
 so. Call not names, my Redfortli, or they will 
 apply to pa." 
 
 " Let 'em," said the colonel. " I don't care. 
 Who's he ? " 
 
 Tinkling here undertook the perilous task of 
 remonstrating with his lawless friend, who con- 
 sented to withdraw the moody expressions above 
 quoted. 
 
 " What remains for us to do ? " Alice went on 
 in her mild, wise way. " We must educate, wc 
 must pretend in a new manner, we must wait." 
 
 The colonel clenched his teeth, — four out in 
 front, and a piece of another, and he had been 
 twice dragged to the door of a dentist-despot, 
 but had escaped from his guards. " How edu- 
 cate ? How pretend in a new manner ? How 
 wait ? " 
 
 " Educate the grown-up people," replied 
 Alice. " We part to-night. Yes, Redforth," 
 ■ — for the colonel tucked up his cuffs, — "part 
 to-night ! Let us in these next holidays, now 
 going to begin, throw our thoughts into some- 
 thing educational for the grown-up people, hint- 
 ing to them how things ought to be. Let us 
 veil our meaning under a mask of romance ; you, 
 I, and Nettie. William Tinkling, being the 
 plainest and quickest writer, shall copy out. Is 
 it agreed ? " 
 
 The colonel answered sulkily, " I don't mind." 
 He then asked, "How about pretending?" 
 
 " We will pretend," said Alice, " that we are 
 children ; not that we are those grown-up people 
 who won't help us out as they ought, and who 
 understand us so badly." 
 
 The colonel, still much dissatisfied, growled, 
 " How about waiting ? " 
 
 " We will wait," answered little Alice, taking 
 Nettie's hand in hers, and looking up to the 
 sky, " we will wait — ever constant and true — 
 till the times have got so changed as that every- 
 thing helps us out, and nothing makes us ridi- 
 culous, and the fairies have come back. We 
 will wait — ever constant and true — till we are 
 eighty, ninety, or one hundred. And then the 
 fairies will send ics children, and* we will help 
 them out, poor pretty little creatures, if they 
 pretend ever so much." 
 
 " So we will, dear," said Nettie Ashford, tak- 
 
322 
 
 HO LID A Y ROMANCE. 
 
 ing her round the waist with both arms, and 
 kissing her. " And now, if my husband will go 
 and buy some clierrics for us, I have got some 
 money." 
 
 In the friendliest manner I invited the colonel 
 to go with me; but he so far forgot himself as 
 to acknowledge the invitation by kicking out 
 behind, and then lying down on his stomach 
 on the grass, pulling it up and chewing it. 
 When I came back, however, Alice had nearly 
 brought him out of his vexation, and was sooth- 
 ing him by telling him how soon we shoukl all 
 be ninety. 
 
 As we sat under the willow-tree and ate the 
 cherries (fair, for Alice shared them out), we 
 played at being ninety. Nettie complained 
 that she had a bone in her old back, and it 
 made her hobble ; and Alice sang a song in an 
 old woman's way, but it was very prett\-, and we 
 were all merry. At least, I don't know about 
 merry exactly, but all comfortable. 
 
 There was a most tremendous lot of cherries ; 
 and Alice always had with her some neat little 
 bag, or box, or case, to hold things. In it that 
 night was a tiny wine-glass. So Alice and 
 Nettie said they would maTce some cherry wine 
 to drink our love at parting. 
 
 Each of us had a glassful, and it was delicious ; 
 and each of us drank the toast, " Our love at 
 parting." The colonel drank his wine last ; and 
 it got into my head directly that it got into his 
 directly. Anyhow, his eyes rolled immediately 
 after he had turned the glass upside down ; and 
 he took me on one side, and proposed, in a 
 hoarse whisper, that we should " Cut 'em out 
 still." 
 
 " How (lid he mean ? " I asked my lawless 
 friend. 
 
 " Cut our brides out," said the colonel, " and 
 then cut our way, Avithout going down a single 
 turning, bang to the Spanish main ! " 
 
 We might have tried it, though I didn't think 
 it would answer ; only we looked round, and 
 saw that diere was nothing but moonlight under 
 the willow-tree, and that our pretty, pretty wives 
 were gone. We burst out crying. The colonel 
 gave in second, and came to first; but he gave 
 in strong. 
 
 We were ashamed of our red eyes, and hung 
 about for half an hour to whiten them. Like- 
 'wise a piece of chalk round the rims, I doing 
 the colonel's, and he mine, but afterwards found 
 in the bedroom looking-glass not natural, be- 
 sides inflammation. Our conversation turned 
 on being ninety. The colonel told me he had 
 ■a pair of boots that wanted soling and heeling ; 
 but he thought it hardly worth while to mention 
 
 it to his father, as he himself should so soon be 
 ninety, when he thought shoes would be more 
 convenient. The colonel also told me, with his 
 hand upon his hip, that he felt himself already 
 getting on in life, and turning rheumatic. And 
 I told him the same. And when they said at 
 our house at supper (they are always bothering 
 about something) that I stooped, I felt so glad ! 
 This is the end of the beginning-part that you 
 were to believe most. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 ROMANCE. 
 
 FROM THE PEN OF MISS ALICE 
 RAINBIRD.* 
 
 1 he 
 
 HERE was once a king, and he had 
 a queen ; and he was the manliest 
 of his sex, and she was the loveliest 
 of hers. The king was, in his pri- 
 vate profession, under government, 
 queen's father had been a medical 
 ninn out of town. 
 ^ They had nineteen children, and were 
 
 always having more. Seventeen of these chil- 
 dren took care of the baby ; and Alicia, the 
 eldest, took care of them all. Their ages varied 
 from seven years to seven months. 
 Let us now resume our story. 
 One day the king was going to the oflice, 
 when he stopped at the fishmonger's to buy a 
 pound and a half of salmon not too near the 
 tail, which the queen (who A\as a careful house- 
 keeper) had requested him to send home. Mr, 
 Pickles, the fishmonger, said, " Certainly, sir; 
 is tliere any other article? Good morning." 
 
 The king went on towards the office in a 
 melancholy mood ; for quarter-day was such a 
 long way off, and several of the dear children 
 were growing out of their clothes. He had not 
 proceeded far, when Mr. Pickles's errand-boy 
 came running after him, and said, "Sir, you 
 didn't notice the old lady in our shop." 
 
 "What old lady?" inquired the king. "I 
 saw none." 
 
 Now the king had not seen any old lady, be- 
 cause this old lady had been invisible to him, 
 though visible to Mr. Pickles's boy. Probabh 
 because he messed and splashed the water about 
 to that degree, and flopped the pairs of soles 
 down in that violent manner, that, if she had 
 not been visible to him, he would have spoilt 
 her clothes. 
 
 Just then the old lady came trotting up. She 
 was dressed in shot-silk of the richest quality, 
 smelling of dried lavender. 
 
 * Aged seven. 
 
THE GOOD FAIRY GRANDMARINA. 
 
 323 
 
 " King Watkins the First, I believe," said the 
 old lady. 
 
 " Watkins," replied the king, " is my name." 
 
 " Papa, if I am not mistaken, of the beautiful 
 Princess Alicia?" said the old lady. 
 
 " And of eighteen other darlings," replied the 
 king. 
 
 " Listen. You are going to the office," said 
 the old lady. 
 
 It instantly flashed upon the king that she 
 must be a fairy, or how could she know that ? 
 
 " You are right," said the old lady, answering 
 his thoughts. " I am the good Fairy Grand- 
 marina. Attend ! When you return home to 
 dinner, politely invite the Princess Alicia to 
 have some of the salmon you bought just 
 now." 
 
 " It may disagree with her," said the king. 
 
 The old lady became so very angry at this 
 absurd idea, that the king was quite alarmed, 
 and humbly begged her pardon. 
 
 " We hear a great deal too much about this 
 thing disagreeing, and that thing disagreeing," 
 saitl the old lady, with the greatest contempt it 
 was possible to express. " Don't be greedy. I 
 think you want it all yourself." 
 
 The king hung his head under this reproof, 
 and said he wouldn't talk about things disagree- 
 ing any more. 
 
 " Be good, then," said the Fairy Grand- 
 marina, " and don't. When the beautiful Prin- 
 cess Alicia consents to partake of the salmon, — 
 as I think she will, — you will find she will leave 
 a fish bone on her plate. Tell her to dry it, 
 and to rub it, and to polish it till it shines like 
 mother-of-pearl, and to take care of it as a pre- 
 sent from me." 
 
 " Is that all ? " asked the king. 
 
 " Don't be impatient, sir," returned the Fairy 
 Grandmarina, scolding him severely. " Don't 
 catch people short, before they have done 
 speaking. Just the way with you grown-up 
 persons. You are always doing it." 
 
 The king again hung his head, and said he 
 wouldn't do so any more. 
 
 " Be good, then," said the Fairy Grandmarina, 
 "and don't ! Tell the Princess Alicia, with my 
 love, that the fish bone is a magic present which 
 can only be used once ; but that it will bring 
 her, that once, whatever she wishes for, pro- 
 vided SHE WISHES FOR IT AT THE RIGHT 
 
 i'lME. That is the message. Take care of 
 it." 
 
 The king was beginning, " Might I ask the 
 reason ? " when the fairy became absolutely 
 furious. 
 
 " Will you be good, sir?" she exclaimed, 
 
 stamping her foot on the ground. " The reason 
 for this, and the reason for that, indeed ! You 
 are always wanting the reason. No reason. 
 There ! Hoity-toity me ! I am sick of your 
 grown-up reasons." 
 
 The king was extremely frightened by the old 
 lady's Hying into such a passion, and said he 
 was very sorry to have offended her, and he 
 wouldn't ask for reasons any more. 
 
 " Be good, then," said the old lady, " and 
 don't." 
 
 With these words, Grandmarina vanished, 
 and the king went on and on and on, till he 
 came to the office. There he wrote and wrote 
 and wrote, till it was time to go home again. 
 Then he politely invited the Princess Alicia, as 
 the fairy had directed him, to partake of the 
 salmon. And when she had enjoyed it very 
 much, he saw the fish bone on her plate, as the 
 fairy had told him he would, and he delivered 
 the fairy's message, and the Princess Alicia took 
 care to dry the bone, and to rub it, and to 
 polish it, till it shone like mother-of-pearl. 
 
 And so, when the queen was going to get up 
 in the morning, she said, " Oh, dear me, dear 
 me ; my head, my head ! " and then she fainted 
 away. 
 
 The Princess Alicia, who happened to be 
 looking in at the chamber door, asking about 
 breakfast, was very much alarmed when she 
 saw her royal mamma in this state, and she 
 rang the bell for Peggy, which was the name of 
 the lord chamberlain. But remembering where 
 the Smelling-bottle was, she climbed on a chair 
 and got it ; and after that she climbed on 
 another chair by the bedside, and held the 
 smelling-bottle to the queen's nose ; and after 
 that she jumped down, and got some water ; 
 and after that she jumped up again, and wetted 
 the queen's forehead ; and, in short, when the 
 lord chamberlain came in, that dear old woman 
 said to the litde ]:)rincess, " What a trot you 
 are ! I couldn't have done it better my- 
 self!" 
 
 But that was not the worst of the good 
 queen's illness. Oh no ! She was very ill in- 
 deed for a long time. The Princess Alicia kept 
 the seventeen young princes and princesses 
 quiet, and dressed and undressed and danced 
 the baby, and made the kettle boil, and heated 
 the soup, and swept the hearth, and ])oured out 
 the medicine, and nursed the queen, and did all 
 that ever she could, and was as busy, busy, busy 
 as busy could be ; for there were not many ser- 
 vants at that palace, for three reasons : because 
 the king was short of money, because a rise in 
 his office never seemed to come, and because 
 
324 
 
 HO LI DA Y ROMANCE. 
 
 quarter-day was so far off that it looked almost 
 as far oft" and as little as one of the stars. 
 
 But, on the morning when the queen fainted 
 away, where was the magic fish bone ? Why, 
 there it was in Princess Alicia's pocket ! She 
 had almost taken it out to bring the queen to 
 life again, when she put it back, and looked for 
 the smelling-bottle. 
 
 After the queen had come out of her swoon 
 that morning, and was dozing, the Princess 
 Alicia hurried up-stairs to tell a most particular 
 secret to a most particularly confidential friend 
 of hers, who was a duchess. People did sup- 
 pose her to be a doll; but she was really a 
 duchess, though nobody knew it except the 
 princess. 
 
 This most particular secret was the secret 
 about the magic fish bone, the history of which 
 was well known to the duchess, because the 
 princess told her everything. The princess 
 kneeled down by the bed on which the duchess 
 was lying, full-dressed and wide awake, and 
 whispered the secret to her. The duchess 
 smiled and nodded. People might have sup- 
 posed that she never smiled and nodded ; but 
 she often did, though nobody knew it except 
 the princess. 
 
 Then the Princess Alicia hurried down-stairs 
 again, to keep watch in the queen's room. She 
 often kept watch by herself in the queen's 
 room ; but every evening, while the illness 
 lasted, she sat there watching with the king. 
 And every evening the king sat looking at her 
 with a cross look, wondering why she never 
 brought out the magic fish bone. As often as 
 she noticed this, she ran up-stairs, whispered the 
 secret to the duchess over again, and said to the 
 duchess besides, " They think we children never 
 have a reason or a meaning ! " And the duchess, 
 though the most fashionable duchess that ever 
 was heard of, winked her eye. 
 
 " Alicia," said the king, one evening, when 
 she wished him good night. 
 
 " Yes, papa." 
 
 " What is become of the magic fish bone ? " 
 
 '* In my pocket, papa." 
 
 " I thought you had lost it? " 
 
 " Oh no, papa ! " 
 
 " Or forgotten it ? " 
 
 " No, indeed, papa." 
 
 And so another time the dreadful little si^ap- 
 ping pug-dog, next door, made a rush at one of 
 the young princes as he stood on the steps com- 
 ing home from school, and terrified him out of 
 his wits ; and he put his hand tlirough a pane 
 of glass, and bled, bled, bled. When the seven- 
 teen other young princes and princesses saw 
 
 him bleed, bleed, bleed, they were terrified out 
 of their wits too, and screamed themselves black 
 in their seventeen faces all at once. But the 
 Princess Alicia put her hands over all their 
 seventeen mouths, one after another, and per- 
 suaded them to be quiet because of the sick 
 (lueen. And then she put the wounded prince's 
 hand in a basin of fresh cold water, while they 
 stared with their twice seventeen are thirty- 
 four, put down four and carry three, eyes, and 
 then she looked in the hand for bits of glass, 
 and there were fortunately no bits of glass there. 
 And then she said to two chubby-legged princes, 
 who were sturdy, though small, "Bring me in 
 the royal rag-bag : I must snip and stitch and 
 cut and contrive." So these two young princes 
 tugged at the roj'al rag-bag, and lugged it in ; 
 and the Princess Alicia sat down on the floor, 
 with a large pair of scissors and a needle and 
 thread, and snipped and stitched and cut and 
 contrived, and made a bandage, and put it on, 
 and it fitted beautifully ; and so, when it w-as all 
 done, she saw the king her papa looking on by 
 the door. 
 
 " Alicia." 
 
 " Yes, papa." 
 
 " What have you been doing ? " 
 
 " Snipping, stitching, cutting, and contriving, 
 papa." 
 
 " Where is the magic fish bone ? " 
 
 " In my pocket, papa ! " 
 
 " I thought you had lost it ? " 
 
 " Oh no, papa ! " 
 
 " Or forgotten it ? " 
 
 •' No, indeed, papa." 
 
 After that, she ran up-stairs to the duchess, 
 and told her what had passed, and told her the 
 secret over again ; and the duchess shook her 
 flaxen curls, and laughed with her rosy lips. 
 
 Well ! and so another time the baby fell 
 under the grate. The seventeen young princes 
 and princesses were used to it ; for they were 
 almost always falling under the grate or down 
 the stairs ; but the baby was not used to it yet, 
 antl it gave him a swelled face and a black eye. 
 The way the poor little darling came to tumble 
 was, that he was out of the Princess Alicia's lap 
 just as she was sitting, in a great coarse apron 
 that quite smothered her, in front of the kitchen 
 fire, beginning to peel the turnii^s for the broth 
 for dinner ; and the way she came to be domg 
 that was, that the king's cook had run away 
 that morning with her own true love, who was a 
 very tall but very tipsy soldier. Then the seven- 
 teen young princes and jirincesses, who cried at 
 everything that happened, cried and roared. But 
 the Princess Alicia (who couldn't help crying a 
 
THE MAGIC FISH BONE. 
 
 325 
 
 little herself) quietly called to them to be still, 
 on account of not throwing back the queen up- 
 stairs, who was fast getting well, and said, 
 "Hold your tongues, you wicked little monkeys, 
 every on« of you, while I examine baby ! " 
 Then she examined baby, and found that he 
 hadn't broken anything ; and she held cokl iron 
 to his poor dear eye, and smoothed his poor 
 dear face, and he presently fell asleep in her 
 arms. Then she said to the seventeen princes 
 and princesses, " I am afraid to let him down 
 yet, lest he should wake and feel pain ; be good, 
 and you shall all be cooks." They jumped for 
 joy when they heard that, and began making 
 themselves cooks' caps out of old newspapers. 
 So to one she gave the salt box, and to one she 
 gave the barley, and to one she gave the herbs, 
 and to one she gave the turnips, and to one she 
 gave the carrots, and to one she gave the onions, 
 and to one she gave the spice box, till they were 
 all cooks, and all running about at work, she 
 sitting in the middle, smothered in the great 
 coarse apron, nursing baby. By-and-by the 
 broth was done ; and the baby woke up, smiling 
 like an angel, and was trusted to the sedatest 
 princess to hold, while the other princes and 
 princesses were squeezed into a far-off corner to 
 look at the Princess Alicia turning out the sauce- 
 panful of broth, for fear (as they were always 
 getting into trouble) they should get splashed 
 and scalded. When the broth came tumbling 
 out, steaming beautifully, and smelling like a 
 nosegay good to eat, they clapped their hands. 
 That made the baby clap his hands ; and that, 
 and his looking as if he had a comic toothache, 
 made all the princes and princesses laugh. So 
 the Princess Alicia said, '• Laugh and be good ; 
 and after dinner we will make him a nest on 
 the floor in a corner, and he shall sit in his nest 
 and see a dance of eighteen cooks." That de- 
 lighted the young princes and princesses, and 
 they ate up all the broth, and washed up all the 
 plates and dishes, and cleared away, and pushed 
 the table into a corner ; and then they in their 
 cooks' caps, and the Princess Alicia in the 
 smothering coarse apron that belonged to the 
 cook that had run away with her own true love 
 that was the very tall but very tipsy soldier, 
 danced a dance of eighteen cooks before the 
 angelic baby, who forgot his swelled face and 
 his black eye, and crowed with joy. 
 
 And so then once more the Princess Alicia 
 saw King Watkins the First, her father, standing 
 in the doorway looking on, and he said, " What 
 have you been doing, Alicia ? " 
 " Cooking and contriving, papa." 
 '■'■ What else have you been doing, Alicia ? " 
 
 " Keeping the children light-hearted, papa." 
 
 " Where is the magic fish bone, Alicia ? " 
 
 " In my pocket, papa." 
 
 " I thought you had lost it ? " 
 
 " Oh no, papa ! " 
 
 "Or forgotten it?" 
 
 " No, indeed, papa." 
 
 The king then sighed so heavily, and seemed 
 so low-spirited, and sat down so miserably, 
 leaning his head upon his hand, and his elbow 
 upon the kitchen table pushed away in the 
 corner, that the seventeen princes and princesses 
 crept softly out of the kitchen, and left him alone 
 with the Princess Alicia and the angelic baby. 
 , "What is the matter, papa?" 
 
 " I am dreadfully poor, my child." 
 
 " Have you no money at all, papa ? " 
 
 " None, my child." 
 
 " Is there no way of getting any, papa ? " 
 
 " No way," said the king. " I have tried 
 very hard, and I have tried all ways." 
 
 When she heard those last words, the Princess 
 Alicia began to put her hand into the pocket 
 where she kept the magic fish bone. 
 
 " Papa," said she, " when we have tried very 
 hard, and tried all ways, we must have done our 
 very, very best?" 
 
 " No doubt, Alicia." 
 
 " When we have done our very, very best, 
 papa, and that is not enough, then I think the right 
 time must have come for asking help of others." 
 This was the very secret connected with the 
 magic fish bone, which she had found out for 
 herself from the good Fairy Grandmarina's 
 words, and which she had so often whispered to 
 her beautiful and fashionable friend, the duchess. 
 
 So she took out of her pocket the magic fish 
 bone, that had been dried and rubbed and 
 polished till it shone like mother-of-pearl ; and 
 she gave it one little kiss, and wished it was 
 quarter-day. And immediately it was quarter- 
 day ; and the king's quarter's salary came rattling 
 down the chimney, and bounced into the middle 
 of the floor. 
 
 But this was not half of what happened, — no, 
 not a quarter; for immediately afterwards the 
 good Fairy Grandmarina came riding in, in a 
 carriage and four (peacocks), with Mr. Pickles's 
 boy up behind, dressed in silver and gold, with 
 a cocked-hat, powdered hair, pink silk stockings, 
 a jewelled cane, and a nosegay. Down jumped 
 Mr. Pickles's boy, with his cocked-hat in his 
 hand, and wonderfully polite (being entirely 
 changed by enchantment), and handed Grand- 
 marina out ; and there she stood, in her rich 
 shot-silk smelling of dried lavender, fanning her- 
 self with a sparkling fixn. 
 
y,26 
 
 HOLIDA y ROMANCE. 
 
 "Alicia, my dear," said this charming old 
 fairy, " how do you do ? I hope I see you 
 jjietty well ? Give me a kiss." 
 
 'I he Princess Alicia embraced her ; and then 
 Grandmarina turned to the king, and said rather 
 sharply, "Are you good?" 
 
 The king said he hoped so. 
 
 " 1 suppose you know the reason no7v why my 
 god-daughter here," kissing the princess again, 
 •'did not apply to the fish bone sooner?" said 
 the fairy. 
 
 The king made a shy bow. 
 
 " Ah ! but you didn't tJien ? " said the fairy. 
 
 The king made a shyer bow. 
 
 " Any more reasons to ask for ? " said the fairy. 
 
 The king said. No, and he was very sorry. 
 
 " Be good, then," said the fairy, " and live 
 happy ever afterwards." 
 
 Then Grandmarina waved her fan, and the 
 queen came in most splendidly dressed ; and the 
 seventeen young princes and princesses, no 
 longer grown out of their clothes, came in, newly 
 fitted out from top to toe, with tucks in every- 
 thing to admit of its being let out. After that, 
 the lairy tapped the Princess Alicia with her fan ; 
 and the smothering coarse apron flew away, and 
 sheappeared exquisitely dressed, likea littlebride, 
 with a wreath of orange flowers and a silver veil. 
 After that, the kitchen dresser changed of itself 
 into a wardrobe, made of beautiful woods and 
 gold and looking-glass, which was full of dresses 
 of all sorts, all for her and all exactly fitting her. 
 After that, the angelic baby came in, running 
 alone, with his face and eye not a bit the worse, 
 but much the better. Then Grandmarina begged 
 to be introduced to the duchess ; and, when the 
 duchess was brought down, many compliments 
 passed between them. 
 
 A little -whispering took place between the 
 fairy and the duchess ; and then the fairy said 
 out aloud, " Yes, I thought she would have told 
 you." Grandmarina then turned to the king 
 and queen, and said, " We are going in search 
 of Prince Certainpersonio. The pleasure of 
 your company is requested at church in half an 
 hour precisely." So she and the Princess Alicia 
 got into the carriage ; and Mr. Pickles's boy 
 handed in the duchess, who sat by herself on the 
 opposite seat ; and then Mr. Pickles's boy put 
 up the steps and got up behind, and the pea- 
 cocks flew away with their tails behind. 
 
 Prince Certainpersonio was sitting by himself, 
 eating barley-sugar, and waiting to be ninety. 
 When he saw the peacocks, followed by the 
 carriage, coming in at the window, it imme- 
 diately occurred to him that something uncom- 
 mon was going to happen. 
 
 " Prince," said Grandmarina, " I bring you 
 your bride." 
 
 The moment the fairy said those words. 
 Prince Certainpersonio's face left off being 
 sticky, and his jacket and corduroys changed to 
 peach-bloom velvet, and his hair curled, and a 
 cap and feather flew in like a bird and settled on 
 his head. He got into the carriage by the fairy's 
 invitation ; and there he renewed his acquaint- 
 ance with the duchess, whom he had seen before. 
 
 In the church were the prince's relations and 
 friends, and the Princess Alicia's relations and 
 friends, and the seventeen princes and prin- 
 cesses, and the baby, and a crowd of the neigh- 
 bours. The marriage was beautiful beyond 
 expression. The duchess was bridesmaid, and 
 beheld the ceremony from the pulpit, where she 
 was supported by the cushion of the desk. 
 
 Grandmarina gave a magnificent wedding 
 feast afterwards, in which there was everything 
 and more to eat, and everything and more to 
 drink. The wedding-cake was delicately orna- 
 mented with white satin ribbons, frosted silver, 
 and white lilies, and was forty-two yards round. 
 
 When Grandmarina had drunk her love to 
 the young couple, and Prince Certainpersonio 
 had made a speech, and everybody had cried, 
 Hip, hip, hip, hurrah ! Grandmarina announced 
 to the king and queen that in future there would 
 be eight quarter-days in every year, except in 
 leap-year, when there would be ten. She then 
 turned to Certainpersonio and Alicia, and said, 
 " My dears, you will have thirty-five children, 
 and they will all be good and beautiful. Seven- 
 teen of your children will be boys, and eighteen 
 will be girls. The hair of the whole of your 
 children will curl naturally. They will never 
 have the measles, and will have recovered from 
 the hooping-cough before being born." 
 
 On hearing such good news, everybody cried 
 out, " Hip, hip, hip, hurrah ! " again. 
 
 " It only remains," said Grandmarina in con- 
 clusion, " to make an end of the fish bone." 
 
 So she took it from the hand of the Princess 
 Alicia, and it instantly flew down the throat of 
 the dreadful litde snapping pug-dog, next door, 
 and choked him, and he expired in convulsions. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 ROMANCE. FROM THE PEN OF LIEUT.-COL. ROBIN 
 REDFORTH.* 
 
 THE subject of our present narrative would 
 appear to have devoted himself to the 
 pirate profession at a comparatively early age. 
 * A"ed nine. 
 
A MUTINY. 
 
 327 
 
 We find him in command of a splendid schooner 
 of one hundred guns loaded to the muzzle, ere 
 yet he had had a party in honour of his tenth 
 birthday. 
 
 It seems that our hero, considering himself 
 spited by a Latin-grammar master, demanded 
 the satisfaction due from one man of honour to 
 another. Not getting it, he j)rivately withdrew 
 his haughty spirit from such low company, 
 bought a second-hand pocket pistol, folded up 
 some sandwiches in a paper bag, made a bottle 
 of Spanish-liquorice water, and entered on a 
 career of valour. 
 
 It were tedious to follow Boldheart (for such 
 was his name) through the commencing stages 
 of his story. Suffice it that we find him bearing 
 the rank of Capt. Boldheart, reclining in full 
 uniform on a crimson hearth-rug spread out 
 upon the quarter-deck of his schooner " The 
 Beauty," in the China seas. It was a lovely 
 evening ; and, as his crew lay grouped about 
 him, he favoured them with the following 
 melody : 
 
 " O landsmen are folly ! 
 O pirates are jolly ! 
 O diddleum Dolly, 
 
 Di! 
 Chorus. — Heave yc." 
 
 The soothing effect of these animated sounds 
 floating over the waters, as the common sailors 
 united their rough voices to take up the rich 
 tones of Boldheart, may be more easily con- 
 ceived than described. 
 
 It was under these circumstances that the 
 look-out at the masthead gave the word, 
 ''Whales!" 
 
 All was now activity. 
 
 "Where away?" cried Capt. Boldheart, start- 
 ing up. 
 
 " On the larboard bow, sir," replied the fel- 
 low at the masthead, touching his hat. For 
 such was the height of discipline on board of 
 •'The Beauty," that, even at that height, he 
 was obliged to mind it, or be shot through the 
 head. 
 
 " This adventure belongs to me," said Bold- 
 heart. '■ Boy, my harpoon. Let no man fol- 
 low;'" and, leaping alone into his boat, the 
 captain rowed with admirable dexterity in the 
 direction of the monster. 
 
 All was now excitement. 
 
 " He nears him ! " said an elderly seaman, 
 following the captain through his spy-glass. 
 
 " He strikes him ! " said another seaman, a 
 mere stripling, but also with a spy-glass. 
 
 " He tows him towards us ! " said another 
 
 seaman, a man in the full vigour of life, but 
 also with a spy-glass. 
 
 In fact, the captain was seen approaching, 
 with the huge bulk following. We will not 
 dwell on the deafening cries of " Boldheart ! 
 Boldheart !" with which he was received, when, 
 carelessly leaping on the quarter-deck, he pre- 
 sented his prize to his men. They afterwards 
 made two thousand four hundred and seventeen 
 pound ten and sixpence by it. 
 
 Ordering the sails to be braced up, the cap- 
 tain now stood W.N.W. "The Beauty" flew 
 rather than floated over the dark blue waters. 
 Nothing particular occurred for a fortnight, 
 except taking, with considerable slaughter, four 
 Spanish galleons, and a snow from South 
 America, all richly laden. Inaction began to 
 tell upon the spirits of the men. Capt. Bold- 
 heart called all hands aft, and said, " My lads, 
 I hear there are discontented ones among ye. 
 Let any such stand forth." 
 
 After some murmuring, in which the expres- 
 sions, " Ay, ay, sir ! " " Union Jack," " Avast," 
 " Starboard," " Port," " Bowsprit," and similar 
 indications of a mutinous under-current, though 
 subdued, were audible. Bill Boozey, captain oi 
 the foretop, came out from the rest. His form 
 was that of a giant, but he quailed under the 
 captain's eye. 
 
 " What are your wrongs ?" said the captain. 
 
 " Why, d'ye see, Capt. Boldheart," replied the 
 towering mariner, " I've sailed, man and boy. 
 for many a year, but I never yet knowed the 
 milk served out for the ship's company's teas to 
 be so sour as 'tis aboard this craft." 
 
 At this moment the thrilling cry, " Man over- 
 board ! " announced to the astonished crew that 
 Boozey, in stepping back, as the captain (in 
 mere thoughtfulness) laid his hand upon the 
 faithful pocket pistol which he wore in his belt, 
 had lost his balance, and was struggling with 
 the foaming tide. 
 
 All was now stupefaction. 
 
 But with Capt. Boldheart, to throw off his 
 uniform coat, regardless of the various rich 
 orders with which it was decorated, and to 
 plunge into the sea after the drowning giant, 
 was the work of a moment. Maddening was 
 the excitement when boats were lowered ; in- 
 tense the joy when the captain was seen holding 
 up the drowning man with his teeth ; deafening 
 the cheering when l)oth were restored to the 
 main-deck of "The Beauty." And, from the 
 instant of his changing his wet clothes for dry 
 ones, Capt. Boldheart had no such devoted 
 though humble friend as William Boozey. 
 
 Boldheart now pointed to the horizon, and 
 
320 
 
 HO LI DA Y ROMANCE. 
 
 called the attention of his crew to the taper 
 spars of a ship lying snug in harbour under the 
 guns of a fort. 
 
 *' She shall be ours at sunrise," said he. 
 ** Serve out a double allowance of grog, and 
 prepare for action." 
 
 AH was now preparation. 
 
 When morning dawned, after a sleepless 
 night, it was seen that the stranger was crowd- 
 ing on all sail to come out of the harbour and 
 oft'er battle. As the two ships came nearer to 
 each other, the stranger fired a gun and hoisted 
 Roman colours. Boldhcart then perceived her 
 to be the Latin-grammar master's bark. Such 
 indeed she was, and had been tacking about the 
 world in unavailing pursuit, from the time of his 
 first taking to a roving life. 
 
 Boldheart now addressed his men, promising 
 to blow them up if he should feel convinced that 
 their reputation required it, and giving orders 
 that the Latin-grammar master should be taken 
 alive. He then dismissed them to their quar- 
 ters, and the fight began with a broadside from 
 " The Beauty." She then veered around, and 
 poured in another. " The Scorpion " (so was 
 the bark of the Latin-grammar master appropri- 
 ately called) was not slow to return her fire ; 
 and a terrific cannonading ensued, in which the 
 guns of "The Beauty" did tremendous execution. 
 
 The Latin-grammar master was seen upon the 
 poop, in the midst of the smoke and fire, encou- 
 raging his men. To do him justice, he was no 
 craven, though his white hat, his short grey 
 trousers, and his long snuft-coloured surtout 
 reaching to his heels (the selfsame coat in which 
 he had spited Boldheart), contrasted most un- 
 favourably with the brilliant uniform of the 
 latter. At this moment, Boldheart, seizing a 
 pike and putting himself at the head of his men, 
 gave the word to board. 
 
 A desperate conflict ensued in the hammock- 
 nettings, — or somewhere in about that direction, 
 — until the Latin-grammar master, having all 
 his masts gone, his hull and rigging shot through, 
 and seeing Boldheart slashing a path towards 
 him, hauled down his flag himself, gave up his 
 sword to Boldheart, and asked for quarter. 
 Scarce had he been put into the captain's boat, 
 ere " The Scorpion " went down with all on 
 board. 
 
 On Capt. Boldhcart's now assembling his 
 men, a circumstance occurred. He found it 
 necessary with one blow of his cutlass to kill 
 the cook, who, having lost his brother in the 
 late action, was making at the Latin-grammar 
 master in an infuriatetl state, intent on his 
 destruction with a carving-knife. 
 
 Capt. Boldheart then turned to the Latin- 
 grammar master, severely reproaching him with 
 his perfidy, and put it to his crew what they 
 considered that a master who spited a boy 
 deserved. 
 
 They answered with one voice, " Death," 
 
 " It may be so," said the captain ; " but it 
 shall never be said that Boldheart stained his 
 hour of triumph with the blood of his enemy. 
 Prepare the cutter." 
 
 The cutter was immediately prepared. 
 
 " Without taking your life," said the captain, 
 '' I must yet for ever deprive you of the power 
 of spiting other boys. I shall turn you adrift in 
 this boat. You will find in her two oars, a com- 
 pass, a bottle of rum, a small cask of water, a 
 piece of pork, a bag of biscuit, and my Latin 
 grammar. Go ! and spite the natives, if you 
 can find any." 
 
 Deeply conscious of this bitter sarcasm, the 
 unhappy wretch was put into the cutter, and 
 was soon left far behind. He made no effort to 
 row, but was seen lying on his back with his 
 legs up, when last made out by the ship's tele- 
 scopes. 
 
 A stift' breeze now beginning to blow, Capt. 
 Boldheart gave orders to keep her S.S.W., eas- 
 ing her a little during the night by falling off a 
 point or two W. by W., or even by W.S., if she 
 complained much. He then retired for the 
 night, having, in truth, much need of repose. 
 \\\ addition to the fatigues he had undergone, 
 this brave officer had received sixteen wounds 
 in the engagement, but had not mentioned it. 
 
 In the morning a white squall came on, and 
 was succeeded by other squalls of various 
 colours. It thundered and lightened heavily 
 for six weeks. Hurricanes then set in for two 
 months. Water-spouts and tornadoes followed. 
 The oldest sailor on board — and he was a very 
 old one — had never seen such weather. " The 
 Beauty" lost all idea where she was, and the 
 carpenter reported six feet two of water in the 
 hold. Everybody fell senseless at the pumps 
 every day. 
 
 Pro\-isions now ran very low. Our hero put 
 the crew on short allowance, and put himself on 
 shorter allowance than any man in the ship. 
 But his spirit kept him fat. In this extremity, 
 the gratitude of Boozey, the captain of the fore- 
 top, whom our readers may remember, was truly 
 affecting. The loving though lowly William 
 repeatedly requested to be killed, and preserved 
 for the captain's table. 
 
 We now approach a change of affairs. 
 
 One day during a gleam of sunshine, and 
 when the weather had moderated, the man at 
 
A NATIVE FEAST INTERRUPTED. 
 
 329 
 
 the masthead — too weak now to touch his hat, 
 besides its having been blown away — called out : 
 
 " Savages ! " 
 
 All was now expectation. 
 
 Presently fifteen hundred canoes, each paa- 
 dled by twenty savages, were seen advancing in 
 excellent order. They were of a light green 
 colour (the savages were), and sang, with great 
 energy, the following strain : 
 
 ♦' Choo a choo a choo tooth. 
 Muntch, muntch. Nycey ! 
 Choo a clioo a choo tooth. 
 Muntch, muntch. Nycey!" 
 
 As the shades of night were by this time closing 
 in, these expressions were supposed to embody 
 this simple people's views of the evening hymn. 
 But it too soon appeared that the song was a 
 translation of " For what we are going to re- 
 ceive,' &c. 
 
 The chief, imposingly decorated with feathers 
 of lively colours, and having the majestic ap- 
 pearance of a fighting parrot, no sooner under- 
 stood (he understood English perfectly) that the 
 ship was " The Beauty," Capt. Boldheart, than 
 he fell upon his face on the deck, and could not 
 be persuaded to rise until the captain had lifted 
 him up, and told him he wouldn't hurt him. 
 All the rest of the savages also fell on their 
 faces with marks of terror, and had also to be 
 lilted up one by one. Thus tlie fame of the 
 great Boldheart had gone before him, even 
 among these children of Nature. 
 
 Turtles and oysters were now produced in 
 astonishing numbers ; and on these and yams 
 the people made a hearty meal. After dinner 
 the chief told Capt. Boldheart that there was 
 better feeding up at the village, and that he 
 would be glad to take him and his officers there. 
 Apprehensive of treachery, Boldheart ordered 
 his boat's crew to attend him completely armed. 
 And well were it for other commanders if their 
 precautions But let us not anticipate. 
 
 When the canoes arrived at the beach, the 
 darkness of the night was illumined by the 
 light of an immense fire. Ordering his boat's 
 crew (with the intrepid though illiterate William 
 at their head) to keep close and be upon their 
 guard, Boldheart bravely went on, arm-in-arm 
 with the chief 
 
 But how to depict the captain's surprise when 
 he found a ring of savages singing in chorus that 
 barbarous translation of " For what we are going 
 to receive," &c., which has been given above, 
 and dancing hand-in-hand round the Latin- 
 grammar master, in a hamper with his head 
 shaved, while two savages floured him, before 
 putting him to the fire to be cooked ! 
 
 Boldheart now took counsel with his officers 
 on the course to be adopted. In the meantime, 
 the miserable captive never ceased begging par- 
 don and imploring to be delivered. On the 
 generous Boldheart's proposal, it was at length 
 resolved that he should not be cooked, but should 
 be allowed to remain raw, on two conditions, 
 namely : 
 
 1. That he should never, under any circum- 
 stances, presume to teach any boy anything any 
 more. 
 
 2. That, if taken back to England, he should 
 pass his life in travelling to find out boys who 
 wanted their exercises done, and should do their 
 exercises for those boys for nothing, and never 
 say'a word about it. 
 
 Drawing the sword from its sheath. Bold- 
 heart swore him to these conditions on its 
 shining blade. The prisoner wept bitterly, and 
 appeared acutely to feel the errors of his past 
 career. 
 
 The captain then ordered his boat's crew to 
 make ready for a volley, and after firing to reload 
 quickly. " And expect a score or two on ye to 
 go head over heels," murmured William Boozey; 
 "for I'm a looking at ye." With those words, 
 the derisive though deadly William took a good 
 aim. 
 
 " Fire ! " 
 
 The ringing voice of Boldheart was lost in 
 the report of the guns and the screeching of the 
 savages. Volley after volley awakened the nu- 
 merous echoes. Hundreds of savages were 
 killed, hundreds wounded, and thousands ran 
 howhng into the woods. The Latin-grammar 
 master had a spare nightcap lent him, and a 
 long-tail coat, which he wore hind-side before. 
 He presented a ludicrous though pitiable appear- 
 ance, and serve him right. 
 
 We now find Capt. Boldheart, with this res- 
 cued wretch on board, standing off" for other 
 islands. At one of these, not a cannibal island, 
 but a pork and vegetable one, he married (only 
 in fun on his part) the king's daughter. Here 
 he rested some time, receiving from the natives 
 great quantities of precious stones, gold dust, 
 elephants' teeth, and sandal wood, and getting 
 very rich. This, too, though he almost every day 
 made presents of enormous value to his men. 
 
 The ship being at length as full as she could 
 hold of all sorts of valuable things, Boldlieart 
 gave orders to weigh the anchor, and turn " The 
 Beauty's " head towards England. These orders 
 were obeyed with three clieers ; and ere the sun 
 went down full many a hornpipe had been 
 danced on deck by the uncouth though agile 
 William. 
 
330 
 
 nOLIDA V ROMANCE. 
 
 We next find Capt. Boldheart about three 
 leagues oft" Madeira, surveying through his spy- 
 glass a stranger of suspicious appearance making 
 sail towards him. On his firing a gun ahead of 
 her to bring her to, she ran up a flag, which he 
 instantly recognised as the flag from the mast in 
 the back-garden at home. 
 
 Inferring, from this, that his father had put to 
 sea to seek his long-lost son, the captain sent his 
 own boat on board the stranger to inquire if 
 this was so, and, if so, whether his father's in- 
 tentions were strictly honourable. The boat 
 came back with a present of greens and fresh 
 meat, and reported that the stranger was " The 
 Family," of twelve hundred tons, and had not 
 only the captain's father on board, but also his 
 mother, with the majority of his aunts and uncles, 
 and all his cousins. It was further reported to 
 Boldheart that the whole of these relations had 
 expressed themselves in a becoming manner, 
 and were anxious to embrace him and thank 
 him for the glorious credit he had done them. 
 Boldheart at once invited them to breakfast next 
 morning on board " The Beauty," and gave 
 orders for a brilliant ball that should last all day. 
 
 It was in the course of the night that the cap- 
 tain discovered the hopelessness of reclaiming 
 the Latin-grammar master. That thankless 
 traitor was found out, as the two ships lay near 
 each other, communicating wdth " The Family " 
 by signals, and offering to give up Boldheart. 
 He was hanged at the yard-arm the first thing in 
 the morning, after having it impressively pointed 
 out to him by Boldheart that this was what 
 spiters came to. 
 
 The meeting between the captain and his 
 parents was attended with tears. His uncles 
 and aunts would have attended their meeting 
 with tears too, but he wasn't going to stand that. 
 His cousins were very much astonished by the 
 size of his ship and the discipline of his men, 
 and were greatly overcome by the splendour of 
 his uniform. He kindly conducted them round 
 the vessel, and pointed out everything worthy of 
 notice. He also fired his hundred guns, and 
 found it amusing to witness their alarm. 
 
 The entertainment surpassed everything ever 
 seen on board ship, and lasted from ten in the 
 morning until seven the next morning. Only 
 one disagreeable incident occurred. Capt. Bold- 
 heart found himself obliged to put his cousin 
 Tom in irons, for being disrespectful. On the 
 boy's promising amendment, however, he was 
 humanely released after a few hours' close con- 
 finement. 
 
 Boldheart now took his mother down into the 
 great cabin, and asked after the young lady with 
 
 whom, it was well known to the world, he was 
 in love. His mother replied that the object of 
 his afi'ections was then at school at Margate, for 
 the benefit of sea-bathing (it was the month of 
 September), but that she feared the young lady's 
 friends were still opposed to the union. Bold- 
 heart at once resolved, if necessary, to bombard 
 the town. 
 
 Taking the command of his ship with this 
 intention, and putting all but fighting-men on 
 board " The Family," with orders to that vessel 
 to keep in company, Boldheart soon anchored 
 in Margate Roads. Here he went ashore well 
 armed, and attended by his boat's crew (at their 
 head the faithful though ferocious William), and 
 demanded to see the mayor, who came out ol 
 his oftice. 
 
 " D jst know the name of yon ship, mayor ? " 
 asked Boldheart fiercely. 
 
 •' No," said the mayor, rubbing his eyes, vvhich 
 he could scarce believe, when he saw the goodly 
 vessel riding at anchor. 
 
 " She is named ' The Beauty,' " said the cap- 
 tain. 
 
 " Hah ! " exclaimed the mayor with a start. 
 '•'And you, then, are Capt. Boldheart?" 
 
 " The same." 
 
 A pause ensued. The mayor trembled. 
 
 " Now, mayor," said the captain, " choose ! 
 Help me to my bride, or be bombarded." 
 
 The mayor begged for two hours' grace, in 
 which to make inquiries respecting the young 
 lady. Boldheart accorded him but one; and 
 during that one placed William Boozey sentry 
 over him, with a drawn sword, and instructions 
 to accompany him wherever he went, and to run 
 him through the body if he showed a sign of 
 playing false. 
 
 At the end of the hour the mayor reappeared 
 more dead than alive, closely waited on by 
 Boozey more alive than dead. 
 
 "Captain," said the mayor, "I have ascer- 
 tained that the young lady is going to bathe. 
 Even now she waits her turn for a machine. 
 The tide is low, though rising. I, in one of our 
 town boats, shall not be suspected. When she 
 comes forth in her bathing-dress into the shallow 
 water from behind the hood of the machine, my 
 boat shall intercept her and prevent her return. 
 Do you the rest." 
 
 " Mayor," returned Capt. Boldheart, " thou 
 hast saved thy town." 
 
 The captain then signalled his boat to take 
 him off, and, steering her himself, ordered her 
 crew to row towards the bathing-ground, and 
 there to rest upon their oars. All happened as 
 had been arranged. His lovely bride came 
 
AfRS. ORANGE AND MRS. LEMON 
 
 331 
 
 forth, the mayor glided in behind her, she 
 became confused, and had floated out of her 
 depth, when, with one skilful toucli of the rudder 
 and one quivering stroke from the boat's crew, 
 her adoring Boldheart held her in his strong 
 arms. There her shrieks of terror were changed 
 to cries of joy. 
 
 Before " The Beauty " could get under way, 
 the hoisting of all the flags in the town and har- 
 bour, and the ringing of all the bells, announced 
 to the brave Boldheart that he had nothing to 
 fear. He therefore determined to be married 
 on the spot, and signalled for a clergyman and 
 clerk, who came off promptly in a sailing-boat 
 named " The Skylark." Another great entertain- 
 ment was then given on board " The Beauty," 
 in the midst of which the mayor was called out 
 by a messenger. He returned with the news 
 that government had sent down to know whether 
 Capt. Boldheart, in acknowledgment of the great 
 services he had done his country by being a 
 pirate, would consent to be made a lieutenant- 
 colonel. For himself he would have spurned 
 the worthless boon ; but his bride wished it, and 
 he consented. 
 
 Only one thing further happened before the 
 good ship " Family " was dismissed, with rich 
 presents to all on board. It is painful to record 
 (but such is human nature in some cousins) that 
 Capt. Boldheart's unmannerly cousin Tom was 
 actually tied up to receive three dozen with a 
 rope's end " for cheekiness and making game," 
 when Capt. Boldheart's lady begged for him, 
 and he was spared. "The Beauty" then re- 
 fitted, and the captain and his bride departed 
 for the Indian Ocean to enjoy themselves for 
 evermore. 
 
 ROMANCE. 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 FROM THE PEN OF MISS NETTIE 
 ASHFORD.* 
 
 HERE is a country, which I will 
 show you when I get into maps, 
 where the children have everything 
 their own way. It is a most delight- 
 ful country to live in. The grown- 
 up people are obliged to obey the children, 
 and are never allowed to sit up to supper, 
 except on their birthdays. The children 
 order them to make jam and jelly and marma- 
 lade, and tarts and pies and puddings, and all 
 manner of pastry. If they say they won't, they 
 are put in a corner till they do. They are some- 
 times allowed to have some ; but, when they 
 * Aged half-past six. 
 
 have some, they generally have powders given 
 them afterwards. 
 
 One of the inhabitants of this country, a truly 
 sweet young creature of the name of Mrs. 
 Orange, had the misfortune to be sadly plagued 
 by her numerous family. Her parents required 
 a great deal of looking after, and they had con- 
 nections and companions who were scarcely 
 ever out of mischief. So Mrs. Orange said to 
 herself, " I really cannot be troubled with these 
 torments any longer ; I must put them all to 
 school." 
 
 Mrs. Orange took off her pinafore, and dressed 
 herself very nicely, and took up her baby, and 
 went out to call upon another lady of the name 
 of Mrs. Lemon, who kept a preparatory esta- 
 blishment. Mrs. Orange stood upon the 
 scraper to pull at the bell, and give a ring- 
 ting-ting. 
 
 Mrs. Lemon's neat little housemaid, pulling 
 up her socks as she came along the passage, 
 answered the Ring-ting-ting. 
 
 " Good morning," said Mrs. Orange. " Fine 
 day. How do you do ? Mrs. Lemon at 
 home ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am." 
 
 " Will you say Mrs. Orange and baby ? " 
 
 "Yes, ma'am. Walk in." 
 
 Mrs. Orange's baby was a very fine one, and 
 real wax all over. Mrs. Lemon's baby was 
 leather and bran. However, when Mrs. Lemon 
 came into the drawing-room with her baby in 
 her arms, Mrs. Orange said politely, " Good 
 morning. Fine day. How do you do ? And 
 how is little Tootleum-boots ? " 
 
 " Well, she is but poorly. Cutting her teeth, 
 ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. 
 
 " Oh, indeed, ma'am ! " said Mrs. Orange. 
 "No fits, I hope?" 
 
 " No, ma'am." 
 
 " How many teeth has she, ma'am ? " 
 
 " Five, ma'am." 
 
 " My Emilia, ma'am, has eight," said Mrs. 
 Orange. " Shall we lay them on the mantel- 
 piece side by side while we converse? " 
 
 " By all means, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. 
 " Hem ! " 
 
 " The first question is, ma'am," said Mrs. 
 Orange, " I don't bore you ? " 
 
 " Not in the least, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. 
 " Far from it, I assure you." 
 
 " Then pray hai'e you," said Mrs. Orange, — 
 " /lare you any vacancies ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am. How many might you re- 
 quire ? " 
 
 " Why, the truth is, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange, 
 " I have come to the conclusion that my chil- 
 
332 
 
 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 
 
 dren," — oh, I forgot to say that they call the 
 grown-up people children in that country ! — 
 " that my children are getting positively too 
 much for me. Let me see. Two parents, two 
 intimate friends of theirs, one godfather, two 
 godmothers, and an aunt. Have you as many 
 as eight vacancies ? " 
 
 "I have just eight, ma'am," said Mrs. 
 Lemon. 
 
 " Most fortunate ! Terms moderate, I 
 think ? " 
 
 " Very moderate, ma'am." 
 
 " Diet good, I believe ? " 
 
 " Excellent, ma'am." 
 
 " Unlimited ? " 
 
 "Unlimited." 
 
 " Most satisfactory ! Corporal punishment 
 dispensed with ? " 
 
 " Why, we do occasionally shake," said Mrs. 
 Lemon, " and we have slapped. But only in 
 extreme cases.'' 
 
 " Could I, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange, — '' could 
 I see the establishment ? " 
 
 " With the greatest of pleasure, ma'am," said 
 Mrs. Lemon. 
 
 Mrs. Lemon took Mrs. Orange into the 
 schoolroom, where there were a number of 
 pupils. " Stand up, children," said Mrs. 
 Lemon ; and they all stood up. 
 
 Mrs. Orange whispered to Mrs. Lemon, 
 " There is a pale, bald child, with red whiskers, 
 in disgrace. Might I ask what he has done ? " 
 
 " Come here. White," said Mrs. Lemon, " and 
 tell this lady what you have been doing." 
 
 " Betting on horses," said White sulkily. 
 
 " Are you sorry for it, you naughty child ? " 
 said Mrs. Lemon. 
 
 "No," said White. "Sorry to lose, but 
 shouldn't be sorry to win." 
 
 " There's a vicious boy for you, ma'am 1 " 
 said Mrs. Lemon. " Go along with you, sir ! 
 This is Brown, ]\Irs. Orange. Oh, a sad case, 
 Brown's ! Never knows when he has had 
 enough. Greedy. How is your gout, sir?" 
 
 " Bad," said Brown. 
 
 " What else can you expect ? " said Mrs, 
 Lemon. "Your stomach is the size of two. Go 
 and take exercise directly. Mrs. Black, come 
 here to me. Now, here is a child, Mrs. 
 Orange, ma'am, who is always at play. She 
 can't be kept at home a single day together ; 
 always gadding about and spoiling her clothes. 
 Play, play, play, play, from morning to night, 
 and to morning again. How can she expect to 
 improve ? " 
 
 " Don't expect to improve," sulked Mrs. 
 Black. " Don't want to." 
 
 " There is a specimen of her temper, ma'am ! " 
 said Mrs. Lemon. " To sec her when she is 
 tearing about, neglecting everything else, you 
 would suppose her to be at least good-humoured. 
 But bless you, ma'am ! she is as pert and flounc- 
 ing a minx as ever you met with in all your 
 days ! " 
 
 " You must have a great deal of trouble with 
 them, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange. 
 
 "Ah, I have, indeed, ma'am!" said Mrs. 
 Lemon. " What with their tempers, what with 
 their quarrels, what with their never knowing 
 what's good for them, and wliat with their 
 always wanting to domineer, deliver me from 
 these unreasonable children ! " 
 
 "Well, I wish you good morning, ma'am," 
 said Mrs. Orange. 
 
 " Well, I wish you good morning, ma'am,*' 
 said Mrs. Lemon. 
 
 So Mrs. Orange took up her baby and went 
 home, and told the family that plagued her so 
 that they were all going to be sent to school. 
 They said they didn't want to go to school; 
 but she packed up their boxes, and packed 
 them oft^. 
 
 " Oh dear me, dear me ! Rest and be 
 thankful ! " said Mrs. Orange, throwing herself 
 back in her little arm-chair. " Those trouble- 
 some troubles are got rid of, please the pigs ! " 
 
 Just then another lady, named Mrs. Alicum- 
 paine, came calling at the street-door with a 
 ring-ting-ting. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Alicumpaine," said Mrs. 
 Orange, " how do you do ? Pray stay to 
 dinner. We have but a simple joint of sweet- 
 stuff, followed by a plain dish of bread-and- 
 treacle ; but, if you will take us as you find us, 
 it will be so kind ! " 
 
 " Don't mention it," said Mrs. Alicumpaine. 
 " I shall be too glad. But what do you think 
 I have come for, ma'am? Guess, ma'am." 
 
 " I really cannot guess, ma'am," said I\lrs. 
 Orange. 
 
 " Why, I am going to have a small juvenile 
 party to-night," said Mrs. Alicumpaine ; " and, 
 if you and Mr. Orange and baby would but join 
 us, we shoukl be complete." 
 
 " More than charmed, I am sure," said i\Irs. 
 Orange. 
 
 " So kind of you ! " said Mrs. Alicumpaine. 
 " But I hope the children won't bore you?" 
 
 " Dear things ! Not at all," said JNIrs. Orange. 
 " I dote upon them." 
 
 Mr. Orange here came home from the City ; 
 and he came, too, with a ring-ting-ting. 
 
 "James love," said Mrs. Orange, "you look 
 tired. What has been doing in the City to-day?" 
 
A JUVENILE PARTY. 
 
 333 
 
 "Trap, bat, and ball, my dear," said Mr. 
 Orange; *' and it knocks a man up." 
 
 " That dreadfully anxious City, ma'am," said 
 Mrs. Orange to Mrs. Alicumpaine ; " so wear- 
 ing, is it not ?'' 
 
 "Oh, so trying!" said Mrs. Alicumpaine. 
 " John has lately been speculating in the pegtop 
 ring ; and I often say to him at night, ' John, is 
 the result worth the wear and tear ? ' " 
 
 Dinner was ready by this time : so they sat 
 down to dinner; and, while Mr. Orange carved 
 the joint of sweetstuff, he said, " It's a poor 
 heart that never rejoices. Jane, go down to the 
 cellar, and fetch a bottle of the Upest ginger- 
 beer." 
 
 At tea-time, I\Ir. and Mrs. Orange, and baby, 
 and Mrs. Alicumpaine went off" to Mrs. Alicum- 
 paine's house. The children had not come yet ; 
 but the ball-room was ready for them, decorated 
 with paper flowers. 
 
 " How very sweet ! " said Mrs. Orange. " The 
 dear things ! How pleased they will be ! " 
 
 " I don't care for children myself," said Mr. 
 Orange, gaping. 
 
 " Not for girls ? " said Mrs. Alicumpaine. 
 " Come ! you care for girls ? " 
 
 Mr. Orange shook his head, and gaped again. 
 " Frivolous and vain, ma'am." 
 
 " My dear James," cried Mrs. Orange, who 
 had been peeping about, " do look here. Here's 
 the supper for the darlings, ready laid in the 
 room behind the folding doors. Here's their 
 little pickled salmon, I do declare ! And here's 
 their little salad, and their little roast beef and 
 fowls, and their little pastry, and their wee, wee, 
 wee champagne ! '' 
 
 " Yes, I thought it best, ma'am," said Mrs. 
 Alicumpaine, " that they should have their supper 
 by themselves. Our table is in the corner here, 
 where the gentlemen can have their wine-glass 
 of negus, and their egg-sandwich, and their quiet 
 game at beggar-m3^-neighbour, and look on. As 
 for us, ma'am, we shall have quite enough to do 
 to managj the company." 
 
 " Oh, indeed, you may say so ! Quite enough, 
 ma'am," said j\Irs. Orange. 
 
 The company began to come. The first of 
 them was a stout boy, with a white top-knot and 
 spectacles. The housemaid brought him in and 
 said, " Compliments, and at what time was he 
 to be fetched ?" Mrs. Alicumpaine said, " Not 
 a moment later than ten. How do you do, sir? 
 Go and sit down." Then a number of other 
 children came ; boys by themselves, and girls 
 by themselves, and boys and girls together. 
 They didn't behave at all well. Some of them 
 looked through quizzing-glasses at others, and 
 
 said, "Who are those? Don't know them." 
 Some of them looked through quizzing-glasses at 
 others, and said, "How do?" Some of them 
 had cups of tea or coffee handed to them by 
 others, and said, " Thanks ; much ! " A good 
 many boys stood about, and felt their shirt 
 collars. Four tiresome fat boys ivoiild stand in 
 the doorway, and talk about the newspapers, till 
 Mrs. Alicumi)aine went to them and said, " My 
 dears, I really cannot allow you to prevent 
 people from coming in. I shall be truly sorry 
 to do it ; but, if you put yourselves in every- 
 body's way, I must positively send you home." 
 One boy, with a beard and a large white waist- 
 coat, who stood straddling on the hearth-rug 
 warming his coat-tails, was sent home. " Highly 
 incorrect, my dear," said Mrs. Alicumpaine, 
 handing him out of the room, " and I cannot 
 permit it." 
 
 There was a children's band, — harp, cornet, 
 and piano, — and Mrs. Alicumpaine and Mrs. 
 Orange bustled among the children to persuade 
 them to take partners and dance. But they were 
 so obstinate ! For quite a long time they would 
 not be persuaded to take partners and dance. 
 Most of the boys said, "Thanks ; much! But 
 not at present." And most of the rest of the 
 boys said, " Thanks ; much ! But never do." 
 
 " Oh, these childr^ are very wearing ! " said 
 Mrs. Ahcumpaine to Mrs. Orange. 
 
 " Dear things ! I dote upon them ; but they 
 ARE wearing," said Mrs. Orange to Mrs. Alicum- 
 paine. 
 
 At last they did begin in a slow and melan- 
 choly way to slide about to the music ; though 
 even then they wouldn't mind what they were 
 told, but would have this partner, and wouldn't 
 have that partner, and showed temper about it. 
 And they wouldn't smile, — no, not on any 
 account they wouldn't; but when the music 
 stopped, went round and round the room in 
 dismal twos, as if everybody else was dead. 
 
 " Oh, it's very hard indeed to get these vexing 
 children to be entertained ! " said Mrs. Alicum- 
 paine to I\Irs. Orange. 
 
 " I dote upon the darlings ; but it is hard," 
 said Mrs. Orange to Mrs. Alicumpaine. 
 
 They were trying children, that's the truth. 
 First, they wouldn't sing when they were asked ; 
 and then, when everybody fully believed they 
 wouldn't, they would. " If you serve us so any 
 more, my love," said Mrs. Alicumpaine to a tall 
 child, with a good deal of white back, in mauve 
 silk trimmed with lace, " it will be my painful 
 privilege to offer you a bed, and to send you to 
 it immediately." 
 
 The girls were so ridiculously dressed, too, 
 
334 
 
 iiULlUA y KUMANCE. 
 
 that they were in rags before supper. How 
 could the boys help treading on their trains? 
 And yet, when their trains were trodden on, 
 they often showed temper again, and looked as 
 black, they did ! However, they all seemed to 
 be pleased when Mrs. Alicumpaine said, "Supper 
 is ready, children ! " And they went crowding 
 and pushing in, as if they had had dry bread for 
 dinner. 
 
 "How are the children getting on?" said Mr. 
 Orange to Mrs. Orange, when Mrs. Orange came 
 to look after baby. Mrs. Orange had left baby 
 on a shelf near Mr. Orange while he played at 
 beggar-my-neighbour, and had asked him to keep 
 his eye upon her now and then. 
 
 " Most charmingly, my dearest," said Mrs. 
 Orange. " So droll to see their litde flirtations 
 and jealousies ! Do come and look !" 
 
 "Much obhged to you, my dear," said Mr. 
 Orange ; ''' but I don't care about children 
 myself." 
 
 So Mrs. Orange, having seen that baby was 
 safe, went back without Mr. Orange to the room 
 where the children were having supper. 
 
 "What are they doing now?" said Mrs. 
 Orange to Mrs. Alicumpaine. 
 
 " They are making speeches, and playing at 
 Parliament," said Mrs. Alicumpaine to Mrs. 
 Orange. 
 
 On hearing this, Mrs. Orange set off once 
 more back again to Mr. Orange, and said, 
 "James dear, do come. The children are play- 
 ing at Parliament." 
 
 " Thank you, my dear," said Mr. Orange, 
 " but I don't care about Parliament myself" 
 
 So Mrs. Orange went once again without Mr. 
 Orange to the room where the children were 
 having supper, to see them playing at Parlia- 
 ment. And she found some of the boys crying, 
 * Hear, hear, hear ! " while other boys cried 
 " No, no ! " and others, " Question ! " " Spoke ! "' 
 and all sorts of nonsense that ever you heard. 
 Then one of those tiresome fat boys who had 
 stopped the doorway told them he was on his 
 legs (as if they couldn't see that he wasn't on his 
 head, or on his anything else) to explain, and 
 that, with the permission of his honourable friend, 
 if he would allow him to call him so (another tire- 
 some boy bowed), he would proceed to explain. 
 Then he went on for a long time in a sing-song 
 (whatever he meant), did this troublesome fat 
 boy, about that he held in his hand a gla,ss ; and 
 about that he had come down to that house that 
 night to discharge what he would call a public 
 duty; and about that, on the present occasion, 
 he W'juld lay his hand (his other hand) upon his 
 
 heart, and would tell honourable gentlemen that 
 he was about to open the door to general ap- 
 proval. Then he opened the door by saying, 
 " To our hostess ! " and everybody else said, 
 " To our hostess ! " and then there were cheers. 
 Then another tiresome boy started up in sing- 
 song, and then half-a-dozen noisy and non- 
 sensical boys at once. But at last Mrs. Alicum- 
 paine said, " I cannot have this din. Now, 
 children, you have played at Parliament very 
 nicely ; but Parliament gets tiresome after a 
 little while, and it's time you left off, for you 
 will soon be fetched." 
 
 After another dance (with more tearing to rags 
 than before supper), they began to be fetched ; 
 and you will be very glad to be told that the 
 tiresome fat boy who had been on his legs was 
 walked off first without any ceremony. When 
 they were all gone, poor Mrs. Alicumpaine 
 dropped upon a sofa, and said to Mrs. Orange, 
 " These children will be the death of me at last, 
 ma'am, — they will indeed ! " 
 
 " I quite adore theni, ma'am," said Mrs. 
 Orange ; " but they do want variety." 
 
 Mr. Orange got his hat, and Mrs. Orange got 
 her bonnet and her baby, and they set out to 
 walk home. They had to pass Mrs. Lemon's 
 preparatory establishment on their way. 
 
 " I wonder, James dear," said Mrs. Orange, 
 looking up at the window, " whether the precious 
 children are asleep ! " 
 
 " I don't care much whether they are or not, 
 myself," said Mr. Orange. 
 
 " James dear ! " 
 
 '■ You dote upon them, you know," said Mr. 
 Orange. " That's another thing." 
 
 " I do," said Mrs. Orange rapturously. " Oh, 
 I do!" 
 . " I don't," said Mr. Orange. 
 
 " But I was thinking, James love," said Mrs. 
 Orange, pressing his arm, " whether our dear, 
 good, kind Mrs. Lemon would like them to stay 
 the holidays with her." 
 
 "If she was paid for it, I dare say she would," 
 said Mr. Orange. 
 
 " I adore them, James," said Mrs. Orange, 
 " but SUPPOSE we pay her, then ! " 
 
 This was what brought that country to such 
 perfection, and made it such a delightful place 
 to live in. The grown-up people (that would be 
 in other countries) soon left oft" being allowed 
 any holidays after Mr. and Mrs. Orange tried 
 the experiment ; and the children (that would 
 be in other countries) kept them at school as 
 long as ever they lived, and made them do what- 
 ever they were told. 
 
GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 
 
 1 
 
 FIRST CEI AFTER, 
 T happened in this wise- 
 
 But, sitting with my pen in my liand look- 
 ing at those words again without descrying any 
 hint in them of the words that should follow, it 
 comes into my mind that they have an abrupt 
 appearance. They may serve, however, if I let 
 them remain, to suggest how very difficult I 
 find it to begin to explain my explanation. 
 
 An uncouth phrase : and yet I do not see my 
 way to a better. 
 
 SECOND CHAPTER. 
 
 It happened in iliis wise 
 
 But, looking at those words, and comparing 
 them with my former opening, I find they are 
 the selfsame words repeated. This is the more 
 
336 
 
 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 
 
 surprising to me, because I employ them in quite 
 a new connection. For indeed I declare that 
 my intention was to discard the commencement 
 I first had in my thoughts, and to give the pre- 
 ference to another of an entirely different nature, 
 dating my explanation from an anterior jjeriod 
 of my life, I will make a third trial, without 
 erasing this second failure, protesting that it is 
 not my design to conceal any of my infirmities, 
 whether they be of head or heart. 
 
 THIRD CHAPTER. 
 
 Not as yet directly aiming at how it came to 
 pass, I will come upon it by degrees. The 
 natural manner, after all, for God knows that is 
 how it came upon me. 
 
 My parents were in a miserable condition of 
 life, and my infant home was a cellar in Preston. 
 I recollect the sound of father's Lancashire clogs 
 on the street pavement above, as being different 
 in my young hearing from the sound of all other 
 clogs ; and I recollect that, when mother came 
 down the cellar steps, I used tremblingly to spe- 
 culate on her feet having a good or an ill tem- 
 pered look, — on her knees, — on her waist, — 
 until finally her face came into view, and settled 
 the question. From this it will be seen that I 
 was timid, and that the cellar steps were steep, 
 and that the doorway was very low. 
 
 Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty 
 upon her face, upon her figure, and not least 
 of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high- 
 pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by 
 the compression of bony fingers on a leathern 
 bag ; and she had a way of rolling her eyes 
 about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that 
 was gaunt and hungry. Father, with his shoulders 
 rounded, would sit quiet on a three-legged stool, 
 looking at the empty grate, until she would pluck 
 the stool from under him, and bid him go bring 
 some money home. Then he would dismally 
 ascend the steps ; and I, holding my ragged shirt 
 and trousers together with a hand (my only 
 braces), would feint and dodge from mother's 
 pursuing grasp at my hair. 
 
 A worldly little devil was mother's usual name 
 for me. Whether I cried for that I was in the 
 dark, or for that it was cold, or for that I was 
 hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a 
 warm corner when there was a fire, or ate vora- 
 ciously when there was food, she would still say, 
 " Oh, }'ou worldly little devil ! " And the sting 
 of it was, that I quite well knew myself to be a 
 worldly little devil. Worldly as to wanting to 
 be housed and warmed, worldly as to wanting to 
 
 be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I 
 inwardly compared how much I got of those 
 good things with how much father and mother 
 got, when, rarely, those good things were going. 
 
 Sometimes they both went away seeking work ; 
 and then I would be locked up in the cellar for 
 a day or two at a time. I was at my worldliest 
 then. Left alone, I yielded myself up to a 
 worldly yearning for enough of anything (except 
 misery), and for the death of mother's father, 
 who was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and 
 on whose decease, I had heard mother say, she 
 would come into a whole courtful of houses " if 
 she had her rights." Worldly little devil, I would 
 stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet 
 into cracked bricks and crevices of the damp 
 cellar floor, — walking over my grandfather's 
 body, so to speak, into the courtful of houses, 
 and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes 
 to wear. 
 
 At last a change came down into our cellar. 
 The universal change came down even as low 
 as that, — so will it mount to any height on which 
 a human creature can perch, — and brought other 
 changes with it. 
 
 We had a heap of I don't know what foul 
 litter in the darkest corner, which we called " the 
 bed." For three days mother lay upon it with- 
 out getting up, and then began at times to laugh. 
 If I had ever heard her laugh before, it had been 
 so seldom that the strange sound frightened me. 
 It frightened father too ; and we took it by turns 
 to give her water. Then she began to move her 
 head from side to side, and sing. After that, 
 she getting no better, father fell a laughing and 
 a singing; and then there was only I to give 
 them both water, and they both died. 
 
 FOURTH CHAPTER. 
 
 When I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, 
 of whom one came peeping" down alone first, 
 and ran away and brought the other, I could 
 hardly bear the light of the street. I was sitting 
 in the roadway, blinking at it, and at a ring of 
 people collected around me, but not close to 
 me, when, true to my character of worldly little 
 devil, I broke silence l)y saying, " I am hungry 
 and thirsty ! " 
 
 '■ Does he know they are dead ?" asked one of 
 another. 
 
 " Do you know your father and mother are 
 both dead of fever ? " asked a third of me se- 
 verely. 
 
 " I don't know what it is to be dead. I sup- 
 posed it meant that, when the cup rattled against 
 
WORLDLINESS. 
 
 337 
 
 their teeth, and the water spilt over them. I am 
 hungry and thirsty." That was all I had to say 
 about it. 
 
 The ring of people widened outward from the 
 inner side as 1 looked around me ; and I smelt 
 vinegar, and what I know to be camphor, thrown 
 in towards where I sat. Presently some one put 
 a great vessel of smoking vinegar on the ground 
 near me ; and then they all looked at me in 
 silent horror as I ate and drank of what was 
 brought for me. I knew at the time they had a 
 horror of me, but I couldn't help it. 
 
 I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur 
 of discussion had begun to arise respecting what 
 was to be done with me next, when I heard a 
 cracked voice somewhere in the ring say, " My 
 name is Hawkyard, Mr. Verity Hawkyard, of 
 West Bromwich." Then the ring split in one 
 l)lace ; and a yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentle- 
 man, clad all in iron grey to his gaiters, pressed 
 forward with a policeman and another official of 
 some sort. He came forward close to the vessel 
 of smoking vinegar, from which he sprinkled 
 himself carefully, and me copiously. 
 
 " He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this 
 young boy, who is just dead too," said Mr. 
 Hawkyard. 
 
 I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said 
 in a ravening manner, "Where's his houses?" 
 
 " Hah ! Horrible worldliness on the edge of 
 the grave," said Mr. Hawkyard, casting more of 
 the vinegar over me, as if to get my devil out 
 of rne. " I have undertaken a slight — a ve-ry 
 sh'ght — trust in behalf of this boy ] quite a volun- 
 tary trust ; a matter of mere honour, if not of 
 mere sentiment : still I have taken it upon my- 
 self, and It shall be (oh yes, it shall be !) dis- 
 charged." 
 
 The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of 
 this gentleman much more favourable than their 
 opinion of me. 
 
 " He shall be taught," said Mr. Hawkyard 
 " (oh yes, he shall be taught !) ; but what is to 
 be done with him for the present ? He may be 
 infected. He may disseminate infection." The 
 ring widened considerably. " What is to be 
 done with him ?" 
 
 He held some talk with the two officials. I 
 could distinguish no word save " Farmhouse." 
 There was another sound several times repeated, 
 which was wholly meaningless in my ears then, 
 but which I knew afterwards to be " Hoghton 
 Towers." 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Hawkyard, " I think that 
 sounds promising ; I think that sounds hopeful. 
 And he can be put by himself in a ward for a 
 night or two, you say ? " 
 Edwin Drood, Etc., 22. 
 
 It seemed to be the police-officer who had 
 said so ; for it was he who replied, Yes. It was 
 he, too, who finally took me by the arm, and 
 walked me before him through the streets, into 
 a whitewashed room in a bare building, where I 
 had a chair to sit in, a table to sit at, an iron 
 bedstead and good mattress to lie upon, and a 
 rug and blanket to cover me. Where I had 
 enough to eat too, and was shown how to clean 
 the tin porringer in which it was conveyed to 
 me, until it was as good as a looking-glass. 
 Here, likewise, I was put in a bath, and had 
 new clothes brought to me ; and my old rags 
 were burnt, and I was camphored and vinegared 
 and disinfected in a variety of ways. 
 
 When all this was done, — I don't know in 
 how many days, or how few, but it matters not, 
 — Mr. Hawkyard stepped in at the door, re- 
 maining close to it, and said, " Go and stand 
 against the opposite wall, George Silverman. 
 As far off as you can. That'll do. How do 
 you feel ? " 
 
 I told him that I didn't feel cold, and didn't 
 feel hungry, and didn't feel thirsty. That was 
 the whole round of human feelings, as far as I 
 knew, except the pain of being beaten. 
 
 "Well," said he, "you are going, George, to 
 a healthy farmhouse to be purified. Keep in 
 the air there as much as you can. Live an out- 
 of-door life there until you are fetched away. 
 You had better not say much — in fact, you had 
 better be very careful not to say anything — 
 about what your parents died of, or they might 
 not like to take you in. Behave well, and I'll 
 put you to school. Oh yes ! I'll put you to 
 school, though I am not obligated to do it. I 
 am a servant of the Lord, George ; and I have 
 been a good servant to him. I have, these five- 
 and-thirty years. The Lord has had a good ser- 
 vant in me, and he knows it." 
 
 What I then supposed him to mean by this, I 
 cannot imagine. As little do I know when I 
 began to comprehend that he was a prominent 
 member of some obscure denomination or con- 
 gregation, every member of which held forth to 
 the rest when so inclined, and among whom he 
 was called Brother Hawkyard. It was enough 
 for me to know, on that day in the ward, that 
 the farmer's car ti was waiting for me at the street 
 corner. I was not slow to get into it ; for it was 
 the first ride I ever had in my life. 
 
 It made me sleepy, and I slept. First, J 
 stared at Preston streets as long as they lasted ; 
 and, meanwhile, I may have had some small 
 dumb wondering within me whereabouts our 
 cellar was; but I doubt it. Such a worldly 
 little devil was I, that I took no thought who 
 
338 
 
 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 
 
 would bury father and mother, or where they 
 would be buried, or when. The question whe- 
 ther the eating and drinking by day, and the 
 covering by night, would be as good at the 
 farmhouse as at the ward superseded those 
 questions. 
 
 The jolting of the cart on a loose stony road 
 awoke me ; and I found that we were mounting 
 a steep hill, where the road was a rutty by-road 
 through a field. And so, by fragments of an 
 ancient terrace, and by some rugged out-build- 
 ings that had once been fortified, and passing 
 under a ruined gateway, we came to the old 
 farmhouse in the thick stone wall outside the 
 old quadrangle of Hoghton Towers : which I 
 looked at like a stupid savage, seeing no spe- 
 cialty in, seeing no antiquity in ; assuming all 
 farmhouses to resemble it ; assigning the decay I 
 noticed to the one potent cause of all ruin that I 
 knew, — poverty ; eyeing the pigeons in their 
 flights, the cattle in their stalls, the ducks in the 
 pond, and the fowls pecking about the yard with 
 a hungry hope that plenty of them might be 
 killed for dinner while I stayed there ; wonder- 
 ing whether the scrubbed dairy vessels, drying 
 in the sun-light, could be goodly porringers out 
 of which the master ate his belly-filling food, and 
 which he polished when he had done, according 
 to my ward experience ; shrinkingly doubtful 
 whether the shadows, passing over that airy 
 height on the bright spring day, were not some- 
 thing in the nature of frowns, — sordid, afraid, 
 unadmiring, — a small brute to shudder at. 
 
 To that time I had never had the faintest im- 
 pression of duty. I had had no knowledge 
 whatever that there was anything lovely in this 
 life. When I had occasionally slunk up the 
 cellar steps into the street, and glared in at shop- 
 windows, I had done so with no higher feelings 
 than we may suppose to animate a mangy young 
 dog or wolf-cub. It is equally the fact that I had 
 never been alone, in the sense of holding un- 
 selfish converse with myself. I had been solitary 
 often enough, but nothing better. 
 
 Such was my condition when 1 sat down to 
 my dinner that day, in the kitchen of the old 
 farmhouse. Such was my condition when I lay 
 on my bed in the old farmhouse that night, 
 stretched out opposite the narrow muUioned 
 window, in the cold light of the moon, like a 
 young vampire. 
 
 FIFTH CHAPTER. 
 
 What do I know now of Hoghton Towers ? 
 Very little 3 for I have been gratefully unwilling 
 to disturb my first impressions. A house, cen- 
 
 turies old, on high ground a mile or so removed 
 from the road between Preston and Blackburn, 
 where the first James of England, in his hurry- 
 to make money by making baronets, perhaps 
 made some of those remunerative dignitaries. 
 A house, centuries old, deserted and falling to 
 pieces, its woods and gardens long since grass- 
 land or ploughed up, the rivers Ribble and 
 Darwen glancing below it, and a vague haze of 
 smoke, against which not even the supernatural 
 prescience of the first Stuart could foresee a 
 counterblast, hinting at steam power, powerful 
 in two distances. 
 
 What did I know then of Hoghton Towers ? 
 When I first peeped in at the gate of the lifeless 
 quadrangle, and started from the mouldering 
 statue becoming visible to me like its guardian 
 ghost ; when I stole round by the back of the 
 farmhouse, and got in among the ancient rooms, 
 many of them with their floors and ceilings fall- 
 ing, the beams and rafters hanging dangerously 
 down, the plaster dropping as I trod, the oaken 
 panels stripped away, the windows half walled 
 up, half broken ; when I discovered a gallery 
 commanding the old kitchen, and looked down 
 between balustrades upon a massive old table 
 and benches, fearing to see I know not what 
 dead-alive creatures come in and seat them- 
 selves, and look up with I know not what dread- 
 ful eyes, or lack of eyes, at me ; when all over 
 the house I was awed by gaps and chinks where 
 the sky stared sorrowfully at me, where the 
 birds passed, and the ivy rustled, and the stains 
 of winter weather blotched the rotten floors; 
 when down at the bottom of dark pits of stair- 
 case, into which the stairs had sunk, green leaves 
 trembled, butterflies fluttered, and bees hummed 
 in and out through the broken doorways ; Avhen 
 encircling the whole ruin were sweet scents, and 
 sights of fresh green growth, and ever-renewing 
 life, that I had never dreamed of, — I say, when 
 I passed into such clouded perception of these 
 things as my dark soul could compass, what did 
 I know then of Hoghton Towers ? 
 
 I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully 
 at me. Therein have I anticipated the answer. 
 I knew that all these things looked sorrowfully 
 at me ; that they seemed to sigh or whisper, not 
 without pity for me, " Alas, poor worldly little 
 devil ! " 
 
 There were two or three rats at the bottom of 
 one of the smaller pits of broken staircase when 
 I craned over and looked in. They were 
 scuffling for some prey that was there; and, 
 when they started and hid themselves close 
 together in the dark, I thought of the old life 
 (it had grown old already) in the cellar. 
 
HOGHTON TO WERS. 
 
 339 
 
 How not to be this worldly little devil ? how 
 not to have a repugnance towards myself as I 
 liad towards the rats? I hid in a corner of one 
 of the smaller chambers, frightened at myself, 
 and crying (it was the first time I had ever cried 
 for any cause not purely physical), and I tried to 
 think about it. One of the flirm ploughs came 
 into my range of view just then ; and it seemed 
 to help me as it went on with its two horses up 
 and down the field so peacefully and quietly. 
 
 There was a girl of about my own age in the 
 farmhouse family, and she sat opposite to me at 
 the narrow table at meal-times. It had come 
 into my mind, at our first dinner, that she might 
 take the fever from me. The thought had not 
 disquieted me then. I had only speculated how 
 she would look under the altered circumstances, 
 and whether she would die. But it came into 
 my mind, now, that I might try to prevent her 
 taking the fever by keeping away from her. I 
 knew I should have but scrambling board if I 
 did ; so much the less worldly and less devilish 
 the deed would be, I thought. 
 
 From that hour I withdrew myself at early 
 morning into secret corners of the ruined house, 
 and remained hidden there until she went to 
 bed. At first, when meals were ready, I used 
 to hear them calling me ; and then my resolution 
 weakened. But I strengthened it again by 
 going farther oft" into the ruin, and getting out 
 of hearing, I often watched for her at the dim 
 windows ; and, when I saw that she was fresh 
 and rosy, felt much happier. 
 
 Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to 
 the humanising of myself, I suppose some 
 childish love arose within me. I felt, in some 
 sort, dignified by the pride of protecting her, — 
 by the pride of making the sacrifice for her. As 
 my heart swelled with that new feeling, it in- 
 sensibly softened about mother and father. It 
 seemed to have been frozen before, and now to 
 be thawed. The old ruin, and all the lovely 
 things that haunted it, were not sorrowful for 
 me only, but sorrowful for mother and father as 
 well. Therefore did I cry again, and often 
 too. 
 
 The farmhouse family conceived me to be of 
 a morose temper, and were very short with me ; 
 though they never stinted me in such broken 
 fare as was to be got out of regular hours. One 
 night, when I lifted the kitchen latch at my 
 usual time, Sylvia (that was her pretty name) 
 had but just gone out of the room. Seeing her 
 ascending the opposite stairs, I stood still at the 
 door. She had heard the click of the latch, and 
 looked round. 
 
 " George," she called to me in a pleased voice. 
 
 " to-morrow is my birthday ; and we are to have 
 a fiddler, and there's a party of boys and girls 
 coming in a cart, and we shall dance. I invite 
 you. Be sociable for once, George." 
 
 " I am very sorry, miss," I answered ; " but I 
 — but no ; I can't come." 
 
 " You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad," 
 she returned disdainfully ; " and I ought not to 
 have asked you. I shall never speak to you 
 again." 
 
 As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire 
 after she was gone, I felt that the farmer bent 
 his brows upon me. 
 
 " Eh, lad ! " said he ; " Sylvy's right. You're 
 as moody and broody a lad as never I set eyes 
 on yet." 
 
 I tried to assure him that I meant no harm ; 
 but he only said coldly, " Maybe not, maybe 
 not! There, get thy supper, get thy supper; 
 and then thou can sulk to thy heart's content 
 again." 
 
 Ah ! if they could have seen me next day, in 
 the ruin, watching for the arrival of the cartful 
 of merry young guests ; if they could have seen 
 me at night, gliding out from behind the ghostly 
 statue, listening to the music and the fall of 
 dancing feet, and watching the lighted farm- 
 house windows from the quadrangle when all 
 the ruin was dark ; if they could have read my 
 heart, as I crept up to bed by the back-way, 
 comforting myself with the reflection, " They 
 will take no hurt from me," — they would not 
 have thought mine a morose or an unsocial 
 nature. 
 
 It was in these ways that I began to form a 
 shy disposition ; to be of a timidly silent cha- 
 racter under misconstruction ; to have an inex- 
 pressible, perhaps a morbid, dread of ever being 
 sordid or worldly. It was in these ways that my 
 nature came to shape itself to such a mould, 
 even before it was affected by the influences of 
 the studious and retired life of a poor scholar. 
 
 SIXTH CHAPTER. 
 
 Brother Hawk^ard (as he insisted on my 
 calling him) put me to school, and told me to 
 work my way. " You are all right, George," he 
 said. " I have been the best servant the Lord 
 has had in his service for this five-and-thirty 
 year (oh, I have !) ; and he knows the value of 
 such a servant as I have been to him (oh yes, 
 he does I) ; and he'll prosper your schooling as 
 a part of my reward. That's what /;^'ll do, 
 George. He'll do it for me." 
 
 From the first I could not like this familiar 
 
340 
 
 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 
 
 knowledge of the ways of the sublime, inscru- 
 table Almighty on Brother Hawkyard's part. As 
 I grew a little wiser, and still a little wiser, I 
 liked it less and less. His manner, too, of con- 
 firming himself in a parenthesis, — as if, knowing 
 himself, he doubted his own word, — I found 
 distasteful. I cannot tell how much these dis- 
 likes cost me ; lor I had a dread that they were 
 worldly. 
 
 As time went on, I became a Foundation-boy 
 on a good foundation, and I cost Brother Hawk- 
 yard nothing. When I had worked my way so 
 far, I worked yet harder, in the hope of ulti- 
 mately getting a presentation to college and a 
 fellowship. My health has never been strong 
 (some vapour from the Preston cellar cleaves to 
 me, I think) ; and what with much work and 
 some weakness, I came again to be regarded — 
 that is, by my fellow-students — as unsocial. 
 
 All through my time as a foundation-boy, I 
 was within a few miles of Brother Hawkyard's 
 congregation ; and^ whenever I was what we 
 called a leave-boy on a Sunday, I went over 
 there at his desire. Before the knowledge be- 
 came forced upon me that outside their place of 
 meeting these brothers and sisters were no 
 better than the rest of the human family, but on 
 the whole were, to put the case mildly, as bad 
 as most, in respect of giving short weight m 
 their shops, and not speaking the truth, — I say, 
 before this knowledge became forced upon me, 
 their prolix addresses, their inordinate conceit, 
 their daring ignorance, their investment of the 
 Supreme Ruler of heaven and earth with their 
 own miserable meannesses and littlenesses, 
 greatly shocked me. Still, as their term for the 
 frame of mind that could not perceive them 
 to be in an exalted state of grace was the 
 " worldly " state, I did for a time suffer tortures 
 under my inquiries of myself whether that young 
 worldly-devilish spirit of mine could secretly 
 be lingering at the bottom of my non-appreciation. 
 
 Brother Hawkyard was the popular expounder 
 in this assembly, and generally occupied the 
 platform (there was a little platform with a table 
 on it, in lieu of a pulpit) first on a Sunday after- 
 noon. He was by trade a drysalter. Brother 
 Gimblet, an elderly man with a crabbed face, a 
 large do^'s-eared shirt-collar, and a spotted blue- 
 neckerchief reaching up behind to the crown of 
 his head, was also a drysalter and an expounder. 
 Brother Gimblet professed the greatest admira- 
 tion for Brother Hawkyard, but (I had thought 
 more than once) bore him a jealous grudge. 
 
 Let whosoever may peruse these lines kindly 
 take the pains here to read twice my solemn 
 pledge, that what I write of the language and 
 
 customs of the congregation in question I write 
 scrupulously, literally, exactly, from the life and 
 the truth. 
 
 On the first Sunday after I had won what I 
 had so long tried for, and when it was certain 
 that I was going up to college, Brother Hawk- 
 yard concluded a long exhortation thus : 
 
 " Well, my friends and fellow-sinners, now I 
 told you, when I began, that 1 didn't know a 
 word of what I was going to say to you (and no, 
 I did not !), but that it was all one to me, be- 
 cause I knew the Lord would put into my 
 mouth the words I wanted." 
 
 (" That's it ! " from Brother Gimblet.) 
 
 " And he did put into my mouth the words I 
 wanted." 
 
 (" So he did ! " from Brother Gimblet.) 
 
 " And why ? " 
 
 (" Ah, let's have that ! " from Brother Gim- 
 blet.) 
 
 " Because I have been his faithful servant for 
 five-and-thirty years, and because he knows it. 
 For five-and-thirty years ! And he knows it, 
 mind you ! I got those words that I wanted 
 on account of my wages. I got 'em from the 
 Lord, my fellow-sinners. Down ! I said, 
 ' Here's a heap of wages due ; let us have some- 
 thing down, on account.' And I got it down, 
 and I paid it over to you ; and you won't wrap 
 it up in a napkin, nor yet in a towel, nor yet 
 pocketankercher, but you'll put it out at good 
 interest. Very well. Now, my brothers and 
 sisters and fellow-sinners, I am going to con- 
 clude with a question, and I'll make it so plam 
 (with the help of the Lord, after five-and-thirty 
 years, I should rather hope !) as that the Devil 
 shall not be able to confuse it in your heads, — 
 which he would be overjoyed to do." 
 
 (" Just his way ! Crafty old blackguard ! ' 
 from Brother Gimblet.) 
 
 " And the question is this, Are the angels 
 learned ? " 
 
 (" Not they ! Not a bit on it ! " from Brother 
 Gimblet with the greatest confidence.) 
 
 "Not they! And where's the proof. ^ Sent 
 ready-made by the hand of the Lord. Why, 
 there's one among us here now that has got all 
 the learning that can be crammed into him. / 
 got him all the learning that could be crammed 
 into him. His grandfather" (this I had never 
 heard before) " was a brother of ours. He was 
 Brother Parksop. That's what he was. Park- 
 sop ; Brother Parksop. His worldly name was 
 Parksop, and he was a brother of this brother- 
 hood. Then wasn't he Brother Parksop ? " 
 
 (" Must be. Couldn't help hisself 1 " from 
 Brother Gimblet.) 
 
BROTHER GIMBLETS PRAYER. 
 
 341 
 
 " Well, he left that one now here present 
 among us to the care of a brother sinner of his 
 (and that brother sinner, mind you, was a sinner 
 of a bigger size in his time than any of you ; 
 praise the Lord !), Brother Hawkyard. INIe. / 
 got him without fee or reward, — without a mor- 
 sel of myrrh, or frankincense, nor yet amber, 
 letting alone the honeycomb, — all the learning 
 that could be crammed into him. Has it 
 brought him into our temple, in the sjnrit? 
 No. Have we had any ignorant brothers and 
 sisters that didn't know round O from crooked 
 S, come in among us meanwhile ? Many. Then 
 the angels are not learned; then they don't so 
 much as know their alphabet. And now, my 
 friends and fellow-sinners, having brought it to 
 that, perhaps some brother present — perhaps 
 you, Brother Gimblet — will pray a bit for us } " 
 
 Brother Gimblet undertook the sacred func- 
 tion, after having drawn his sleeve across his 
 mouth, and muttered, " Well, I don't know as I 
 see my way to hitting any of you quite in the 
 right place neither." He said this with a dark 
 smile, and then began to bellow. What we 
 were specially to be preserved from, according 
 to his solicitations, was, despoilment of the 
 orphan, suppression of testamentary intentions 
 on the part of a father or (say) grandfather, ap- 
 propriation of the orphan's house property, 
 feigning to give in charity to the wronged one 
 from whom we withheld his due ; and that 
 class of sins. He ended with the petition, 
 " Give us peace ! " which, speaking for mj^self, 
 was very much needed after twenty minutes of 
 his bellowing. 
 
 Even though I had not seen him, when he 
 rose from his knees, steaming with perspiration, 
 glance at Brother Hawkyard, and even though 
 I had not heard Brother Hawkyard's tone of 
 congratulating him on the vigour with which he 
 had roared, I should have detected a malicious 
 application in this prayer. Unformed suspicions 
 to a similar effect had sometimes passed through 
 my mind in my earlier school days, and had 
 always caused me great distress ; for they were 
 worldly in their nature, and wide, very wide, of 
 the spirit that had drawn me from Sylvia. They 
 were sordid suspicions, without a shadow of 
 proof. They were worthy to have originated 
 in the unwholesome cellar. They were not only 
 without proof, but against proof; for w^as I not 
 myself a living proof of what Brother Hawkyard 
 had done ? and, without him, how should I ever 
 have seen the sky look sorrowfully down upon 
 that wretched boy at Hoghton Towers ? 
 
 Although the dread of a relapse into a stage 
 of savage selfishness was less strong upon me as 
 
 I approached manhood, and could act in an 
 increased degree for myself, yet I was always on 
 my guard against any tendency to such relapse. 
 After getting these suspicions under my feet, I 
 had been troubled by not being able to like 
 Brother Hawkyard's manner, or his professed 
 religion. So it came about that, as I walked 
 back that Sunday evening, I thought it would 
 be an act of reparation for any such injury my 
 struggling thoughts had unwillingly done him, if 
 I wrote, and placed in his hands, before going 
 to college, a full acknowledgment of his good- 
 ness to me, and an ample tribute of thanks. It 
 might serve as an implied vindication of him 
 against any dark scandal from a rival brother 
 and expounder, or from any other quarter. 
 
 Accordingly, I wrote the document with much 
 care. I may add, with much feeling too ; for it 
 affected me as I went on. Having no set 
 studies to pursue in the brief interval between 
 leaving the Foundation and going to Cambridge, 
 I determined to walk out to his place of busi- 
 ness, and give it into his own hands. 
 
 It was a winter afternoon when I tapped at 
 the door of his little counting-house, which was 
 at the farther end of his long, low shop. As I 
 did so (having entered by the back-yard, where 
 casks and boxes were taken in, and where there 
 was the inscription, " Private way to the count- 
 ing-house "), a shopman called to me from the 
 counter that he was engaged. 
 
 " Brother Gimblet " (said the shopman, who 
 Avas one of the brotherhood) " is with him." 
 
 I thought this all the better for my purpose, 
 and made bold to tap again. They were talk- 
 ing in a low tone, and money was passing ; for 
 I heard it being counted out. 
 
 "Who is it?" asked Brother Hawkyard 
 sharply. 
 
 " George Silverman," I answered, holding the 
 door open. " May I come in ? " 
 
 Both brothers seemed so astounded to see 
 me that I felt shyer than usual. But they 
 looked quite cadaverous in the early gas-light, 
 and perhaps that accidental circumstance exag- 
 gerated the expression of their faces. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " asked Brother Hawk- 
 yard. 
 
 " Ay ! what is the matter ? " asked Brother 
 Gimblet. 
 
 " Nothing at all," I said, diffidently producing 
 my document : " I am only the bearer of a 
 letter from myself." 
 
 "From yourself, George?" cried Brother 
 Hawkyard. 
 
 " And to you," said I. 
 
 " And to me. George ? " 
 
342 
 
 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 
 
 He turned paler, and opened it hurriedly; 
 but, looking over it, and seeing generally what it 
 was, became less hurried, recovered his colour, 
 and said, " Praise the Lord ! " 
 
 " That's it ! " cried Brother Gimblet. " Well 
 put ! Amen." 
 
 Brother Hawkyard then said, in a livelier 
 strain, " You must know, George, that Brother 
 Gimblet and I are going to make our two busi- 
 nesses one. We are going into partnership. 
 We are settling it now. Brother Gimblet is to 
 take one clear half of the profits (oh yes ! he 
 shall have it; he shall have it to the last 
 farthing)." 
 
 " D. V. ! " said Brother Gimblet, with his 
 right fist firmly clinched on his right leg. 
 
 " There is no objection," pursued Brother 
 Hawkyard, " to my reading this aloud, George ?" 
 
 As it was what I expressly desired should be 
 done, after yesterday's prayer, I more than 
 readily begged him to read it aloud. He did so ; 
 and Brother Gimblet listened with a crabbed 
 smile. 
 
 " It was in a good hour that I came here," he 
 said, wrinkling up his eyes. " It was in a good 
 hour, likewise, that I was moved yesterday to 
 depict for the terror of evil-doers a character the 
 direct opposite of Brother Hawkyard's. But it 
 was the Lord that done it ; I felt him at it while 
 I was perspiring." 
 
 After that it was proposed by both of them 
 that I should attend the congregation once more 
 before my final departure. What my shy reserve 
 would undergo, from being expressly preached 
 at and prayed at, I knew beforehand. But I 
 reflected that it would be for the last time, and 
 that it might add to the weight of my letter. It 
 was well known to the brothers and sisters that 
 there was no place taken for me in their para- 
 dise ; and if I showed this last token of deference 
 to Brother Hawkyard, notoriously in despite of 
 my own sinful inclinations, it might go some 
 little way in aid of my statement that he had 
 been good to me, and that I was grateful to 
 him. Merely stipulating, therefore, that no ex- 
 f)rcss endeavour should be made for my conver- 
 sion, — which would involve the rolling of several 
 brothers and sisters on the floor, declaring that 
 they felt all their sins in a heap on their left 
 side, weighing so many pounds avoirdupois, as 
 I knew from what I had seen of those repulsive 
 mysteries, — I promised. 
 
 Since the reading of my letter. Brother Gim- 
 blet had been at intervals wiping one eye with an 
 end of his spotted blue neckerchief, and grinning 
 to himself. It was, however, a habit that brother 
 had to grin in an ugly manner even when ex- 
 
 pounding. I call to mind a delighted snarl with 
 which he used to detail from the platform the 
 torments reserved for the wicked (meaning all 
 human creation except the brotherhood), as being 
 remarkably hideous. 
 
 I left the two to settle their articles of part- 
 nership and count money ; and I never saw them 
 again but on the following Sunday. Brother 
 Hawkyard died within two or three years, leav- 
 ing all he possessed to Brother Gimblet, in virtue 
 of a will dated (as I have been told) that very 
 day. 
 
 Now, I was so far at rest with myself, when 
 Sunday came, knowing that I had conquered my 
 own mistrust, and righted Brother Hawkyard in 
 the jaundiced vision of a rival, that I went, even 
 to that coarse chapel, in a less sensitive state 
 than usual. How could I foresee that the deli- 
 cate, perhaps the diseased, corner of my mind, 
 where I winced and shrunk when it was touched, 
 or was even approached, would be handled as 
 the theme of the whole proceedings ? 
 
 On this occasion it was assigned to Brother 
 Hawkyard to pray, and to Brother Gimblet to 
 preach. The prayer was to open the ceremo- 
 nies ; the discourse was to come next. Brothers 
 Hawkyard and Gimblet were both on the plat- 
 form ; Brother Hawkyard on his knees at the 
 table, unmusically ready to pray ; Brother Gim- 
 blet sitting against the wall, grinningly ready to 
 preach. 
 
 " Let us offer up the sacrifice of prayer, my 
 brothers and sisters and fellow-sinners." Yes ; 
 but it was I who was the sacrifice. It w^as our 
 poor, sinful, worldly-minded brother here present 
 who was wrestled for. The now-opening career 
 of this our unawakened brother might lead to his 
 becoming a minister of what was called " the 
 church." That was what he looked to. The 
 church. Not the chapel. Lord. The church. No 
 rectors, no vicars, no archdeacons, no bishops, 
 no archbishops, in the chapel, but, O Lord ! 
 many such in the church. Protect our sinful 
 brother from his love of lucre. Cleanse from 
 our unawakened brother's breast his sin of 
 worldly-mindedness. The prayer said infinitely 
 more in words, but nothing more to any intel- 
 ligible effect. 
 
 Then Brother Gimblet came forward, and 
 took (as I knew he would) the text, "My king- 
 dom is not of this world." Ah ! but whose was, 
 my fellow-sinners ? Whose ? Why, our brother's 
 here present was. The only kingdom he had 
 an idea of was of this world. (" That's it ! " 
 from several of the congregation.) What did 
 the woman do when she lost the piece of money? 
 Went and looked for it. What should our 
 
AT COLLEGE. 
 
 343 
 
 brother do when he lost his way ? ("Go and 
 look for it," from a sister.) Go and look for it, 
 true. But must he look for it in the right direc- 
 tion, or in the ■wrong? (" In the right," from a 
 brother.) There spake the prophets ! He must 
 look for it in the right direction, or he couldn't 
 find it. But he had turned his back upon the 
 right direction, and he wouldn't find it. Now, 
 my fellow-sinners, to show you the difference 
 betwixt worldly -mindedness and unworldly- 
 mindedness, betwixt kingdoms not of this world 
 and kingdoms of this world, here was a letter 
 wrote by even our worldly-minded brother 
 unto Brother Hawkyard. Judge, from hear- 
 ing of it read, whether Brother Hawkyard was 
 the faithful steward that the Lord had in his 
 mind only t'other day, when, in this very place, 
 he drew you the picter of the unfaithful one ; for it 
 was him that done it, not me. Don't doubt that ! " 
 Brother Gimblet then groaned and bellowed 
 his way through my composition, and subse- 
 quently through an hour. The service closed 
 with a hymn, in which the brothers unanimously 
 roared, and the sisters unanimously shrieked at 
 me, That I by wiles of worldly gain was mocked, 
 and they on waters of sweet love were rocked : 
 that I with mammon struggled in the dark, while 
 they were floating in a second ark. 
 
 I went out from all this with an aching heart 
 and a weary spirit : not because I was quite so 
 weak as to consider these narrow creatures inter- 
 preters of the Divine Majesty and Wisdom, but 
 because I was weak enough to feel as though it 
 were my hard fortune to be misrepresented and 
 misunderstood, when I most tried to subdue any 
 risings of mere worldlinsss within me, and when 
 I most hoped that, by dint of trying earnestly, I 
 had succeeded. 
 
 SEVENTH CHAPTER. 
 
 Mv timidity and my obscurity occasioned me 
 to live a secluded life at college, and to be little 
 known. No relative ever came to visit me, 
 for I had no relative. No intimate friends 
 broke in upon my studies, for I made no inti- 
 mate friends. I supported myself on my scholar- 
 ship, and read much. My college -time was 
 otherwise not so very different from my time at 
 Hoghton Towers. 
 
 Knowing myself to be unfit for the noisier stir 
 of social existence, but believing myself qualified 
 to do my duty in a moderate, though earnest 
 way, if I could obtain some small preferment in 
 the Church, I applied my mind to the clerical 
 profession. In due sequence I took orders, was 
 ordained, and began to look about me for em- 
 
 ployment. I must observe that I had taken a 
 good degree, that I had succeeded in winning 
 a good fellowship, and that my means were 
 ample for my retired way of life. By this time I 
 had read with several young men ; and the occu- 
 pation increased my income, while it was highly 
 interesting to me. I once accidentally over- 
 heard our greatest don say, to my boundless joy, 
 " That he heard it reported of Silverman that 
 his gift of quiet explanation, his patience, his 
 amiable temper, and his conscientiousness made 
 him the best of coaches." May my "gift of 
 quiet explanation " come more seasonably and 
 powerfully to my aid in this present explanation 
 than I think it will ! 
 
 It may be in a certain degree owing to the 
 situation of my college rooms (in a corner where 
 the daylight was sobered), but it is in a much 
 larger degree referable to the state of my own 
 mind, that I seem to myself, on looking back to 
 this time of my life, to have been always in the 
 peaceful shade. I can see others in the sun- 
 light ; I can see our boats' crews and our athletic 
 young men on the glistening water, or speckled 
 with the moving lights of sunlit leaves ; but I 
 myself am always in the shadow looking on. 
 Not unsympathetically, — God forbid ! — but look- 
 ing on alone, much as I looked at Sylvia from 
 the shadows of the ruined house, or looked at 
 the red gleam shining through the farmer's win- 
 dows, and listened to the fall of dancing feet, 
 when all the ruin was dark that night in the 
 quadrangle. 
 
 I now come to the reason of my quoting that 
 laudation of myself above given. Without such 
 reason, to repeat it would have been mere 
 boastfulness. 
 
 Among those who had read with me was Mr. 
 Fareway, second son of Lady Fareway, widow 
 of Sir Gaston Fareway, Baronet. This young 
 gentleman's abilities were much above the 
 average ; but he came of a rich family, and was 
 idle and luxurious. He presented himself to 
 me too late, and afterwards came to me too 
 irregularly, to admit of my being of much ser- 
 vice to him. In the end, I considered it my 
 duty to dissuade him from going up for an ex- 
 amination which he could never pass ; and he 
 left college without a degree. After his depar- 
 ture. Lady Fareway wrote to me, representing 
 the justice of my returning half my fee, as I had 
 been of so little use to her son. Within my 
 knowledge a similar demand had not been made 
 in any other case; and I most freely admit that 
 the justice of it had not occurred to me until it 
 was pointed out. But I at once perceived it, 
 yielded to it, and returned the money. 
 
344 
 
 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 
 
 Mr. Fareway had been gone two years or 
 more, and I had forgotten him, when he one 
 day walked into my rooms as I was sitting at 
 my books. 
 
 Said he, after the usual salutations had passed, 
 " Mr. Silverman, my mother is in town here, at 
 the hotel, and wishes me to present you to her." 
 
 I was not comfortable with strangers, and I 
 dare say I betrayed that I was a little nervous 
 or unwilling. " For," said he, without my hav- 
 ing spoken, " I think the interview may tend to 
 the advancement of your prospects." 
 
 It put me to the blush to think that I should 
 be tempted by a worldly reason, and I rose 
 immediately. 
 
 Said Mr. Fareway, as we went along, " Are 
 you a good hand at business ? " 
 
 " I think not," said I. 
 
 Said Mr. Fareway then, " My mother is." 
 
 "Truly," said I. 
 
 " Yes : my mother is what is usually called a 
 managing woman. Doesn't make a bad thing, 
 for instance, even out of the spendthrift habits 
 of my eldest brother abroad. In short, a 
 managing vvoman. This is in confidence." 
 
 He had never spoken to me in confidence, 
 and I was surprised by his doing so. I said I 
 should respect his confidence, of course, and 
 said no more on the delicate subject. We had 
 but a little way to walk, and I was soon in his 
 mother's company. He presented me, shook 
 hands with me, and left us two (as he said) to 
 business. 
 
 I saw in my Lady Fareway a handsome, well- 
 preserved lady of somewhat large stature, with a 
 steady glare in her great round dark eyes that 
 embarrassed me. 
 
 Said my lady, '' I have heard from my son, 
 Mr. Silverman, that you would be glad of some 
 preferment in the church." 
 
 I gave my lady to understand that was so. 
 
 " I don't know whether you are aware," my 
 lady proceeded, " that we have a presentation 
 to a living ? I say luc have ; but, in point of 
 fact, /have." 
 
 I gave my lady to understand that I had not 
 been aware of this. 
 
 Said my lady, " So it is : indeed, I have two 
 presentations, — one to two hundred a year, one 
 to six. Both livings are in our county, — North 
 Devonshire, — as you probably know. The first 
 is vacant. Would you like it ? " 
 
 What with my lady's eyes, and what with the 
 suddenness of this proposed gift, I was much 
 confused. 
 
 " I am sorry it is not the larger presentation," 
 said my lady rather coldly; " though I will not, 
 
 Mr. Silverman, pay you the bad compliment of 
 supposing that you are, because that would be 
 mercenary, — and mercenary I am persuaded you 
 are not." 
 
 Said I, with my utmost earnestness, " Thank 
 you. Lady Fareway, thank you, thank you ! I 
 should be deeply hurt if I thought I bore the 
 character." 
 
 " Naturally," said my lady. " Always de- 
 testable, but particularly in a clergyman. You 
 have not said whether you will like the living?" 
 
 With apologies for my remissness or indis- 
 tinctness, I assured my lady that I accepted it 
 most readily and gratefully. I added that I 
 hoped she would not estimate my appreciation 
 of the generosity of her choice by my flow of 
 words ; for I was not a ready man in that 
 respect when taken by surprise or touched at 
 heart. 
 
 " The affair is concluded," said my lady ; 
 " concluded. You will find the duties very 
 light, Mr. Silverman. Charming house; charm- 
 ing little garden, orchard, and all that. You 
 will be able to take pupils. By-the-bye ! No : 
 I will return to the word afterwards. What was 
 I going to mention, when it put me out ? " 
 
 My lady stared at me, as if I knew. And I 
 didn't know. And that perplexed me afresh. 
 
 Said my lady, after some consideration, " Oh, 
 of course, how very dull of me ! The last in- 
 cumbent, — least mercenary man I ever saw, — 
 in consideration of the duties being so light and 
 the house so deHcious, couldn't rest, he said, 
 unless I permitted him to help me with my cor- 
 respondence, accounts, and various little things 
 of that kind ; nothing in themselves, but which 
 it worries a lady to cope with. Would Mr. 
 Silverman also like to ? Or shall I ?" 
 
 I hastened to say that my poor help would be 
 always at her ladyship's service. 
 
 " I am absolutely blessed," said my lady, 
 casting up her eyes (and so taking them oft" of 
 me for one moment), " in having to do with 
 gentlemen who cannot endure an approach to 
 the idea of being mercenary ! " She shivered at 
 the word. "And now as to the pupil." 
 
 " The ? " I was quite at a loss. 
 
 " Mr. Silverman, you have no idea what she 
 is. She is," said my lady, laying her touch upon 
 my coat-sleeve, " I do verily believe, the most 
 extraordinary girl in this world. Already knows 
 more Greek and Latin than Lady Jane Grey. 
 And taught herself! Has not yet, remember, 
 derived a moment's advantage from Mr. Silver- 
 man's classical acquirements. To say nothing 
 of mathematics, which she is bent upon becom- 
 ing versed in, and in which (as I hear from my 
 
ADELINA. 
 
 345 
 
 son and others) Mr. Silverman's reputation is so 
 deservedly high ! " 
 
 Under my lady's eyes I must have lost the 
 clue, I felt persuaded ; and yet I did not know 
 where I could have dropped it. 
 
 "Adelina," said my lady, "is my only 
 daughter. If I did not feel cjuite convinced 
 that I am not blinded by a mother's partiality; 
 unless I was absolutely sure that when you 
 know her, Mr. Silverman, you will esteem it a 
 high and unusual privilege to direct her studies, 
 — I should introduce a mercenary element 
 into this conversation, and ask you on what 
 terms " 
 
 I entreated my lady to go no further. ]\Iy 
 lady saw that I was troubled, and did me the 
 honour to comply with my recjuest. 
 
 EIGHTH CHAPTER. 
 
 Everything in mental acquisition that her 
 brother might have been, if he would, and 
 everything in all gracious charms and admirable 
 qualities that no one but herself could be, — this 
 was Adelina. 
 
 I will not expatiate upon her beauty ; I will 
 not expatiate upon her intelligence, her quick- 
 ness of perception, her powers of memory, her 
 sweet consideration, from the first moment, for 
 the slow-paced tutor who ministered to her won- 
 derful gifts. I was thirty then ; I am over sixty 
 now : she is ever present to me in these hours as 
 she was in those, bright and beautiful and young, 
 wise and fanciful and good. 
 
 When I discovered that I loved her, how can 
 I say ? In the first day ? in the first week ? in 
 the first month ? Impossible to trace. If I be 
 (as I am) unable to represent to myself any 
 previous period of my life as quite separable 
 irom her attracting power, how can I answer for 
 this one detail ? 
 
 Whensoever I made the discovery, it laid a 
 heavy burden on me. And yet, comparing it 
 with the far heavier burden that I afterwards 
 took up, it does not seem to me now to have 
 been very hard to bear. In the knowledge that 
 I did love her, and that I should love her while 
 my life lasted, and that I was ever to hide my 
 secret deep in my own breast, and she was never 
 to find it, there was a kind of sustaining joy or 
 pride, or comfort, mingled with my pain. 
 
 But later on, — say, a year later on, — when I 
 made another discovery, then indeed my suffer- 
 ing and my struggle were strong. That other 
 discovery was 
 
 These words will never see the light, if ever, | 
 
 until my heart is dust ; until her bright spirit has 
 returned to the regions of which, when impri- 
 soned here, it surely retained some unusual 
 glimpse of remembrance ; until all the pulses 
 that ever beat around us shall have long been 
 quiet ; until all the fruits of all the tiny victories 
 and defeats achieved in our lilUe breasts shall 
 have withered away. That discovery was that 
 she loved me. 
 
 She may have enhanced my knowledge, and 
 loved me for that ; she may have over-valued my 
 discharge of duty to her, and loved me for that ; 
 she may have refined upon a playful compassion 
 which she would sometimes show for what she 
 called my want of wisdom, according to the light 
 of the world's dark lanterns, and loved me for 
 that ; she may — she must — have confused the 
 borrowed light of what I had only learned, with 
 its brightness in its pure, original rays ; but she 
 loved me at that time, and she made me 
 know it. 
 
 Pride of family and pride of wealth put me as 
 far otf from her in my lady's eyes as if I had 
 been some domesticated creature of another 
 kind. But they could not put me farther from 
 her than I put myself when I set my merits 
 against hers. More than that. They could not 
 put me, by millions of fathoms, half so low be- 
 neath her as I put myself when in imagination I 
 took advantage of her noble trustfulness, took 
 the fortune that I knew she must possess in her 
 own right, and left her to find herself, in the 
 zenith of her beauty and genius, bound to poor 
 rusty, plodding me. 
 
 No ! Worldliness should not enter here at 
 any cost. If I had tried to keep it out of other 
 ground, how much harder was I bound to try to 
 keep it out from this sacred place ! 
 
 But there was something daring in her broad, 
 generous character, that demanded at so delicate 
 a crisis to be delicately and patiently addressed. 
 After many and many a bitter night (oh ! I 
 found I could cry, for reasons not purely phy- 
 sical, at this pass of my life !) I took my 
 course. 
 
 My lady had, in our first interview, uncon- 
 sciously overstated the accommodation of my 
 pretty house. There was room in it for only one 
 pupil. He was a young gentleman near coming 
 of age, very well connected, but what is called a 
 poor relation. His parents were dead. The 
 charges of his living and reading with me were 
 defrayed by an uncle ; and he and I were to do 
 our utmost together for three years towards qua- 
 lifying him to make his way. At this time he had 
 entered into his second year with me. He was 
 well-looking, clever, energetic, enthusiastic, bold ; 
 
346 
 
 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 
 
 in the best sense of the term, a thorough young 
 Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 I resolved to bring these two together. 
 
 NINTH CHAPTER. 
 
 Said I, one night, when I had conquered my- 
 self, " Mr. Granville," — Mr. Granville Wharton 
 his name was, — " I doubt if you have ever yet 
 so much as seen Miss Fareway." 
 
 "Well, sir," returned he, laughing, "you see 
 her so much yourself, that you hardly leave 
 another fellow a chance of seeing her." 
 
 " I am her tutor, you know," said I, 
 
 And there the subject dropped for that time. 
 But I so contrived as that they should come 
 together shortly afterwards. I had previously so 
 contrived as to keep them asunder; for while I 
 loved her, — I mean before I had determined on 
 my sacrifice, — a lurking jealousy of Mr. Gran- 
 ville lay within my unworthy breast. 
 
 It was quite an ordinary interview in the 
 Fareway Park ; but they talked easily together 
 for some time : like takes to like, and they had 
 many points of resemblance. Said Mr. Gran- 
 ville to me, when he and I sat at our supper 
 that night, " Miss Fareway is remarkably beau- 
 tiful, sir, remarkably engaging. Don't you 
 think so ? " "I think so," said I. And I stole 
 a glance at him, and saw that he had reddened 
 and was thoughtful. I remember it most 
 vividly, because the mixed feeling of grave 
 pleasure and acute pain that the slight circum- 
 stance caused me was the first of a long, long 
 series of such mixed impressions under which 
 my hair turned slowly grey. 
 
 I had not much need to feign to be subdued; 
 but I counterfeited to be older than I was in all 
 respects (Heaven knows ! my heart being all too 
 young the while), and feigned to be more of a 
 recluse and bookworm than I had really be- 
 come, and gradually set up more and more of a 
 fatherly manner towards Adelina. Likewise I 
 made my tuition less imaginative than before ; 
 separated myself from my poets and philoso- 
 phers ; was careful to present them in their own 
 light, and me, their lowly servant, in my own 
 shade. Moreover, in the matter of apparel, I 
 was equally mindful ; not that I had ever been 
 dapper that way, but that I was slovenly now. 
 
 As I depressed myself with one hand, so did 
 I labour to raise Mr. Granville with the other ; 
 directing his attention to such subjects as I too 
 well knew most interested her, and fashioning 
 him (do not deride or misconstrue the expres- 
 sion, unknown reader of this writing ; for I have 
 
 suffered !) into a greater resemblance to myself 
 in my solitary one strong aspect. And gradu- 
 ally, gradually, as I saw him take more and 
 more to these thrown-out lures of mine, then 
 did I come to know better and better that love 
 was drawing him on, and was drawing her from 
 me. 
 
 So passed more than another year ; every day 
 a year in its number of my mixed impressions 
 of grave pleasure and acute pain ; and then 
 these two being of age and free to act legally 
 for themselves, came before me hand-in-hand 
 (my hair being now quite white), and entreated 
 me that I would unite them together. " And 
 indeed, dear tutor," said Adelina, " it is but 
 consistent in you that you should do this thing 
 for us, seeing that we should never have spoken 
 together that first time but for you, and that but 
 for you w'e could never have met so often after- 
 wards." The whole of which was literally true ; 
 for I had availed myself of my many business 
 attendances on, and conferences with, my lady, 
 to take Mr. Granville to the house, and leave 
 him in the outer room with Adelina. 
 
 I knew that my lady would object to such a 
 marriage for her daughter, or to any marriage 
 that was other than an exchange of her for 
 stipulated lands, goods, and moneys. But 
 looking on the two, and seeing with full eyes 
 that they were both young and beautiful ; and 
 knowing that they were alike in the tastes and 
 acquirements that will outlive youth and beauty ; 
 and considering that Adelina had a fortune, 
 now, in her own keeping ; and considering, fur- 
 ther, that J\Ir. Granville, though for the present 
 poor, was of a good family that had never lived 
 in a cellar in Preston ; and believing that their 
 love would endure, neither having any great 
 discrepancy to find out in the other, — I told 
 them of my readiness to do this thing which 
 Adelina asked of her dear tutor, and to send 
 them forth, husband and wife, into the shining 
 world with golden gates that awaited them. 
 
 It was on a summer morning that I rose be- 
 fore the sun to compose myself for the crowning 
 of my work with this end ; and my dwelling 
 being near to the sea, I walked down to the 
 rocks on the shore, in order that I might behold 
 the sun in his majesty. 
 
 The tranquiUity upon the deep, and on the 
 firmament, the orderly withdrawal of the stars, 
 the calm promise of coming day, the rosy suffu- 
 sion of the sky and waters, the ineffable splen- 
 dour that then burst forth, attuned my mind 
 afresh after the discords of the night. Me- 
 thought that all I looked on said to me, and 
 that all I heard in the sea and in the air said to 
 
RESULT OF MY SCHEME. 
 
 347 
 
 me, " Be comforted, mortal, that thy life is so 
 short. Our preparation for what is to follow 
 has endured, and shall endure, for unimaginable 
 ages.'' 
 
 I married them. I knew that my hand was 
 cold when I placed it on their hands clasped 
 together; but the words with which I had to 
 accompany the action I could say without fal- 
 tering, and I was at peace. 
 
 They being well away from my house and 
 from the place after our simple breakfast, the 
 time was come when I must do what I had 
 pledged myself to them that I would do, — break 
 the intelligence to my lady. 
 
 I went up to the house, and found my lady in 
 her ordinary business-room. She happened to 
 have an unusual amount of commissions to 
 intrust to me that day ; and she had filled my 
 hands with papers before I could originate a 
 word. 
 
 " My lady," I then began as I stood beside 
 her table. 
 
 " Why, what's the matter?" she said quickly, 
 looking up. 
 
 " Not much, I would fain hope, after you 
 shall have prepared yourself, and considered a 
 little." 
 
 " Prepared myself; and considered a little ! 
 You appear to have prepared yoiir%€\.i but indif- 
 ferently, anyhow, Mr. Silverman." This mighty 
 scornfully, as I experienced my usual embarrass- 
 ment under her stare. 
 
 Said I, in self-extenuation once for all, " Lady 
 Fareway, I have but to say for myself that I 
 have tried to do my duty." 
 
 '* For yourself? " repeated my lady. " Then 
 there are others concerned, I see. Who are 
 they?" 
 
 I was about to answer, when she made to- 
 wards the bell with a dart that stopped me, and 
 said, " Why, where is Adelina ? " 
 
 " Forbear ! Be calm, my lady. I married 
 her this morning to Mr. Granville Wharton." 
 
 She set her lips, looked more intently at me 
 than ever, raised her right hand, and smote me 
 hard upon the cheek. 
 
 "Give me back those papers! give me back 
 those papers ! " She tore them out of my 
 hands, and tossed them on her table. Then, 
 seating herself defiantly in her great chair, and 
 folding her arms, she stabbed me to the heart 
 with the unlooked-for reproach, " You worldly 
 wretch ! " 
 
 " Worldly ! " I cried. " Worldly ! " 
 
 "This, if you please," — she went on with 
 supreme scorn, pointing me out as if there were 
 some one there to see, — " this, if you please, is 
 
 the disinterested scholar, with not a design be- 
 yond his books ! This, if you please, is the 
 simple creature whom any one could overreach 
 in a bargain ! This, if you please, is Mr. Silver- 
 man ! Not of this world ; not he ! He has too 
 much simplicity for this world's cunning. He 
 has too much singleness of purpose to be a 
 match for this world's double-dealing. What 
 did he give you for it?" 
 
 "For what? And who?" 
 
 " How much," she asked, bending forward in 
 her great chair, and insultingly tapping the 
 fingers of her right hand on the palm of her 
 left, — " how much does Mr. Granville Wharton 
 pay you for getting him Adehna's money ? What 
 is the amount of your per-centage upon Adelina's 
 fortune ? What were the terms of the agree- 
 ment that you proposed to this boy when you, 
 the Reverend George Silverman, licensed to 
 marry, engaged to put him in possession of this 
 girl ? You made good terms for yourself, what- 
 ever they were. He would stand a poor chance 
 against your keenness." 
 
 Bewildered, horrified, stunned by this cruel 
 perversion, I could not speak. But I trust that 
 I looked innocent, being so. 
 
 " Listen to me, shrewd hypocrite," said my 
 lady, whose anger increased as she gave it 
 utterance ; " attend to my words, you cunning 
 schemer, who have carried this plot through 
 with such a practised double face that I have 
 never suspected you. I had my projects for 
 my daughter; projects for family connection; 
 projects for fortune. You have thwarted them, 
 and overreached me ; but I am not one to be 
 thwarted and overreached without retaliation. 
 Do you mean to hold this living another 
 month ? " 
 
 " Do you deem it possible, Lady Fareway, 
 that I can hold it another hour, under your 
 injurious words?" 
 
 " Is it resigned, then ? " 
 
 " It was mentally resigned, my lady, some 
 minutes ago." 
 
 " Don't equivocate, sir. Is it resigned ? " 
 
 " Unconditionally and entirely ; and I would 
 that I had never, never come near it ! " 
 
 "A cordial response from me to //m/ wish, 
 Mr. Silverman ! But take this with you, sir. If 
 you had not resigned it, I would have had you 
 deprived of it. And though you have resigned 
 it, you will not get quit of me as easily as you 
 think for. I will pursue you with this story, I 
 will make this nefarious conspiracy of yours, for 
 money, known. You have made money by it, 
 but you have at the same time made an enemy 
 by it. You will take good care that the money 
 
348 
 
 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 
 
 sticks to you ; I will take good care that the 
 enemy sticks to you." 
 
 Then said I finally, " Lady Fareway, I think 
 my heart is broken. Until I came into this 
 room just now, the possibility of such mean 
 wickedness as you have imputed to me never 
 dawned upon my thoughts. Your suspicions " 
 
 " Suspicions ! Pah ! " said she indignantly. 
 " Certainties." 
 
 " Your certainties, my lady, as you call them, 
 your suspicions as I call them, are cruel, unjust, 
 wholly devoid of foundation in fact. I can 
 declare no more ; except that I have not acted 
 for my own profit or my own pleasure. I have 
 not in this proceeding considered myself. Once 
 again, I think my heart is broken. If I have 
 unwittingly done any wrong with a righteous 
 motive, that is some penalty to pay." 
 
 She received this with another and more in- 
 dignant " Pah ! " and I made my way out of her 
 room (I think I felt my way out with my hands, 
 although my eyes were open), almost suspecting 
 
 that my voice had a repulsive sound, and that I 
 was a repulsive object. 
 
 There was a great stir made, the bishop was 
 appealed to, I received a severe reprimand, and 
 narrowly escaped suspension. For years a cloud 
 hung over me, and my name was tarnished. But 
 my heart did not break, if a broken heart in- 
 volves death ; for I lived through it. 
 
 They stood by me, Adelina and her husband, 
 through it all. Those who had known me at 
 college, and even most of those who had only 
 known me there by reputation, stood by me too. 
 Little by little, the belief widened that I was not 
 capable of what was laid to my charge. At 
 length I was presented to a college living in a 
 sequestered place, and there I now pen my 
 explanation. I pen it at my open window in 
 the summer-time, before me lying the churchyard, 
 equal resting-place for sound hearts, wounded 
 hearts, and broken hearts. I pen it for the re- 
 lief of my own mind, not foreseeing whether or 
 no it will ever have a reader. 
 
 V&U<I£fi fiV J> S. VIRTUB AND CO., UMiXBD, ClIV ROiU), LONDON. 
 
CHRISTMAS BOOKS 
 
CT^/v/iC^-^^ 
 
 "HE HAD BEEN TIM's HLOOD-HORSE ALL THE WAY FROM CHURCH, AND HAD COME 
 HOME RAMPANT."— C^m/waj Carol, P. 21 
 
Christmas Books 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 WITH TWENTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. BARNARD 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ld. 
 
 1892 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 HE narrow space within which it was necessary to confine these Christmas Stories, 
 when they were originally published, rendered their construction a matter of some 
 difficulty, and almost necessitated what is peculiar in their machinery. I could 
 
 ■m) .... 
 
 ^^^ not attempt great elaboration of detail m the working out of character within such 
 limits. My chief 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. 
 
 PACK 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL i 
 
 THE CHIMES 38 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH . o . . . = ■ ■ 11 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE . . . = 118 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN ,.,.. = ........ 157 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 "HE HAD BEEN TIM'S BLOOD-HORSE ALL THE WAY FROM CHURCH, AND HAD COME HOME RAMPANT" 
 
 Frotitispiece 
 
 "you're in spirits, TUGBY, my DEAR," OBSERVED HIS WIFE "NO," SAID TUGBY. "NO. NOT 
 
 PARTICULAR. I'il A LITTLE ELEWATED. THE MUFFINS CAME SO PAT" . . . To face page 69 
 
 "MR. REDLAW!" HE EXCLAIMED, AND STARTED UP .... I76 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT. 
 
 Vignette. 
 
 " It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not 
 fair. If I was to stop half-a-cro\vn for it, you'd 
 think yourself ill used, I'll be bound ?" . 
 
 Marley's Ghost ....... 
 
 " This pleasantry was received with a general laugh" 
 
 "What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed- 
 curtains.^" 
 
 "No," said Toby after another sniff. "It's — it's 
 mellower than Polonies. It's very nice. It 
 improves every moment. It's too decided for 
 Trotters. An't it .? " 
 
 The Poor Man's Friend .... 
 
 " Whither thou goest, I can Not go ; where thou 
 lodgest, I do Not lodge ; thy people are No 
 my people ; Nor thy God my God ! " 
 
 " Never more, ;Meg ; never more ! Here ! Here 
 Close to you, holding to you, feeling your dear 
 breath upon my face ! " .... 
 
 John Peerybingle's Fireside .... 
 
 " 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 ! " . . , . 
 
 " The extent to which he's winking at this mo- 
 ment ! " whispered Caleb to his daughter. 
 " Oh, my gracious ! " 
 
 " Suffering him to clasp her round the waist, as they 
 moved slowly down the dim wooden gallery" 
 
 " After dinner Caleb sang the song about the 
 Sparkhng Bowl " 
 
 28 
 
 38 
 52 
 
 65 
 
 68 
 
 77 
 
 88 
 
 93 
 104 
 
 116 
 
 " 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 " 
 
 " What is the matter ?" he exclaimed. 
 " I don't know. I — I am afraid to think. 
 back. Hark ! " 
 
 Go 
 
 118 
 
 " By-the-bye," and he looked into the pretty face, 
 still close to his, " I suppose it's your birth- 
 day " 124 
 
 " I think it will be better not to hear this, Mr. 
 Craggs } " said Snitchey, looking at him across 
 the client. 
 
 "/think not," said Craggs. — Both listening atten- 
 tively ....... 
 
 ^33 
 
 -4-d. 
 
 "Guessed half aloud 'milk and water,' 'monthly 
 warning,' 'mice and walnuts' — and couldn't 
 approach her meaning " .... 152 
 
 " Merry and happy, was it .'' " asked the Chemist in 
 
 a low voice. "Merry and happy, old man.'"' 157 
 
 " 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 Tumblers," Sec. 169 
 
 " I'm not a-going to take you there. Let me be, 
 
 Cl~ I'll heave some iire at you ! " . . .184 
 
 " You speak to me of what is lying here," the 
 Phantom interposed, and pointed with its finger 
 to the boy 189 
 
 "What a wonderful man you are, father! — Plow 
 are you, father ? Are you really pretty hearty, 
 though?" said William, shaking hands with 
 him again, and patting him again, and rubbing 
 him gently down again . . . . .196 
 
 ' Lord, keep my memory green ! " . » . 200 
 
A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 IN PROSE. 
 
 BEING A GHOST STORY OF CHRISTMAS. 
 
 STAVE ONE. 
 
 MARLEY,'S GHOST. 
 
 lY/r ARLEY was dead, to begin with. There 
 ■*-^-*- is no doubt whatever about that. The 
 register of his burial was signed by the clergy- 
 man, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief 
 mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's 
 Christmas Books, i. ^ 
 
 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, oi 
 my own knowledge, what there is particularly 
 dead about a door-nail. I might have been in- 
 clined, myself, to regard a cofhn-nail as the 
 deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But 
 the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; 
 
 331 
 
A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 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 dread- 
 fully cut up by the sad event, but that he was 
 an excellent man of business on the very day of 
 the funeral, ?nd solemnised 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 nothing wonderful can 
 come of the story I am going to relate. If we 
 were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet'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 St. Paul's Church- 
 yard, 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 ware- 
 house 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 nose, 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 Avith 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 blew 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. 
 
 Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, 
 with gladsome looks, " My dear Scrooge, how 
 are you? When 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 inquired the 
 way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. 
 Even the blind men'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 sym- 
 pathy 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, on Christmas Eve — old Scrooge sat busy 
 in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting 
 weather : foggy withal : and he could hear the 
 people in the court outside 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 Avindows of the 
 neighbouring oftices, 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 nar- 
 rowest, 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 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 
 came in with the shovel, the master predicted 
 that it would be necessary for them to part. 
 Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, 
 and tried to warm himself at the candle; in 
 which efi'ort, not being a man of strong imagina- 
 tion, he failed. 
 
 '• A merry Christmas, uncle ! God save you ! " 
 
OUT UPON MERRY CHRISI^MAS! 
 
 cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of 
 Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so 
 quickly that tliis 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. 
 
 " Christmas a humbug, uncle ! " said Scrooge's 
 nephew. " You don't mean that, I am sure ? " 
 
 " I do," said Scrooge. " 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. 
 
 " "Wliat 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 
 presented 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 
 Christmas 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 derived good, by which I have not profited, 
 I dare say," returned 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 can be apart from that — as a good time ; a 
 kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time ; the 
 only time I know of, in the long calendar of the 
 
 year, when men and women seem by one con- 
 sent 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 another 
 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. 
 Becoming immediately sensible of the impro- 
 priety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the 
 last frail spark for ever. 
 
 "Let me hear another sound from jm^," said 
 Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by 
 losing your situation ! You're quite a powerful 
 speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. 
 " I wonder you don't go into Parliament." 
 
 " Don't be angry, uncle. Come ! Dine with 
 us to-morrow." 
 
 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 now ? " 
 
 " 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 
 resolute. 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 ! " 
 
 " Good afternoon ! " said Scrooge. 
 
 His nephew left the room without an angry 
 word, notwithstanding. 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 he returned them cordially. 
 
 " There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge, 
 who overheard him : " my clerk, with fifteen shil- 
 lings a week, and a wife and family, talking about 
 a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam." 
 
 This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out. 
 
A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 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," Scrooge replied. " He died seven years 
 ago, this very night." 
 
 " We have no doubt his liberality is well re- 
 presented by his surviving partner," said the 
 gentleman, presenting his credentials. 
 
 It certainly was; for they had been two 
 kindred spirits. At the ominous word "libe- 
 rality " Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, 
 and handed the credentials back. 
 
 "At this festive season of the year, Mr. 
 Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, 
 " it is more than usually 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 neces- 
 saries ; hundreds of thousands are in want of 
 common comforts, sir." 
 
 "Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge. 
 
 " Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, lay- 
 ing 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. 
 
 " 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," returned 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, 
 and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you 
 down for ? " 
 
 " Nothing ! " Scrooge replied. 
 
 " You wish to be anonymous ? " 
 
 " I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. 
 "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, 
 that is my answer. I don't make merry myself 
 at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle 
 people merry. I help to support the establish- 
 
 ments 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. Besides — excuse me — I don't know 
 that." 
 
 " But you might know it," observed the gentle- 
 man. 
 
 " 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 people ran about with flaring links, proffer- 
 ing their services to go before horses in car- 
 riages, 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 in- 
 visible, and struck the hours and quarters in the 
 clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards, as 
 if its teeth were chattering 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 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 ovefiowings suddenly congealed, 
 and turned to misanthropic ice. The bright- 
 ness of the shojDS, 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 im- 
 possible to believe that such dull principles as 
 bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord 
 Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion 
 House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers 
 to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's house- 
 hold should ; and even the little tailor, whom he 
 had fined five shillings on the previous Monday 
 for being drunk and blood-thirsty 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 
 
GOD BLESS YOU, MERRY GENTLEMAN ! 
 
 nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of 
 such weather as that, instead 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 Christmas 
 carol ; but, at the first sound of 
 
 •' God bless you, merry gentleman, 
 ^lay nothing you dismay ! " 
 
 Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of 
 action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the 
 keyhole to the fog, and even more congenial frost. 
 
 At length the hour of shutting up the counting- 
 house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dis- 
 mounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the 
 fact to the expectant clerk in the tank, who 
 instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his 
 hat. 
 
 " You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" 
 said Scrooge. 
 
 " If quite convenient, sir." 
 
 " It's not convenient," said Scrooge, " and it's 
 not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, 
 you'd think yourself ill used, I'll be bound ? " 
 
 The clerk smiled faintly. 
 
 "And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think 
 me ill used when I pay a day's wages for no 
 work." 
 
 The clerk observed that it was only once a 
 year. 
 
 "A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket 
 every twenty-fifth of December ! " said Scrooge, 
 buttoning his great-coat to the chin. " But I 
 suppose you must have the whole day. Be here 
 all the earlier next morning." 
 
 The clerk promised that he would ; and 
 Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office 
 was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with 
 the long ends of his white comforter dangling 
 below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), 
 went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a 
 lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being 
 Christmas-eve, and then ran home to Camden 
 Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blind- 
 man's buff. 
 
 Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his 
 usual melancholy tavern ; and having read all 
 the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the 
 evening with his banker's book, went home to 
 bed. He lived in chambers which had once 
 belonged to his deceased partner. They were 
 a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of 
 building up a yard, where it had so little busi- 
 ness to be, that one could scarcely help fancying 
 it must have run there when it was a young 
 
 hou.'e, j.i'aying at hideand-seek with other 
 housts, and have forgotten the way out again. 
 It was old enough now, and dreary enough \ for 
 nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms 
 being all let out as offices. The yard was so 
 dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every 
 stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The 
 fog and frost so hung about the black old gate- 
 way of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius 
 of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on 
 the threshold. 
 
 Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all 
 particular about the knocker on the door, except 
 that it was very large. It is also a fact that 
 Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during 
 his whole residence in that place ; also that 
 Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy 
 about him as any man in the City of London, 
 even including — which is a bold word — the cor- 
 poration, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be 
 borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed 
 one thought on Marley since his last mention 
 of his seven-years'-dead partner that afternoon. 
 And then let any man explain to me, if he can, 
 how it happened that Scrooge, having his key 
 in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, 
 without its undergoing any intermediate process 
 of change — not a knocker, but Marley's face. 
 
 Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable 
 shadow, as the other objects in the yard were, 
 but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster 
 in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, 
 but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look : 
 with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly 
 forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if 
 by breath or hot air ; and, though the eyes were 
 wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, 
 and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its 
 horror seemed to be in spite of the face, and 
 beyond its control, rather than a part of its own 
 expression. 
 
 As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, 
 it was a knocker again. 
 
 To say that he was not startled, or that his 
 blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation 
 to which it had been a stranger from infancy, 
 would be untrue. But he put his hand upon 
 the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, 
 walked in, and lighted his candle. 
 
 He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, 
 before he shut the door; and he did look cau- 
 tiously behind it first, as if he half expected to 
 be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail 
 sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing 
 on the back of the door, except the screws and 
 nuts that held the knocker on, so he said, 
 " Pooh, pooh ! " and closed it with a bang. 
 
A CHRISTMAS CAROL, 
 
 The sound resounded through the house like 
 thunder. Every room above, and every cask in 
 the wine merchant's cellars below, appeared to 
 have a separate peal of echoes of its own. 
 Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by 
 echoes. He fastened the door, and walked 
 across the hall, and \i\) the stairs : slowly, too : 
 trimming his candle as he went. 
 
 You may talk vaguely about driving a coach 
 and six up a good old flight of stairs, or through 
 a bad young Act of Parliament ; but I mean to 
 say you might have got a hearse up that stair- 
 case, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter- 
 bar towards the wall, and the door towards the 
 balustrades : and done it easy. There was plenty 
 of width for that, and room to spare ; which is 
 perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he 
 saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in 
 the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the 
 street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, 
 so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with 
 Scrooge's dip. 
 
 Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. 
 Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But, 
 before he shut his heavy door, he walked through 
 his rooms to see that all was right. He had just 
 enough recollection of the face to desire to do 
 that. 
 
 Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as 
 they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody 
 under the sofa ; a small fire in the grate ; spoon 
 and basin ready ; and the little saucepan of gruel 
 (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. 
 Nobody under the bed ; nobody in the closet ; 
 nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging 
 up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. 
 Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old 
 shoes, two fish baskets, washing-stand on three 
 legs, and a poker. 
 
 Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked 
 himself in ; double locked himself in, which was 
 not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, 
 he took off his cravat ; put on his dressing-gown 
 and slippers, and his nightcap ; and sat down 
 before the fire to take his gruel. 
 
 It was a very low fire indeed ; nothing on 
 such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close 
 to it, and brood over it, before he could extract 
 the least sensation of warmth from such a hand- 
 ful of fuel. The fire-place was an old one, built 
 by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved 
 all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to 
 illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and 
 Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, 
 Angelic messengers descending through the air 
 on clouds like feather beds, Abrahams, Belshaz- 
 zars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, 
 
 hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts ; and 
 yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came 
 like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed 
 up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a 
 blank at first, with power to shape some picture 
 on its surface from the disjointed fragments of 
 his thouglits, there would have been a copy ol 
 old Marley's head on every one. 
 
 " Humbug !" said Scrooge; and walked across 
 the room. 
 
 After several turns he sat down again. As he 
 threw his head back in the chair, his glance hap- 
 pened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that 
 hung in the room, and communicated, for some 
 purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in the 
 highest story of the building. It was with great 
 astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable 
 dread, that, as he looked, he saw this bell begin 
 to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that 
 it scarcely made a sound ; but soon it rang out 
 loudly, and so did every bell in the house. 
 
 This might have lasted half a minute, or a 
 minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells 
 ceased, as they had begun, together. They 
 were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down 
 below, as if some person were dragging a heavy 
 chain over the casks in the wine merchant's 
 cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard 
 that ghosts in haunted houses were described as 
 dragging chains. > ■■ 
 
 The cellar door flew open with a booming 
 sound, and then he heard the noise much louder 
 on the floors below ; then coming up the stairs : 
 then coming straight towards his door. 
 
 " It's humbug still ! " said Scrooge. " 1 won't 
 believe it." 
 
 His colour changed, though, when, without a 
 pause, it came on through the heavy door, and 
 passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its 
 coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though 
 it cried, " I know him ! Marley's Ghost ! " and 
 fell again. 
 
 The same face : the very same. Marley in his 
 pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the 
 tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and 
 his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The 
 chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It 
 was long, and wound about him like a tail ; and 
 it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of 
 cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and 
 heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was 
 transparent ; so that Scrooge, observing him, and 
 looking through his waistcoat, could see the two 
 buttons on his coat behind. 
 
 Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley 
 had no bowels, but he had never believed it 
 until now. 
 
THE GHOST. 
 
 No, nor did he believe it even now. Though 
 
 he looked the phantom through and through, 
 and saw it standing before him ; though he felt 
 the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes ; and 
 marked the very texture of tlie folded kerchief 
 bound about its head and chin, whicli wrapper 
 he had not observed before; he was still incredu- 
 lous, and fought against his senses. 
 
 " How now ! " said Scrooge, caustic and cold 
 as ever. '■ What do you want with me ?" 
 
 " Much ! " — Marley's voice, no doubt about it. 
 
 " Who are you ? " 
 
 " Ask me who I was." 
 
 " Who were you, then ? " said Scrooge, raising 
 his voice. " You're particular, for a shade." He 
 was going to say "/t? a shade," but substituted 
 this, as more appropriate. 
 
 *' In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley." 
 
 " Can you — can you sit down ?" asked Scrooge, 
 looking doubtfully at him. 
 
 "I can." 
 
 " Do it, then." 
 
 Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't 
 know whether a ghost so transparent might find 
 himself in a condition to take a chair ; and felt 
 that, in the event of its being impossible, it might 
 involve the necessity of an embarrassing expla- 
 nation. But the Ghost sat down on the opposite 
 side of the fire-place, as if he were quite used 
 to it. 
 
 " You don't believe in me," observed the 
 Ghost. 
 
 " I don't," said Scrooge. 
 
 " What evidence would you have of my reality 
 beyond that of your own senses ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Scrooge. 
 
 " Why do you doubt your senses ? " 
 
 " Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing afifects 
 them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes 
 them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of 
 beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a 
 fragment of an underdone potato. There's 
 more of gravy than of grave about you, what- 
 ever you are ! " 
 
 Scrooge was not much in the habit of crack- 
 ing jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any 
 means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried 
 to be smart, as a means of distracting his own 
 attention, and keeping down his terror; for the 
 spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his 
 bones. ,-■ 
 
 To sit stafmg at those fixed glazed eyes in 
 silence, for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, 
 the very deuce with him. There was something 
 very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided 
 with an infernal atmosphere of his own. Scrooge 
 could not feel it himself, but this svas clearly the 
 
 case ; for though the Ghost sat perfectly mo- 
 tionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels were still 
 agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven. 
 
 " You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, re- 
 turning quickly to the charge, for the reason just 
 assigned ; and wishing, though it were only for 
 a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from 
 himself. 
 
 " I do," replied the Ghost. 
 
 " You are not looking at it," said Scrooge. 
 
 "But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwith- 
 standing." 
 
 " Well ! " returned Scrooge, " I have but to 
 swallow this, and be for the rest of my days per- 
 secuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own 
 creation. Humbug, I tell you ; humbug ! " 
 
 At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and 
 shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling 
 noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to 
 save himself from falling in a swoon. But how 
 much greater was his horror when the phantom, 
 taking off the bandage round his head, as if it 
 Avere too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw 
 dropped down upon its breast ! 
 
 Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his 
 hands before his face. 
 
 " Mercy ! " he said. " Dreadful apparition, 
 why do you trouble me ? " 
 
 " Man of the worldly mind ! " replied the 
 Ghost, " do you believe in me or not ? " 
 
 " I do," said Scrooge. " I must. But why 
 do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come 
 tome?" 
 
 " It is required of every man," the Ghost 
 returned, "that the spirit within him should 
 walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel 
 far and wide ; and, if that spirit goes not forth 
 in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It 
 is doomed to wander through the world — oh, 
 woe is me ! — and witness what it cannot share, 
 but might have shared on earth, and turned to 
 happiness ! " 
 
 Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its 
 chain and wrung its shadowy hands. 
 
 " You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. 
 " Tell me why ? " 
 
 " I wear the chain I forged in life," replied 
 the Ghost. " I made it link by link, and yard 
 by yard ; I girded it on of my own free-will, and 
 of my o\vn free-will I wore it. Is its pattern 
 strange to you ? " 
 
 Scrooge trembled more and more. 
 
 " Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, 
 " the weight and length of the strong coil you 
 bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long 
 as this, seven Cliristmas-eves ago. You have 
 laboured on it since. It is a ponderous chain!" 
 
8 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in 
 the expectation of finding himself surrounded 
 by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable ; but 
 he could see nothing. 
 
 "Jacob ! " he said imploringly. " Old Jacob 
 
 Marley, tell me more ! Speak comfort to me, 
 Jacob ! " 
 
 " I have none to give," the Ghost replied. 
 "It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge^ 
 and is conveyed by other ministers, to other 
 
 MARLEY'S GHOST. 
 
 kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. 
 A very little more is all permitted to me. I 
 cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger any- 
 where. My spirit never walked beyond our 
 counting-house — mark me ; — in life my spirit 
 never roved beyond the narrow limits of our 
 money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie 
 before me ! " 
 
 It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he 
 became thoughtful, to put his hands in his 
 breeches pockets. Pondering on what the 
 Ghost had said, he did so now, but without 
 lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees. 
 
 " You must have been very slow about it, 
 Jacob," Scrooge observed in a business-like 
 manner, though with humility and deference. 
 
THE GHOST'S DEPARTURE. 
 
 "Slow ! " the Ghost repeated. 
 
 " Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And 
 travelling all the time ? " 
 
 "The whole time," said the Ghost. "No 
 rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse." 
 
 " You travel fast ? " said Scrooge. 
 
 " On the wings of the wind," replied the 
 Ghost. 
 
 " You might have got over a great quantity of 
 ground in seven years," said Scrooge. 
 
 The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another 
 cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the 
 dead silence of the night, that the Ward would 
 have been justified in indicting it for a nui- 
 sance. 
 
 " Oh ! captive, bound, and double-ironed," 
 cried the phantom, " not to know that ages of 
 incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this 
 earth must pass into eternity before the good of 
 which it is susceptible is all developed ! Not to 
 know that any Christian spirit working kindly in 
 its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find 
 its mortal life too short for its vast means of 
 usefulness ! Not to know that no space of regret 
 can make amends for one life's opportunities 
 misused ! Yet such was I ! Oh, such was I ! " 
 
 " But you were always a good man of busi- 
 ness, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began 
 to apply this to himself. 
 
 " Business ! " cried the Ghost, wringing its 
 hands again. " Mankind was my business. The 
 common welfare was my business; chanty, 
 mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, 
 my business. The dealir.gs of my trade were 
 but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean 
 of my business ! " 
 
 It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that 
 were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and 
 flung it heavily upon the ground again. 
 
 " At this time of the rolling year," the spectre 
 said, " I suffer most. Why did I walk through 
 crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned 
 down, and never raise them to that blessed Star 
 which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? 
 Were there no poor homes to which its Hght 
 would have conducted me I " 
 
 Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the 
 spectre going on at this rate, and began to 
 quake exceedingly. 
 
 " Hear me ! " cried the Ghost. " My time is 
 nearly gone." 
 
 " I will," said Scrooge. " But don't be hard 
 upon me ! Don't be flowery, Jacob ! Pray !" 
 
 " How it is that I appear before you in a 
 shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have 
 sat invisible beside you many and many a day." 
 
 It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge 
 
 shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his 
 brow. 
 
 " That is no light part of my penance," pur- 
 sued the Ghost. " I am here to-night to warn 
 you that you have yet a chance and hope of 
 escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my 
 procuring, Ebenezer." 
 
 " You were always a good friend to me," said 
 Scrooge. " Thankee ! " 
 
 " You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, 
 " by Three Spirits." 
 
 Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as 
 the Ghost's had done. 
 
 "Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, 
 Jacob ? " he demanded in a faltering voice. 
 
 " It 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-morrow 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 remember 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, witli its chain wound over and about 
 its arm. 
 
 The apparition walked backward from him ; 
 and, at every step it took, the window raised 
 itself a little, so that, when the spectre 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 confused noises in the air; incoherent 
 sounds of lamentation and regret ; wailings in- 
 expressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The 
 spectre, after listening for a moment, 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 
 
10 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 as they went. Every one of them wore chains 
 
 like Marley's Ghost ; some few (they might be 
 guilty governments) were linked together ; none 
 were free. Many had been personally 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 ankle, 
 who cried piteously at being unable to assist a 
 wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw 
 below upon a doorstep. The misery with them all 
 was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for 
 good, in human matters, and had lost the power 
 for ever. 
 
 Whether these creatures 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 con- 
 versation 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. 
 
 STAVE TWO. 
 
 THE FIRST OK THE THREE SPIRITS. 
 
 fHEN 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 struck 
 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 regularly 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 any- 
 
 thing 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 Avay 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. Ebenezer 
 Scrooge or his order," and so forth, would have 
 become a mere United States security if there 
 were no days to count by. 
 
 Scrooge 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. 
 
 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 presented 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 re- 
 solved to lie awake until the hour was passed ; 
 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 listening 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 
 
ANOTHER UNEARTHLY VISITOR. 
 
 It 
 
 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 
 himseh' face to face with the unearthly visitor 
 who drew them: as close to it as I am now 
 to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your 
 elbow. 
 
 It was a strange figure — like a child : yet not 
 so like a child as like an old man, viewed 
 through some supernatural medium, which gave 
 him the appearance of having receded from the 
 view, and being diminished to a child's propor- 
 tions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and 
 down its back, was white, as if with age ; and 
 yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the 
 tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms 
 were very long and muscular ; the hands the 
 same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. 
 Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, 
 like those upper members, bare. It 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 singular 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. 
 
 Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it 
 with increasing steadiness, was no^ 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 another 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 without 
 a head, now a head without a body : of which 
 dissolving 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 ! " 
 
 The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly 
 low, as if, instead of being so close beside him, 
 it were at a distance. 
 
 " Who and what are you ? " Scrooge de- 
 manded. 
 
 " 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 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 immediately : 
 
 '' 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 window, clasped its 
 robe in supplication. 
 
 " I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, '' and 
 liable to fall." 
 
 " Bear but a touch of my hand f/ic/r,'" 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, winter 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 instanta- 
 neous, appeared still present to the old man's 
 sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thou- 
 sand odours floating in the air, each one con- 
 
12 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 nected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, 
 and joys, and cares long, long forgotten ! 
 
 " Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. 
 " And what is that upon your cheek ? " 
 
 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 ! " observed the Ghost. ** Let us go on." 
 
 They walked along the road, Scrooge recog- 
 nising 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 been," 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. " A 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 weather-cock 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 
 broken, and their gates decayed. Fowls clucked 
 and strutted in the stables; and the coach- 
 houses 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. "n 
 
 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 latent echo in the house, not a squeak 
 and scuffle from the mice behind the paneUing, 
 not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in 
 the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leaf- 
 less 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 
 belt, and leading by the bridle an ass laden with 
 wood. 
 
 " Why, it's Ali Baba ! " Scrooge exclaimed in 
 ecstasy. " It's dear old honest Ali Baba ! 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 extra- 
 ordinary voice between laughing and crying; 
 and to see his heightened and excited face ; 
 would have been a surprise to his business 
 friends in the City, indeed. 
 
 " There's the Parrot ! " cried Scrooge. " Green 
 body and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce 
 growing out of the top of his head ; there he is ! 
 Poor Robin Crusoe he called him, when he 
 came home again after sailing round the island. 
 ' Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, 
 Robin Crusoe ? ' The man thought he was 
 dreaming, but he wasn't. It was the Parrot, 
 you know. There goes Friday, running for his 
 life to the litde creek ! Halloa ! Hoop ! 
 Halloo ! " 
 
SCROOGE'S SCHOOL DAYS. 
 
 13 
 
 Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign 
 to his 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, and looking about him, after dry- 
 ing 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. 1 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 larger 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 in, 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. 
 
 " Yes ! " said the child, brimful of glee. 
 " Home for good and all. Home for ever 
 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 1 " ex- 
 claimed 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 
 loath 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 con- 
 descension, 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 instal- 
 ments of those dainties to the young people : at 
 the same time sending out a meagre servant to 
 offer a glass of "something" to the postboy, 
 who answered that he thanked the gentle- 
 man, 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 have withered," said the Ghost. "But 
 she had a large heart ! " . ''' 
 
 " So she had," cried Scrooge. " You're right. 
 I will not gainsay it, Spirit. God forbid ! " 
 
 " She died a woman," said the Ghost, " and 
 had, as I think, children." 
 
 " One child," Scrooge returned. 
 
 " True," 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 pas- 
 sengers passed and repassed ; 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 appren- 
 ticed here ? " 
 
 They went in. At sight of an old gentleman 
 in a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk, 
 that if he had been two inches taller, he must 
 have knocked his head against the ceiling, 
 Scrooge cried in great excitement : 
 
14 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 "Why, it's old Fezziwig ! 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 benevolence ; 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 — 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 snug, and warm, 
 and dry, and bright a ball-room as you would 
 desire to see upon a winter's night. 
 
 In came a fiddle with a music-book, and went 
 
 up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of 
 
 it, and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In came 
 
 Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In 
 
 ... 
 
 came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beammg and 
 lovable. In came the six young followers whose 
 hearts they broke. In came all the young men 
 and women employed in the business. In came 
 the housemaid, with her cousin the baker. In 
 came the cook, with her brother's particular 
 friend the milkman. In came the boy from 
 over the way, who was suspected 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 aftei 
 another ; some shyly, some boldly, some grace- 
 fully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pull- 
 ing; in they all came, any how and every how. 
 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 re- 
 sult was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping 
 his hands to stop the dance, cried out, " Well 
 done ! " and the fiddler plunged his hot face into 
 a pot of porter, especially provided for that 
 purpose. But, scorning rest upon his reappear- 
 ance, he instantly began again, though there 
 were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had 
 been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and 
 he were a bran-new man resolved to beat him 
 out of sight, or perish. 
 
 There were more dances, and there were for- 
 feits, and more dances, and there was cake, and 
 there was negus, and there was a great piece of 
 Cold Roast, and there 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 Avho 
 would dance, and had no notion of walking. 
 
 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 curtsy, 
 cork-screw, thread-the-needle, and back again to 
 your place; Fezziwig " 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 
 
SCROOGE'S OLD LOVE. 
 
 '5 
 
 ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took 
 
 their stations, one on either side the door, and, 
 shaking hands with every person 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 to their beds ] which were under 
 a counter in the back-shop. 
 
 During the whole of this time Scrooge had 
 acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and 
 soul were in the scene, antl with his former self. 
 He corroborated everything, remembered every- 
 thing, enjoyed everything, and underwent the 
 strangest agitation. It was not until now, when 
 the bright faces of his 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 
 apprentices, 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 latter self. " It isn't that. Spirit. 
 He has the power to render us happy or un- 
 happy; to make our service light or burden- 
 some ; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power 
 lies in w^ords and looks ; in things so slight and 
 insignificant 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." 
 
 He 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." 
 
 His 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 him- 
 
 self. 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, restless motion in the eye, which 
 showed the passion that had taken root, and 
 where the shadow of the growing tree would fall. 
 
 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 re- 
 joined. 
 
 " A golden one." 
 
 " This is the even-handed dealing of the 
 world ! " he said. " There is nothing on which 
 it is so hard as poverty ; and there is nothing it 
 professes to condemn with such severity as the 
 pursuit of wealth ! " 
 
 " 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 aspi- 
 rations foil off one by one, until the master pas- 
 sion, 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 you." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " Am I ? " 
 
 " Our contract is an old one. It was made 
 when we were both poor, and content to be so, 
 until, in good season, we could improve our 
 worldly fortune by our patient industry. You 
 are changed. When it was made you were 
 another man." 
 
 " 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 ever3'thing that made my love 
 of any worth or value in your sight. If this had 
 
i6 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 never been between us," said the girl, looking 
 mildly, but with steadiness, upon him ; " tell 
 me, would you seek me out and try to win me 
 now ? Ah, no ! " 
 
 He seemed to yield to the justice of this sup- 
 position 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 / 
 have learned a Truth like this, I know how 
 strong and irresistible it must be. But if you 
 were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even 
 I believe that you would choose a dowerless 
 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 ! " 
 
 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 hap- 
 pened 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 w^as conducting itself 
 like forty. The consequences were uproarious 
 beyond belief; but no one seemed to care ; on 
 the contrary, the 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 ruth- 
 
 lessly. 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 al) 
 the world have crushed that braided hair, and 
 torn it down ; and, for the precious 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 ex- 
 pected 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 hair, an inch of which would be a keep- 
 sake 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 on- 
 slaught 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, pummel his back, and kick 
 his legs in irrepressible aftection ! The shouts 
 of wonder and delight with which the develop- 
 ment 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 immense 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 subsided. 
 
 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 another creature, 
 quite as graceful and as full of promise, might 
 have called him father, and been a spring-time 
 in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew 
 very dim indeed. 
 
EXPECTING A THIRD VISITOR. 
 
 17 
 
 '' 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 are, do not 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 me ! Take me back ! Haunt me no 
 longer ! " 
 
 In the struggle — if that can be called a 
 struggle in which the Ghost, with no visible re- 
 sistance 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 sudden 
 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 by an irresistible drowsiness ; and, 
 further, of being in his own bedroom. He 
 gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his 
 hand relaxed ; and had barely time to reel to 
 bed before he sank into a heavy sleep. 
 
 STAVE THREE. 
 
 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 
 Christmas Books, 2. 
 
 to be told that the bell was again upon the 
 stroke of One. He felt that he was restored 
 to consciousness in the right nick of time, for 
 the especial purpose of holding a conference 
 with the second messenger dispatched to him 
 through Jacob Marley's intervention. But, find- 
 ing 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, established 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 
 nervous. 
 
 Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who 
 plume themselves 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 
 manslaughter ; between which opposite extremes, 
 no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and com- 
 prehensive 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 appearances, and 
 that nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros 
 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 
 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 power- 
 less 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 
 consolation 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 unquestionably 
 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 possession of his mind, he 
 got up softly, and shuffled in his slippers to the 
 door. 
 
 The moment Scrooge's hand was on tV.a inrk, 
 
i8 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 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 httle mirrors had been scattered there ; 
 and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the 
 chimney as that dull petrifaction 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, were tur- 
 keys, 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 glowing 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 1 " exclaimed the Ghost. " Come 
 in ! and know me better, man ! " 
 
 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 simple deep green robe, or mantle, bordered 
 with white fur. This garment hung so loosely 
 on the figure, that its capacious 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 sparkling eye, 
 its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained 
 demeanour, 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 I" 
 exclaimed 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," mut- 
 tered 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, puddings, 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 rough, but brisk and not unpleasant 
 kind of music, in 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 snow-storms. •^ 
 
 The house-fronts looked black enough, and 
 the windows 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 waggons; 
 furrows that crossed and recrossed each other 
 hundreds 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 descended in 
 a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys 
 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 housetops were jovial and full of glee ; 
 calling out to one another from the parapets, 
 and now and then exchanging a facetious snow- 
 ball — better-natured missile far than many a 
 
CHRISTMAS SHOPS. 
 
 19 
 
 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 chest- 
 nuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old 
 gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbUng 
 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 Spanish Friars, and winking from 
 their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as 
 they went by, and glanced demurely at the 
 hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and 
 apples clustered high in blooming pyramids ; 
 there were bunches of grapes, made, in the 
 shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle from con- 
 spicuous hooks that people's mouths might water 
 gratis as they passed ; there were piles of filberts, 
 mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, 
 ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant 
 shufflings ankle 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 
 members 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 passion- 
 less excitement. 
 
 The Grocers' ! oh, the Grocers' ! nearly closed, 
 with perhaps two shutters down, or one \ but 
 through those gaps such glimpses ! It was not 
 alone that the scales descending 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 cinna- 
 mon 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 every- 
 thing 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 counter, and came 
 
 running back to fetch them, and committed 
 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 fastened 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 streets in their best clothes, 
 and with their gayest faces. And at the same 
 time there emerged, from scores of by-streets, 
 lanes, and nameless turnings, innumer?.ole 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 pavement 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 enjoy- 
 ment." 
 
 " 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." 
 
A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 " /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 
 name, who are as strange to us, 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 subuibs of the town. It was a remarkable 
 quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had ob- 
 served at the baker's), that, notwithstanding his 
 gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to 
 any place with ease ; and that he stood beneath 
 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 wnth 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 ribbons, which are cheap, and make 
 a goodly show for sixpence ; 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, con- 
 ferred 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, scream- 
 ing 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 collars nearly choked 
 him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes, 
 
 bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan 
 lid to be let out and peeled. 
 
 " What has ever got your precious father, 
 then?" said Mrs. Cratchit. " And your brother, 
 Tiny Tim ? And Martha warn't as late last 
 Christmas-day by half an hour ! " 
 
 " Here's Martha, mother ! " said a girl, appear- 
 ing as she spoke. 
 
 " Here's Martha, mother ! " cried the two 
 young Cratchits. " Hurrah ! There's such a 
 goose, Martha ! " 
 
 " Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how 
 late you are ! " said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a 
 dozen times, and taking off her shawl and 
 bonnet for her with officious zeal. 
 
 " 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, Martha, hide !" 
 
 So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, 
 the father, with at least three feet of comforter, 
 exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before 
 him; and his threadbare clothes damed 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 w^ay 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 prema- 
 turely 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, 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 
 
AT BOB CRATCHITS. 
 
 21 
 
 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 — com- 
 pounded 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 phenomenon, to 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 potatoes 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 forgetting 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 suc- 
 ceeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, 
 looking slowly all along the carving-knife, pre- 
 pared to plunge it in the breast ; but when she 
 did, and when the long-expected gush of stuffing 
 issued forth, one murmur of delight 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 tenderness and flavour, size and 
 cheapness, were the themes of universal admira- 
 tion. 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 1 
 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 alone — too nervous to bear 
 
 witnesses — to take the pudding up, and bring 
 it in. 
 
 Suppose it should not be done enough ! Sup- 
 pose 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 supposition at which the two 
 young Cratchits became livid ! All sorts of 
 horrors were supposed. 
 
 Hallo 1 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 pastrycook's next door to 
 each other, with a laundress's next door 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 of 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, how- 
 ever, as well 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 !" 
 
 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 
 
A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 had never felt before, " tell me if Tiny Tim will 
 live." 
 
 " I see a vacant seat," replied the Glwst, " in 
 the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without 
 an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows 
 remain unaltered by the Future, the child will 
 die." 
 
 " No, no," said Scrooge. " Oh no, kvnd 
 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 better do it, and de- 
 crease the surplus population." 
 
 Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words 
 quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with 
 penitence and grief. 
 
 "Man," said the Ghost, ''if man you be in 
 heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant 
 until you have discovered 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 worthless 
 and less fit to live than millions like this poor 
 man's child. Oh God ! to hear the Insect on 
 the leaf pronouncing 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." 
 
 " My dear," said Bob, " the children ! Christ- 
 mas-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 he is, Robert ! No- 
 body knows it better than you do, poor fellow ! " 
 
 " My dear ! " was Bob's mild answer. " Christ- 
 mas-day." 
 
 " 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 mention 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 ot Peter's being a man of business ; and 
 Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire 
 from between his collars, as if he were deliberat- 
 ing what particular investments he should favour 
 when he came into the receipt of that bewilder- 
 ing income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice 
 at a milliner'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 abed 
 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 collars 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-and-by 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 ; their shoes were far from 
 being waterproof; 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 kitchens, 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 dark- 
 ness, 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 
 shadows on the window blinds of guests assem- 
 bling ; and there a group of handsome girls, all 
 
OVER LAND AND SEA. 
 
 23 
 
 hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at 
 once, tripped lightly off to some near neigh- 
 bour'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 gene- 
 rous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on 
 everything within its reach ! The very lamp- 
 lighter, 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 little kenned 
 the lamp-lighter 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 monstrous masses of rude stone 
 were cast about, as though it were the burial- 
 place of giants ; and water spread itself where- 
 soever it listed ; or would have done so, but 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 of the earth," returned the Spirit. 
 " But they know me. See ! " 
 
 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 assembled round a glowing 
 fire. An old, old man and woman, with their 
 children and their children's children, and an- 
 other generation beyond that, all decked out 
 gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a 
 voice that seldom 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 thundering 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 seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds — 
 born of the wind, one might suppose, as seaweed 
 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 loop- 
 hole 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 
 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 beside 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 bygone 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 own 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 ! 
 
24 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 " Ha, ha ! " laughed Scrooge's nephew. " Ha, 
 ha, ha ! " 
 
 If 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 acquaintance. 
 
 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 
 contortions : Scrooge's niece, by marriage, 
 laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled 
 friends, being not a bit behindhand, roared out 
 lustily. 
 
 " 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 shariie for him, Fred ! " said Scrooge's 
 niece indignantly. Bless those women ! they 
 never do anything by halves. They are always 
 in earnest. 
 
 She was very pretty; exceedingly pretty. 
 With a dimpled, 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 provoking, you know ; but satisfactory, 
 too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory ! 
 
 " 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 
 Pie 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 w'th us. 
 What's the consequence ? He don't lose much 
 of a dinner." 
 
 " Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," 
 interrupted 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 lamp- 
 light. 
 
 " 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 ? " 
 
 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, clap- 
 ping her hands. " He never finishes what he 
 begins to say ! He is such a ridiculous fel- 
 low ! " 
 
 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 unani- 
 mously 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 saying, ' Uncle 
 Scrooge, how are you ? ' If it only puts him in 
 the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, 
 f/iafs something ; and I think I shook him yes- 
 terday." 
 
 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 merriment, 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 
 
V£S AND NO. 
 
 n 
 
 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 
 playeil well upon the harp ; and })layed, 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 cliild 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 Ghost had shown him came upon 
 his mind ; he softened more and more ; and 
 thought that if he could have listened 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 JNIarley. 
 
 But they didn't devote the whole evening to 
 music. After awhile they played at forfeits ; for 
 it is good to be children sometimes, and never 
 better than at Christmas, when its mighty 
 Founder was a child himself Stop ! There 
 was firot 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, 
 tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against 
 the piano, smothering himself amongst the cur- 
 tains, wherever she went, there went he ! 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 pur- 
 pose, he would have made a feint of endeavour- 
 ing to seize you, which would have been an 
 atiront to your understanding, and would in- 
 stantly 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 conduct was the most exe- 
 crable. 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 chain 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 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 sharper than 
 Scrooge ; blunt as he took it in his head tcv 
 be. 
 
 The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in 
 this mood, 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 ta 
 which he was exposed elicited from him that he 
 was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather 
 a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an ani- 
 mal 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 stamj). 
 At last the plump sister, falling into a similar 
 state, cried out : 
 
 " 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 
 universal sentiment, though some objected that 
 the reply to " Is it a bear?" ought to have been 
 " Yes ; " inasmuch as an answer in the negative 
 was suflicient to have diverted their thoughts 
 
26 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 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, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge ! " 
 
 Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so 
 gay and light of heart, that he would have 
 pledged the unconscious 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 foreign 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, hos- 
 pital, and gaol, 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 pre- 
 cepts. 
 
 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 its hair was grey. 
 
 " Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge. 
 
 " My life upon this globe is very brief," re- 
 plied the Ghost. " It ends to-night," 
 
 " To-night ! " cried Scrooge. 
 
 " To-night at midnight. Hark 1 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 be- 
 longing to yourself, protruding from your skirts. 
 Is it a foot or a claw ? " 
 
 " It might be a claw, for the flesh there is 
 
 Look 
 
 upon it," was the Spirit's sorrowful reply, 
 here." 
 
 P'rom 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 ! " exclaimed 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 degra- 
 dation, 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 children, but the words choked them- 
 selves, rather than be parties to a lie of such 
 enormous magnitude. 
 
 " Spirit ! arc 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 Igno- 
 rance. 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 factious purposes, 
 and make it worse ! And bide the end ! " 
 
 " Have they no refuge or resource ? " cried 
 Scrooge. 
 
 " Are there no prisons ? " said the Spirit, 
 turning on 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 remembered 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. 
 
A DEATH HAS OCCURRED. 
 
 27 
 
 STAVE FOUR. 
 
 THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS. 
 
 HE 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 gar- 
 ment, which concealed 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 pre- 
 sence 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. 
 
 The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward 
 with its hand. 
 
 " You are about to show me shadows of the 
 things that have not happened, but will happen 
 in the time before us," Scrooge pursued. " Is 
 that so. Spirit ? " 
 
 The upper portion of the garment was con- 
 tracted 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 
 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 ! " 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 you 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 1 " 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 encompass 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 conversed 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 don't know much about it either way. 
 I only know he's dead." 
 
 " When did he die ?" inquired another. 
 
 " Last night, I believe." 
 
 "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 excres- 
 cence on the end of his nose, that shook like 
 the gills of a turkey-cock. 
 
 " 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 anybody to go to it. Suppose we make 
 up a party, and volunteer ? " 
 
 " 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 
 
28 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 men, and looked towards the Spirit for an ex- 
 planation. 
 
 The Phantom glided on into a street. Its 
 finger pointed to two persons meeting. Scrooge 
 listened again, thinking that the explanation 
 might lie here. , 
 
 He knew these men, also, perfectly. They 
 Tivere men of business : very wealthy, and of 
 great importance. He had made a point always 
 of standing well in their esteem : in a business 
 
 point of view, that is ; 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 skater, I suppose ? " 
 
 "THIS PLEASANTRY WAS RECEIVED WITH A GENERAL LAUGH." 
 
 " No. No. Something else to think of. 
 Good morning ! " 
 
 Not another word. That was their meeting, 
 their conversation, and their parting. 
 
 Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised 
 that the Spirit should attach importance to con- 
 versations apparently so trivial ; but, feeling 
 assured that they must have some hidden pur- 
 pose, he set himself to consider what it was 
 likely to be. Tliey 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 ihink 
 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 expectation that the conduct of his 
 future self would give him the clue he missed, 
 and would render the solution of these riddles 
 easy. 
 
GIIOULES. 
 
 29 
 
 He looked about in that very place for his 
 own image; but another man stood in his accus- 
 tomed 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 revolv- 
 ing 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 Phan- 
 tom, with its outstretched hand. When he 
 roused himself from his thouglitful quest, he 
 fancied, from the turn of the hand, and its situa- 
 tion 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, slipshod, ugly. 
 Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, 
 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 like to scru- 
 tinise 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 frouzy curtaining of 
 miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line ; and 
 smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retire- 
 ment. :j^ 
 
 Scrooge and the Phantom came into the pre- 
 sence 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 
 an'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 calling, 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 again. 
 
 While he did this, the woman who had 
 already spoken threw her bundle on the tloor, 
 and sat down in a flaunting 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 ! " 
 
 "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 him- 
 self." 
 
 " 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^ 
 
30 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 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 severally 
 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 
 tea-spoons, 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 my- 
 self," said old Joe. " That's your account. If 
 you asked me for another penny, and made it 
 an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal, 
 and knock off half-a-crown." 
 
 " And now undo my bundle, Joe," said the 
 first woman. 
 
 Joe went down on his knees for the greater 
 convenience of opening it, and, having unfast- 
 ened 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 anything 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. " Some- 
 body 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 detestation and disgust 
 which could hardly have been greater, though 
 they had been obscene demons, marketing 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 he 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, and 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 itself in 
 awful language. 
 
 The room was very dark, too dark to be 
 observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge 
 glanced round it in obedience to a secret im- 
 pulse, 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 man. 
 
 Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its 
 steady hand was pointed to the head. The 
 cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest 
 raising of it, the motion of a finger upon 
 Scrooge's part, would have disclosed the face. 
 He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to 
 do, and longed to do it ; but had no more 
 
FAST RELENTING. 
 
 31 
 
 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 iarn 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, 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 fore- 
 most thoughts? Avarice, hard dealing, 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 
 were 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 ! " 
 
 Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved 
 finger to the head. 
 
 "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 emotion caused by this man's death," .^aid 
 Scrooge, quite agonised, " show that person to 
 me, Spirit, I beseech you !" 
 
 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 
 eagerness ; for she walked up and down the room ; 
 ; started at every sound; looked out from thewin- 
 idow ; glanced at the clock ; tried, but in vain, to 
 .Vork 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 careworn 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 embar- 
 rassed how to answer. 
 
 "Is it good," she said, "or bad?" to help 
 him. 
 
 " Bad," he answered. 
 
 " We are quite ruined ? " 
 
 " No. There is hope yet, Caroline." 
 
 " If he relents," she said, amazed, " there is ! 
 Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has hap- 
 pened." 
 
 " He is past relenting," said her husband. 
 " He is dead." 
 
 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 forgiveness 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 X.6 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 creditor 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 un- 
 derstood, 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 for ever 
 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 tlie mother and 
 the children seated round the fire. 
 
3? 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 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 en- 
 gaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet ! 
 
 " ' 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 i 
 
 " They're better now again," said Cratch it's 
 wife. " It makes them weak by candle-light ; 
 and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your fatlier, 
 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 
 
 WHAT DO VOU CALL THIS.?" SAID JOE. "BED-CURTAINS.?" 
 
 slower than he used, these ie^ last evenings, 
 mother." 
 
 They were very quiet again. At last she said, 
 and in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered 
 once : 
 
 " 1 have known him walk with — I have known 
 him walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder very 
 fast indeed." 
 
 " 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 comforter — 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 
 Cratchits got upon his knees, and laid, each 
 cluld, a little cheek against his face, as if they 
 
POOR TINY TIM! 
 
 33 
 
 said, "Don't mind it, father. Don't be 
 grieved ! " 
 
 Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke 
 pleasantly 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 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 little 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 
 extraordinary 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 dehghtful. 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. 
 
 Christmas Books, 3. 
 
 " 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 keeping company with some one, and 
 setting up for himself" 
 
 " Get along with you ! " retorted Peter, grin- 
 ning. 
 
 " 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 quarrel easily among our- 
 selves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it." 
 
 " No, never, father ! " they all cried again. 
 
 " I am very happy," said little Bob, " I am 
 very happy ! " 
 
 Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed 
 him, the two young Cratchits kissed him, and 
 Peter and himself 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 con- 
 veyed him, as before — though at a different time, 
 he thought : indeed, 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 to 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. Let 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 ofiice, 
 and looked in. It was an ofiice still, but not 
 his. The furniture was not the same, and the 
 figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom 
 pointed as before. 
 
34 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 He joined it once again, and, wondering why 
 and whither he had gone, accompanied it until 
 they reached an iron gate. He paused to look 
 round 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 towards 
 it trembling. The Phantom 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 the 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. 
 
 " Am /that man who lay upon the bed ? " he 
 cried upon his knees. 
 
 The finger pointed from the grave to him, and 
 back again. 
 
 " No, Spirit ! Oh no, no ! " 
 
 The finger still was there. 
 
 " Spirit ! " he cried, tight clutching at its 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 inter- 
 cedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I 
 yet may change these shadows you have shown 
 me by an altered life ? " 
 
 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 
 4jf all Three shall strive within me. I will not 
 shut out the lessons that they teach. 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, col- 
 lapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost. 
 
 STAVE FIVE. 
 
 THE END OF IT. 
 
 ES ! 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 Pre- 
 sent, 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 intentions, that his broken voice would 
 scarcely answer to his call. He had been sob- 
 bing 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 extrava- 
 gance. 
 
 " I don't know what to do ! " cried Scrooge, 
 laughing and crying in the same breath; and 
 making a perfect Laocoon of himself with his 
 stockings. " I am as light 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 
 in ! " cried Scrooge, starting oft' again, and going 
 round the fire-place. " There's the door by 
 
A DELIGHTFUL BO Y. 
 
 .35 
 
 which the Ghost of Jacob IMarley entered ! 
 There's the corner where the Ghost of Ghrist- 
 inas 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 prac- 
 tice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, 
 3. 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. Nevermind. 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. 
 
 " Eh?" returned the boy with all his might 
 of wonder. 
 
 " What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge. 
 
 " To-day ! " replied the boy, " Why, Christ- 
 mas Day." 
 
 " It's Christmas Day ! " said Scrooge to him- 
 self. " I haven't missed it. The Spirits have 
 done it all in one night. They can do any- 
 thing 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. 
 
 " I should hope I did," replied the lad. 
 
 " An intelligent boy ! " said Scrooge. " A re- 
 markable boy ! Do you know whether they've 
 sold the prize Turkey 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 ! " 
 
 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 the street-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, patting it with his hand. " I scarcely 
 ever looked at it before. 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 Cam- 
 den 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 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 
 continued to shake very much ; and shaving re- 
 quires attention, 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 pouring forth, as he had seen them 
 with the Ghost of Christmas Present ; and, 
 walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge re- 
 garded 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. 
 
36 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL. 
 
 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 before 
 him, and he took it. 
 
 '■ My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his 
 pace, and taking the old gentleman by both his 
 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?" 
 
 " I will ! " cried the old gentleman. And it 
 was clear he meant to do it. 
 
 " Thankee,'' 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 any- 
 thing — 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 courage to go up and knock. But he 
 made a dash, and did it. 
 
 "Is your master at home, ray 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." 
 
 "Thankee. He knows me," said Scrooge, 
 with his hand already on the dining-room lock. 
 " I'll go in here, my dear." 
 
 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 sitting in the corner with the footstool, 
 or he wouldn't have done it on any account. 
 
 " 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 Topper 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 ! 
 
 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 Bob. 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 comforter too. He was on his stool 
 in a jifi"y ; 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 coming here at this time of day ? " 
 
 " I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. " I a7n 
 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 re- 
 peated. I was making 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 staggered back into 
 
SCROOGE RECLAIMED BY CHRISTMAS. 
 
 37 
 
 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 struggling 
 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 was a second father. He be- 
 
 came 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 ! And so, 
 as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every 
 One! 
 
 END OF "A CHRISTMAS CAROL." 
 
THE CHIMES: 
 
 A GOBLIN STORY OF SOME BELLS THAT RANG AN OLD YEAR OUT 
 
 AND A NEW YEAR IN. 
 
 FIRST QUARTER. 
 
 'X'HERE 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, vJJJ to little people, but extend it to 
 all conditions of people : little and big, young 
 and old : yet growing up, or already grow- 
 ing 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 
 
HIGH UP IN THE STEEPLE. 
 
 39 
 
 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 ap- 
 pointed for the purpose, with any one opponent 
 chosen from the rest, who will meet me singly 
 in an old churchyard, before an old church- 
 door ; and will previously empower me to lock 
 him in, i£.needful to his satisfaction, until morn- 
 ing. 
 
 For the night wind has a dismal trick of wan- 
 dering round and round a building of that sort, 
 and moaning as it goes ; and of trying, with its 
 unseen hand, the windows and the doors ; and 
 seeking out some crevices by which to enter. 
 And when it has got in, as one not finding what 
 it seeks, whatever that may be, it wails and 
 howls to issue forth again ; and not content with 
 stalking through the aisles, 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, muttering, 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 
 chant, 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 Mid- 
 night, 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 weather-cock, 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, 
 5-hrivelled 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 ch;'rch 
 dwelt the Chimes I tell of. 
 
 They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries 
 ago, these Bells had been baptized 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 Godmothers, 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 sponsors, and Henry the Eighth had 
 melted down their mugs ; and they now hung, 
 nameless and mugless, in the church tower. 
 
 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 sometimes known to 
 beat a blustering Nor'-Wester ; ay, " 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 Par- 
 liament; 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 confines of the 
 earth, to have a blow at Toby. And oftentimes 
 it seemed to come upon him sooner than it had 
 
40 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 expected ; for, bouncing round the corner, and 
 passing Toby, it would suddenly wheel round 
 again, as if it cried, " Why, here he is ! " In- 
 continently 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 to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his 
 hand, and his legs would undergo tremendous 
 agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and fac- 
 ing now in this direction, now in that, would be 
 so banged and buffeted, and tousled, and wor- 
 ried, 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 portable 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 unknown. 
 
 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 bois- 
 terous element took off his attention, and quite 
 freshened him up, when he was getting hungry 
 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 respect, though, Toby ! So 
 wind and frost and snow, and perhaps a good 
 stiff storm of hail, were Toby Veck's red-letter 
 days. 
 
 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 
 re-passed, spinning round and round hke so 
 many teetotums, as they knocked against each 
 other on the crowded footway, 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 anxiously 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 
 
 and lengthened face. But, coming out 3 
 minute afterwards 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 01 his nook 
 to warm himself 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 cane 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 hammers beat 
 upon them. Perhaps he was the more curious 
 about these Bells, because there were points of 
 resemblance between themselves and him. They 
 hung there in all weathers, with the wind and 
 rain driving in upon them ; facing only the out- 
 sides of all those houses ; never getting any 
 nearer to the blazing fires that gleamed and 
 shone upon the windows, or came pufiing out of 
 the chimney-top ; and incapable of participation 
 in any of the good things that were constantly 
 being handed, through the street-doors and area 
 
TROTTY VECK'S LIFE. 
 
 41 
 
 railings, to prodigious cooks. Faces came and 
 went at many windows : sometimes pretty faces, 
 youthful fiices, pleasant faces : sometimes 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 some- 
 thing of a closer and more delicate woof, he 
 passed through these 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 w'as altogether ignorant, and the 
 knowledge of which would have astonished him 
 very much, arrive at a certain end ; so his men- 
 tal 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 recalled 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 
 melody, that he regarded them with a species of 
 awe ; and sometimes, when he looked up at the 
 dark arched windows in the tower, he half ex- 
 pected 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 im- 
 plying the possibility 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, 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 melo- 
 dious 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 stift', 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 punishing 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 pre- 
 cious 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 (which 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 no- 
 thing less regular in its 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 obserwation for 
 the Papers; or the Parliament !" 
 
 Toby was only joking, for he gravely shook 
 his head in self-depreciation. 
 
 " Why ! Lord ! " said Toby. " The Papers is 
 full of obserwations as it is ; and so's the Parlia- 
 ment. Here's 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 ! 
 Full of obserwations ! 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 
 
42 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 backwards and forwards : musing as he went, 
 and talking to himself. 
 
 " 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 
 r^n't make out whether Ave have any business 
 on the face of the earth, or not. Sometimes I 
 think we must have — a little ; and sometimes 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. AV^e 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 
 mournfully. " 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. 
 
 Toby heard it this time ; started ; stopped ; 
 and shortening his sight, which had been directed 
 a long way off, as seeking for enlightenment in 
 the very heart of the approaching year, found 
 himselt face to face with his own child, and look- 
 ing close into her eyes. 
 
 Bright eyes they were. Eyes that would bear 
 a world of looking in, before their depth w^as 
 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 were 
 beautiful and true, and beaming with Hope. 
 Witli Hope so young and fresh ; with Hope 
 so buoyant, vigorous, 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 busi- 
 ness 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, looking 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 up 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 over- 
 heard 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 towards 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. 
 
 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 suppose it an't Polonies ? " 
 
 " No, no, no ! " cried Meg, delighted. " No- 
 thing like Polonies !" 
 
 " No," said Toby after another sniff. " It's 
 — it's mellower than Polonies. It's very nice. 
 It improves every moment. 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 him- 
 self. " 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 stringi- 
 ness of cocks' heads. And I know it an't sau- 
 sages. I'll tell you what it is. It's chitterlings !" 
 
 " No, it an't ! " cried Meg in a burst of de- 
 light. " No, it an't ! " 
 
 " Why, what am I a thinking of?" said Toby, 
 suddenly recovering a position as near the per- 
 
TROTTY'S DINNER-TABLE AND GRACE. 
 
 43 
 
 pendicular 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 exult- 
 ingly 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 paper the other day, father; what the 
 Judge said, you know ; we poor people are sup- 
 posed 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 knoAv 'em 
 all. He'd grow fat upon the work he'd get, that 
 man, and be popular with the gentlefolks in his 
 neighbourhood. Very much so ! " 
 
 " He'd eat his dinner with an appetite, who- 
 ever 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 ! " 
 
 " The steps to-day, my pet," said Trotty. 
 " Steps in dry weather. Post in wet. There's 
 a greater conveniency in the steps at all times, 
 because of the sitting down ; but they're rheu- 
 matic 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 
 summons, 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 \\\m. 
 " 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. 
 
 She bad, 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, Toby ! 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. 
 
 " Always," answered the unconscious Toby. 
 " Never fails." 
 
 While this discourse was holding, Trotty made 
 no pause in his attack upon the savoury meat 
 before him, but 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 unllagging 
 relish. But happening now to look all round 
 the street — in case anybody should be beckon- 
 ing 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, drop- 
 ping 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 expla- 
 nation, " 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 an't possible ! You might as well 
 tell me that two New Year's Days will come 
 
44 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 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 hot. So 
 Trotty took ^ up his knife and fork again, and 
 w'ent to work. But much more slowly than 
 before, and shaking 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 re- 
 sumed. Then stopped. 
 
 " What does Richard say, Meg ?" asked Toby. 
 
 " Richard says, father " Another stop- 
 page. 
 
 " Richard's a long time saying it," said Toby. 
 
 " He says, then, father," Meg continued, lift- 
 ing 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 
 v/e 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 in- 
 deed — 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, with- 
 out 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 1 love him 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 morn- 
 ing (unexpectedly, 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 cool'Mg 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 glowing 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 eulogium 
 on his style of conversation. 
 
 " See how he leaves it cooling on the step ! " 
 said Richard. " Meg don't know what he likes. 
 Not she ! " 
 
 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 foot- 
 man very nearly put his foot in the tripe. 
 
 " Out of the vays 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 irrele- 
 vant, 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 hght- 
 heavy pace — that peculiar compromise between 
 a walk and a jog-trot — with which a gentleman 
 upon the smooth downhill of life, wearing creak- 
 
THE GREAT ALDERMAN CUTE. 
 
 45 
 
 ing boots, a watch-chain, and clean h'nen, may 
 come out of his house : not only without any 
 abatement of h^ dignity, but with an expres- 
 sion of having important and wealthy engage- 
 ments 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 foot- 
 man with great emphasis to Trotty Veck, " to 
 let our door-steps Idc. Why don't you let 'em 
 be ? Can't vou let 'em be ? " 
 
 "There! 'That'll do, that'll do!" said the 
 gentleman. " Halloa there ! Porter ! " beckon- 
 ing with his head to Trotty Veck. " Come here. 
 What's that ? Your dinner ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Trotty, leaving it behind him 
 in a corner. 
 
 " Don't leave it there," exclaimed the gentle- 
 man. " 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 gentleman was now turning over and 
 over on the end of the fork. 
 
 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 continually in the pockets of his 
 scanty pepper-and-salt trousers, very large and 
 dog's-eared from that custom ; and was not par- 
 ticularly 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 proportion 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 ex- 
 ceedingly 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. Alder- 
 man," said Filer, making little punches in it with 
 a pencil-case, " commonly known to the labour- 
 ing 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 I A knowing fellow. Up to 
 everything. Not to be imposed upon. Deep 
 
 in the people's hearts ! He knew them. Cute 
 did. I believe you ! 
 
 " But who eats tripe ? " said Mr. Filer, look- 
 ing 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 cf tripe has been found 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 hothouse pine- apple. 
 Taking into account the number of animals 
 slaughtered yearly within the bills of mortality 
 alone ; and forming a low estimate of the quan- 
 tity of tripe which the carcases of those animals, 
 reasonably well butchered, would yield ; I find 
 that the waste on that amount of tri]3e, 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 men- 
 tioned. Alderman," said Mr. Filer, " by the esti- 
 mated 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. Con- 
 sequently, 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, any- 
 how. 
 
 " And what do you say ? " asked the Alder- 
 man jocosely of the red-faced gentleman in the 
 blue coat. "You have heard friend Filer. 
 What d.o you say?" 
 
 "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 I The good 
 old times, the grand old times, the great old 
 times ! Those were the times for a bold pea- 
 santry, and all that sort of thing. Those were 
 the times for every sort of thing, in fact. There's 
 nothing nowadays. Ah ! " sighed the red-faced 
 
46 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 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 disinter- 
 ested 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 revolving cage ; 
 touching the mechanism and trick of which it 
 has probably quite as distinct perceptions as 
 ever this red-faced gentleman had of his de- 
 ceased Millennium. 
 
 It is possible that poor Trotty's faith in these 
 very vague Old Times was not entirely de- 
 stroyed, for he felt vague enough at that mo- 
 ment. One thing, however, was ])lain to him, 
 in the midst of his distress ; to wit, that, how- 
 ever 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 
 horn bad ! " 
 
 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." 
 
 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 simul- 
 taneously with Alderman Cute. Now, the 
 Alderman had not yet had his say, but he was a 
 philosopher, 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, ad- 
 dressing 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 dif- 
 ficulty 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 under- 
 stand 'em ! " 
 
 Famous man for the common people. Alder- 
 man 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 ? ha ! ha ! ha ! — and I intend to Put it 
 Down. There's a certain amount of C2.nt in 
 vogue about Starvation, and I mean to Put it 
 Down. That's all ! Lord bless you," said the 
 Alderman, turning to his friends again, " you 
 may Put Down anything 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. 
 
 " 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 ? " re- 
 marked the Alderman pleasantly. 
 
 Toby might or might not have been able to 
 separate his wife in Heaven from her old pur- 
 suits. 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 
 
TO BE MARRIED ON NE W YEAR 'S DA Y. 
 
 47 
 
 nettled by the question, " And we are going to 
 be married on New Year's Day." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " cried Filer sharply. 
 *' Married ! " 
 
 *' Why, yes, we're thinking of it, master," said 
 Richard. " We're rather in a hurry, you see, in 
 case it should be Put Down first." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Filer with a groan. " Put that 
 down indeed, Alderman, and you'll do some- 
 thing. Married ! Married ! ! The ignorance 
 of the first principles of political economy on 
 the part of these people ; their improvidence ; 
 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 Methu- 
 saleh," 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 thoy 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, enjd 
 laid his right forefinger on the side of his nose, 
 as much as to 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 ^vrathfully within the last few minutes ; 
 and he was indisposed to let her come. But, 
 setting a constraint upon himself, he came for- 
 ward with a stride as Meg approached, 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 Alderman 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," pur- 
 sued the Alderman. " Very unbecoming and 
 indelicate in one of your sex ! But never mind 
 chat. After you are married, you'll quarrel with 
 your husband, and come to be a distressed wife. 
 You may think not ; but you will, because I tell I 
 
 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, with- 
 out 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 re- 
 solved 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 ungratefully, 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 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 sui- 
 cide Down. So don't try it on. That's the 
 phrase, isn't it ? Ha, ha ! Now we understand 
 each other." 
 
 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 Alder- 
 man, turning with even increased cheerfulness 
 and urbanity to the young smith, " what are you 
 thinking of being married 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 myself 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 squall- 
 ing children crying after you wherever you go ! " 
 
 Oh, he knew how to banter the common 
 people. Alderman Cute ! 
 
 " There ! Go along with you," said the Alder- 
 man, " and repent. Don't make such a fool of 
 yourself as to get married on New Year's Day. 
 You'll think very difTerently of it long before next 
 New Year's Day : a trim young fellow like you, 
 with all the girls looking after you ! There ! Go 
 along with you ! " 
 
 They went along. Not arm-in-arm, or hand- 
 in-hand, or interchanging bright glances -, but. 
 
48 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 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 Alder- 
 man 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, break- 
 ing in as if his 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 misdoubted 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-halfpenny apiece, he only 
 got sixpence ; and thought himself very well off 
 to get that. 
 
 Then the Alaerman gave an arm to each of 
 his friends, and walked off in high feather; but, 
 he immediately came hurrying back alone, as if 
 he had forgotten something. 
 
 " 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 some- 
 body or other, 1 suppose," thought Toby, look- 
 ing at the sixpence in his hand, and thinking of 
 the tripe. " She's been and robbed five hundred 
 ladies of a bloom apiece, I shouldn't wonder. 
 It's very dreadful ! " 
 
 " She's much too handsome, my man," re- 
 peated the Alderman. " 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, clasping his hands. " Born bad. 
 No business here ! " 
 
 The Chimes came clashing in upon him as 
 he said the words. Full, loud, and sounding — 
 but with no encouragement. No, not a drop. 
 
 " The tune's changed," cried the old man as 
 he listened. " 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 them, and being by that 
 means reminded of his charge, he fell mecha- 
 nically into his usual trot, and trotted off. 
 
 THE SECOND QUARTER. 
 
 HE 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 Alder- 
 man had sealed it with a very large coat-of arms 
 and no end of wax, but because of the weighty 
 name on the superscription, and the ponderous 
 amount of gold and silver with which it was 
 associated. 
 
 " How different from us ! " thought Toby, in 
 all simplicity 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 any- 
 body'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 hand- 
 some, 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, 
 
SIR JOSEPH BO 1 1 'LEY. 
 
 49 
 
 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 mis- 
 uses of its slanderers, and faithfully performed 
 its work. Spring, summer, 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 happiness 
 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. 
 
 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 Avaited 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 almanacs and pocket-books ; the coming 
 of its moons, and stars, and tides was known 
 beforehand to the moment : all the workings of 
 its seasons, in their days and nights, were calcu- 
 lated with as much precision as Mr. Filer could 
 work sums in men and Avomen. 
 
 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 aboard ship. 
 Its patterns were Last Year's, and going at a 
 sacrifice, before its breath was gone. Its trea- 
 sures were mere dirt beside the riches of its 
 unborn successor ! 
 
 Trotty had no portion, to his thinking, in the 
 New Year or the Old. 
 
 " Put 'em down. Put 'em down ! Facts and 
 Figures, Facts 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. 
 Christmas Books, 4. 
 
 This porter underwent some hard panting be- 
 fore he could speak ; having breathed himself 
 by coming incautiously out of his chair, without 
 first taking time to think about it and compose 
 his mind. When he had 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 whis])er : 
 
 " Who's it from ?" 
 
 Toby told him. 
 
 " You're to take it in yourself," said the 
 Porter, pointing to a room at the end of a long 
 passage, opening from the hall. " Everything 
 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 spacious 
 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 dictation ; 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 looking com- 
 placently from time to time at his own picture — 
 a full length ; a very full length — hanging over 
 the fire-place. 
 
 " What is this ? " said the last-named gentle- 
 man. " 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?" 
 inquired 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 de- 
 scription of account is setded in this house at 
 the close of the old one. So that if death was 
 to— to " 
 
 " To cut," suggested Mr. Fish. 
 
 " To sever, sir," returned Sir Joseph with great 
 asperity, "the cord of existence — my aftairs would 
 be found, I hope, in a state of preparation." 
 
 '■^ My dear Sir Joseph ! " said the ladv, who 
 
so 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 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 — ourselves. We should 
 look into our — our accounts. We should feel 
 that every return of so eventful a period in 
 liuman transactions involves matter of deep 
 moment between a man and his — and his 
 ])anker." 
 
 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 oppor- 
 tunity of being improved by such discourse. 
 Possibly he had this end before him in still for- 
 bearing 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 " observed 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 surprise 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 other- 
 wise." 
 
 " I am the Poor Man's Friend," observed Sir 
 Joseph, glancing at the poor man present. " As 
 such I may be taunted. As such I have been 
 taunted. But I ask no other title." 
 
 "Bless liim 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 
 Iriend the Poor Man, in my district, is my busi- 
 ness. No man, or body of men, has any right 
 to interfere between my friend and me. That is 
 
 the ground I take. 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," pur- 
 sued Sir Joseph, looking abstractedly at Toby ; 
 "your only business 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, exercise 
 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, and 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 encourage- 
 ment 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, 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. 
 
 " ]\Iy lady," said Sir Joseph quite majestically, 
 " ingratitude is known to be the sin of that class. 
 I expect no other return." 
 
 " Ah ! Born bad ! " thought Toby. " Nothing 
 melts us." 
 
 " \Vhat man can do / do," pursued Sir Joseph. 
 " I do my duty as the Poor Man's Friend and 
 Father ; and I endeavour to educate his mind. 
 
THE PEOPLE'S FRIEND AND FATHER. 
 
 SI 
 
 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 other- 
 wise, and they become impatient and discon- 
 tented, and are guilty of insurbordinate conduct 
 and black-hearted ingratitude ; which is un- 
 doubtedly 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 ! " ex- 
 claimed 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 carried next 
 morning before the Alderman. The Alderman 
 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," returned the lady. " Last winter, when 
 I introduced pinking and eyelet-holing among 
 the men and boys in the village, as a nice even- 
 ing employment, and had the lines, 
 
 * O 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 aiit I something 
 different from a great girl?' I expected it, of 
 course ; who can expect anything but insolence 
 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 favourable. 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 opposition to my plans. He is 
 a turbulent and rebellious spirit. His character 
 will not bear investigation. Nothing will per- 
 suade 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 class themselves 
 — examples are greatly needed. And I am," 
 and so forth. 
 
 " It appears," remarked Sir Joseph when he 
 had signed this letter, and IMn Fish was sealing 
 it, " as if this were Ordained : really. At the 
 close of the year I wind up my account, and 
 strike my balance, even with William Fern ! " 
 ■_ Trotty, who had long ago relapsed, and was 
 very low-spirited, stepped forward with a rueful 
 face to take the letter. 
 
 " With my compliments and thanks," said Sir 
 Joseph. " Stop ! " 
 
 '' Stop ! " echoed Mr. Fish. 
 
 " You have heard, perhaps," said Sir Joseph 
 oracularly, " certain remarks into which I have 
 been led respecting the solemn period of time 
 at which we have arrived, and the duty imposed 
 upon us of settling our affairs, and being pre- 
 pared. You have observed that I don't shelter 
 myself behind my superior standing in society, 
 but that Mr. Fish — that gentleman — 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." 
 
 " Behindhand 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. Chickenstalker." 
 
52 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 "To Mrs. Chickenstalker ! " rej-^ealed Sir 
 Joseph in the same tone as before. 
 
 " A shop, sir," exclauned 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 ges- 
 ture with both hands at once, as if he gave 
 the thing up altogether. 
 
 "How a man, even among this improvident 
 and impracticable race ; an old man ; a man 
 grown grey ; can look a New Year in the face, 
 with his art'airs in this condition ; 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, anxious to excuse himself " We have 
 been tried very hard." 
 
 Sir Joseph still repeating, 
 
 Take the letter. 
 
 -i^^ 
 
 THE POOR man's KKIFNO. 
 
 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 
 hide the grief he felt at getting no hold on the 
 New Year anywhere. 
 
 He didn't even hft 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 Avas growing dark, and 
 tJiat the steeple rose above him, indistinct 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 loing 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 ; 
 
THE COUNTRYMAN AND HIS CHILD. 
 
 53 
 
 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, be- 
 tween the hat and the torn lining, fixing his liead 
 into a kind of beehive. " I hope I haven't hurt 
 you ? " 
 
 As to hurting anybody, Toby was not such an 
 absolute 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, how- 
 ever, that he was in real concern for the other 
 party : and said again : 
 
 " 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 suspected 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 " penetrated Trotty's heart. He was so 
 jaded and footsore, and so soiled with travel, and 
 looked about him so forlorn 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 leg- 
 gings, common frock, and broad slouched hat, 
 Trotty stood gazing, blind to the whole street. 
 And at the child's arm, clinging round its neck. 
 
 Before he merged into the darkness the tra- 
 veller 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 lives." 
 
 " 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 ? " 
 
 " Eh ! " cried the other, turning on him in 
 astonishment. 
 
 " Fern ! Will Fern ■ " said Trotty. 
 
 " That's my name," repHed 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 /«w." 
 
 His new acquaintance looked as if he thought 
 him mad ; but he bore him company neverthe- 
 less. When they were shrouded from observa- 
 tion, 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 
 calmness that surprised him. He did not con- 
 tradict or interrupt it once. He nodded his 
 head now and then — more in corroboration of 
 an old and worn-out story, it appeared, 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 grain 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 I 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 Birth- 
 day, or a fine Speech-making, or what not. Act 
 your Plays antl Games without me, and be wel- 
 
54 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 come to 'em and enjoy 'em. We've nowt to do 
 with one another. I'm be.-t let alone !' " 
 
 Seeing that the child in his arms had opened 
 her eyes, and was looking about her in wonder, 
 he checked himself 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 Ahnighty's creeturs. I can't 
 — I don't — and so there's a pit dug between 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 afeard, 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 vie much by send- 
 ing me to gaol ; but, without a friend to speak a 
 
 Avord 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 — between 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 w-ill 
 try whether there's better fortun' to be met with 
 somewheres 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 wandering 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 lodg- 
 ing 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 quivering 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 turn- 
 ing 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 ' T. Veck, 
 Ticket Porter,' wrote upon a board; and here 
 we are, and here we go, and here we are indeed, 
 my precious Meg, surprising you ! " 
 
 With which \vords Trotty, in a breathless state, 
 set the child do\vn oefore his daughter in the 
 middle of the floor. The little visitor looked 
 once at Meg ; and doubting 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 
 
TROTTV VECK'S HOSPITALITY. 
 
 55 
 
 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 some- 
 where or other in the course of his wild career, 
 and now put it on the fire : wliile 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 cheer- 
 fully, 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 busy. So 
 busy I 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 \>< so 
 gay, and brisk, and happy " 
 
 The child, in a burst of sobbing, clasped lier 
 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 ? 
 
 " Wliy, 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 ! " 
 
 " 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 
 elaborately 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." 
 
 With this inscrutable artifice, I'oby withdrew 
 to purchase the viands he had spoken of, for 
 ready money, at Mrs. Chickenstalker's ; and pre- 
 sently came back, pretending 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 un- 
 worthy father toasts the bacon, we shall be ready 
 immediate. It's a curious circumstance," said 
 Trotty, proceeding in his cookery with the assist- 
 ance 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 guest, " but to 
 me, as food, they arc disagreeable." 
 
 Yet Trotty sniffed the savour of the hissing 
 bacon — ah ! — as if he liked it ; and, when he 
 poured the boiling water in the teapot, looked 
 lovingly down into the depths of that snug caul- 
 dron, and suft'ered 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 begin- 
 ning, a mere morsel for form's sake, which he 
 appeared to eat with infinite relish, but declared 
 was perfectly uninteresting to him. 
 
 No. Trotty's occupation was to see ^Vill 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. 
 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 litde one, she sleeps with Meg, I 
 know." 
 
 " With good Meg ! " cried the child, caressing 
 her. " With ]\Ieg." 
 
 " That's right," said Trotty. " And I shouldn't 
 wonder if she kiss Meg's father, won't she ? /'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- 
 
56 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 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 uncon- 
 sciously 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, belonging 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 hand released from the child's hair had 
 fallen, trembling, into Trotty's hand. So Trotty, 
 talking without intermission, led him out as ten- 
 derly and easily as if he had been a child him- 
 self 
 
 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 newspaper 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 re-directed 
 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, api)alled ! 
 
 " Unnatural and cruel ! " Toby cried. " Un- 
 natural 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 his slum- 
 bers, break his slumbers ! Toby Veck, Toby 
 Veck, door open wide, Toby ! Toby Veck, 
 
 Toby Veck, door open wide, Toby " then 
 
 fiercely back to their impetuous 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 lea/e 
 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. 
 
 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? 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 
 
TROTTY VECK IN THE BELERY. 
 
 57 
 
 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 
 bareheaded to the church ; and putting his hand 
 into this dark nook, with a certain misgiving 
 that it might be unexpectedly seized, and a 
 shivering propensity to draw it back again ; he 
 found that the door, which opened outwards, 
 actually stood ajar ! 
 
 He thought, on the first surprise, of going 
 back ; or 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. " It's 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 again. 
 
 This 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 rnan or ghostly figure standing up erect 
 and making room for him to pass without dis- 
 covery, 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 monotonous 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 housetops, on the smoking 
 chimneys, on the blur and blotch of lights 
 (towards the place where Meg was wondering 
 where he was, and calling to him, perhaps), all 
 kneaded up together 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 trembled at the very thought of wak- 
 ing the deep Bell. The Bells themselves were 
 higher. Higher, Trotty, in his fascination, or in 
 working out the spell upon him, groped his way. 
 By ladders now, 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 paus- 
 ing 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 sense of dread and loneliness fell in- 
 stantly 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 
 " Halloa ! " 
 
 " 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 swoon. 
 
 THIRD QUARTER. 
 
 LACK are the brooding clouds, and 
 troubled the deep waters, when the 
 Sea of Thought, first heaving from a 
 calm, gives up its Dead. INIonsters 
 ^ uncouth and wild arise in premature, 
 
 '""J imjjerfect resurrection ; the several parts 
 and shapes of difterent things are joined 
 and mixed by chance ; and when, and 
 how, and by what wonderful degrees each sepa- 
 rates 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 and how the whispered 
 
ss 
 
 TJiE chimj:s. 
 
 ** Haunt and hunt him," breathing monotonously 
 through his sleep or swoon, became a voice ex- 
 claiming in the waking ears of Trotty, " Break 
 his slumbers ; '"' when and how he ceased to 
 have a sluggish and confused idea that such 
 things were, companioning 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 foot- 
 steps had brought him, swarming with dwarf 
 phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the Bells. 
 He saw them leaping, flying, dropping, pouring 
 from the Bells, without a pause. He saw them 
 round him on the ground ; above him in the air, 
 clambering from him, by the ropes below ; look- 
 ing down upon him, from the massive iron- 
 girded beams ; peeping in upon him, through 
 the chinks and loopholes in the walls ; spread- 
 ing 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, exquisitely 
 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 beat- 
 ing them with knotted whips ; he saw them yell- 
 ing 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 sleep- 
 ing men, but waking also, active in pursuits irre- 
 concilable with one another, and possessing or 
 assuming natures the most opposite. He saw 
 one buckling on innumerable wings to increase 
 his speed ; another loading himself with chains 
 and weights, to retard his. He saw some 
 putting 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 cere- 
 mony, there a funeral 3 in this chamber an elec- 
 
 tion, in that a ball ; he saw, everywhere, restless 
 and untiring motion. 
 
 Bewildered by the host of shifting and extra- 
 ordinary 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. 
 
 As he gazed the Chimes stopped. Instan- 
 taneous change ! The whole swarm fainted ; 
 their forms collapsed, their speed deserted 
 them j they sought to fly, but, in the act of fall- 
 ing, 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 before he could turn round. Some few of 
 the late company who had gamboled 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 perse- 
 verance, 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 — incomprehensibly, a figure and the 
 Bell itself. Gigantic, grave, and darkly watchful 
 of him, as he stood rooted to the ground. 
 
 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. Sha- 
 dowy and dark, although he saw them by some 
 light belonging to themselves — none else was 
 there — each with its muftled hand upon its 
 goblin mouth. 
 
 He could not plunge down wildly through 
 the opening in the floor; for all power of mo- 
 tion had deserted him. Otherwise he would 
 have done so — ay, would have thrown himself, 
 head foremost, from the steeple-top, rather than 
 have seen them watching him witli 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 
 
WHAT THE BELLS SAID. 
 
 59 
 
 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. Meantime, 
 his eyes and thoughts and fears were fixed upon 
 the watchful figures; which, rendered unhke 
 any figures of this world by the deep gloom and 
 shade enwrapping 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, intricacies, 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. 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " I am a jioor man," faltered Trotty, " and 
 could only thank them in words." 
 
 "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 improvement ; for his greater 
 worth, his greater happiness- . his better life ; 
 his progress onward to thai goal within its 
 knowledge and its view, and set there, in the 
 period when Time and He began. Ages of 
 darkness, wickedness, and violence have come 
 and gone — millions uncountable have suffered, 
 lived, and died — to point the way before him. | 
 
 \Vho 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 
 ser\^ants," 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 help when any ears can listen to re- 
 grets for such a past — v/ho 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 peni- 
 tence and grief. 
 
 " If you knew," said Trotty, clasping his 
 hands earnestly — " or perhaps you do know — if 
 you know how often you have kept me com- 
 pany ; how often you have cheered me up when 
 I've been low ; how you were quite the play- 
 thing 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 be- 
 speaking 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 gauges human passions and affections, 
 as it gauges 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 I " 
 
 " 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 flUlen and dis- 
 figured 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 
 
6o 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 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 childlike voice, 
 which Trotty thought he recognised as having 
 heard before. 
 
 The organ sounded faintly in the church below. 
 Swelling 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 ; awakening 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 before his face. 
 
 " Listen ! " said the Shadow. 
 
 " Listen ! " said the other Shadows. 
 
 " 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 mingles with the dead — dead hopes, dead 
 fancies, dead imaginings 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 com- 
 panion," 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 figures, one and all. 
 
 The tower opened at his feet. He looked down, 
 and beheld his own form, lying at the bottom, 
 on the outside : crushed and motionless. 
 
 " No more a living ma-n ! " cried Trotty. 
 " Dead ! " 
 
 " Dead ! " said the figures all together. 
 
 " 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 
 outstretched hands ; and where their figures had 
 been, there the Bells were. 
 
 And they rung ; their time being come again. 
 And once again, vast multitudes of phantoms 
 sprung into existence ; once again were inco- 
 herently engaged, as they had been before ; once 
 again faded on the stopping of the Chimes ; and 
 dwindled into nothing. 
 
 " What are these ? " he asked his guide. '• If 
 I am not mad, what are these ? " 
 
 " Spirits of the Bells. Their sound upon the 
 air," returned the child. " They take such shapes 
 and occupations 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 embroidery 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 tears, that he might look upon 
 her; that he might only see her. 
 
 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. 
 Following 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 expres- 
 sion 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 some- 
 thing reigning there : a lofty something, unde- 
 
THE DIFFERENCE OF SHOES AND STOCKINGS. 
 
 6r 
 
 fined and indistinct, 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 Lilian, 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! 
 ^Vhy not smile Avhen you look at me, Meg ? " 
 
 " I do so. Do I not ? " she answered : smil- 
 ing on her. 
 
 " 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 httle 
 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 /make our weary life more weary to 
 you, Lilian?" 
 
 " You have been the only thing that made it 
 life," said Lilian, fervently kissing her ; " some- 
 times 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 the consciousness of our hard fate ! 
 Oh, Meg, Meg ! " she raised her voice and twined 
 her arms about her as she spoke, like one in 
 pain. " How can the cruel world go round, and 
 bear to look upon such lives ? " 
 
 " Lilly ! " said Meg, soothing her, and putting 
 back her hair from lier 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 shrive 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 con- 
 
 sidered an especial pointing of the finger of Pro- 
 vidence to Number One, as Lady Bowley's 
 destined figure in Creation), it was on a New 
 Year's Day that this festivity took place. 
 
 Bowley Hall was full of visitors. The red. 
 faced gentleman was there. Mr. Filer was there, 
 the great Alderman Cute was there — Alderman 
 Cute had a sympathetic feeling with great people, 
 and had considerably improved his acijuaintance 
 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 phantom, drearily ; and looking for 
 its guide. 
 
 There was to be a great dinner in the Great 
 Hall. At which Sir Joseph Bowley, in his cele- 
 brated 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 assemblage, 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 skittles — with his 
 tenants ! 
 
 " Which quite reminds one," said Alderman 
 Cute, " of the days of old King Hal, stout King 
 Hal, bluff King Hal. Ah ! Fine character ! " 
 
 " Very," said Mr. Filer drily. " For marry- 
 ing 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 chil- 
 dren of poor Meg. 
 
 " Richard," moaned Trotty, roaming among 
 
62 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 the company to and fro ; " where is he? I can't 
 find Richard ! Where is Richard ? " 
 
 Not likely to be there, if still alive ! But 
 Trotty's grief and solitude confused him ; and 
 he still went wandering among the gallant com- 
 pany, looking for his guide, and saying, " Where 
 is Richard ? Shov/ 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 Alderman Cute? Has anybody seen 
 the Alderman ? " 
 
 Seen the Alderman? Oh dear ! Who could 
 €ver help seeing the Alderman ? He was so 
 considerate, so aftable, he bore so much in mind 
 the natural desire of folks to see him, that, if he 
 had a fault, it was the being constantly On View. 
 And wherever the great people were, there, to 
 be sure, attracted by the kindred sympathy be- 
 tween 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 in- 
 terference with the magistrates ? " 
 
 " Deedles, the banker," gasped the Secretary. 
 " Deedles Brothers — who was to have been 
 here to-day — high in office in the Goldsmiths' 
 Company " 
 
 " Not stopped ! " exclaimed the Alderman. 
 -" It can't be ! " 
 
 " 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 ! " 
 
 " This very morning," returned Mr. Fish. 
 
 " Oh, the brain, the brain ! " exclaimed the 
 
 pious Alderman, 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 Do\\ti ? 
 Remember, 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 rendered 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, audience (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 com- 
 fortable 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. Alderman 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 aft'ected the general 
 economy of the social fabric. Deedles Brothers ! " 
 
 The skittle-playing came off with immense 
 success. 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 come. 
 
 At its proper time the Banquet Avas served up. 
 Trotty involuntarily repaired to the hall with the 
 rest, for he felt himself conducted thither by 
 
THE LABOURER RETURNS THANKS. 
 
 63 
 
 some stronger impulse than his own free-will. 
 The sight was gay in the extreme; the ladies 
 were very handsome; the visitors deliglited, 
 cheerlul, and good-tempered. When tlie lower 
 doors were opened, and the people flocked in, 
 in their rustic dresses, the beauty of the spec- 
 tacle was at its height; but Trotty only mur- 
 mured more and more. "Where is Richard? 
 He should help and comfort her ! I can't see 
 Richard !" 
 
 There had been some speeches made ; and 
 Ladv Bowley's health had been proposed; and 
 Sir Joseph Bowley had returned thanks, and had 
 made his great speech, showing 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, will 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 them witli a humble bow. 
 
 "Gentlefolks !" he said. "You've drunk the 
 Labourer. Look at me ! " 
 
 " Just come from gaol," said Mr. Fish. 
 
 " Just come from gaol," said Will. " And 
 neither for the first time, nor the second, nor the 
 third, nor yet the fourth." 
 
 ]\Ir. 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 
 ^lis breast, and shook his head — " is gone with 
 the scent of last year's beans or clover on the 
 air. Let irie 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 
 have 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, \ ou 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 niore 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 nothing 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 dis- 
 turb him. 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 suspi- 
 cious. I has my doubts,' says you, ' about Will 
 Fern. Watch that fellow ! ' I don't say, gen- 
 tlemen, it ain't quite nat'ral, 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 waist- 
 coat 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 
 
64 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 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 Hve elsewhere. And I'm a vagabond. 
 To gaol with him ! I comes back here. I goes a 
 nutting in your woods, and breaks — who don't ? 
 — a limber branch or two. To gaol with him ! 
 One of your keepers sees me in the broad day, 
 near my own patch of garden, with a gun. To 
 gaol with him ! I has a nat'ral angry word with 
 that man when I'm free again. To gaol with 
 him ! I cuts a stick. To gaol with him ! I 
 eats a rotten apple or a turnip. To gaol with 
 him. It's twenty mile away ; and coming back 
 I begs a trifle on the road. To gaol with him ! 
 At last the constable, the keeper — anybody — 
 finds me anywhere, a doing anything. To gaol 
 with him, for he's a vagrant, and a gaol-bird 
 known ; and gaol'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, gentlemen, 
 gentlemen, dealing with other men like me, be- 
 gin 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 Gaol, Gaol, 
 Gaol afore us, everywhere we turn. There an'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 Gaol : 
 ' Whither thou goest, I can Not go ; where thou 
 lodgest, I do Not lodge ; thy people are Not my 
 people ; Nor thy 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 in- 
 visible 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 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 ! " 
 
 It was well that Trotty knew him oefore he 
 spoke ; for, with any doubt remaining on his 
 mind, the harsh discordant 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, waiting 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 hope- 
 lessness, of such a miserable downfall, that she 
 put her hands before her face and turned away, 
 lest he should see how much it moved her. 
 
 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 ? " 
 
 " And early." 
 
 " So she said. She said you never tired ; or 
 never owned that you tired. Not all the time 
 you lived together. 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 
 
RICHARD A T LAST. 
 
 ^5 
 
 you to tell me nothing more ; and you made 
 
 me a solemn ijromise, Richard, that you never 
 Avould." 
 
 " A solemn promise," he repeated with a 
 drivelling laugh and vacant stare. " A solemn 
 promise ! To be sure. A solemn promise ! " 
 
 ^wakening, as it were, after a time, in the same 
 
 manner as before, he said with sudden '\nima- 
 tion : 
 
 " How can I help it, Margaret? U'hat am I 
 to do ? She has been to me again ! " 
 
 "Again!" cried Meg, clasping her hands. 
 
 'WHITHER THOU GOEST, I CAN NOT GO; WHERE THOU LOUGEST, I DO NOT LODGE; THY PEOPLE ARE NOT 
 
 MY PEOPLE ; NOR THY GOD MY GOD ! " 
 
 ■" Oh ! does she think of me so often? Has she 
 been again ? " 
 
 " Twenty times again," said Richard. " Mar- 
 garet, 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 
 Christmas Books, s. 
 
 (ha, ha ! that an't often), and before 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 ! " 
 
66 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 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 soli- 
 tary 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, Lilian, my sweet girl ! Oh, Lilian, 
 Lilian ! " 
 
 " I saw her," he went on to say, not answer- 
 ing, 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." 
 
 ]\Ieg 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 
 stooj)ing forward in his chair, as if what he said 
 were written on the ground in some half-legible 
 character, which it was his occupation to de- 
 cipher 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 her once, even 
 in my memory, dearly. Others stepped in be- 
 tween 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, interrupting himself for a moment. 
 " I did ! That's neither here nor there. ' Oh, 
 Richard, if you ever did ; if you 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 moment some 
 flash of his old bearing kindled in his form. In 
 the next he went as he had come. Nor did this 
 glimmer 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 w^as 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, blessed 
 and blessing all within your reach, and working 
 out the ends of your Beneficent Creator, look at 
 this! 
 
 She saw the entering figure ; screamed its 
 name ; cried " Lilian ! " 
 
 It was swift, and fell upon its knees before 
 her : clinging to her dress. 
 
 " Up, dear ! Up ! Lilian ! My own dearest ! " 
 
 " Never more, Meg ; never more ! Here I 
 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 breast ! " 
 
 " Never more, Meg ! Never more ! When 
 I first looked into your face, you knelt before 
 me. On my knees before 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 3 but don't raise me. Let it be here. Let 
 
LILIAN DIES. 
 
 67 
 
 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, work- 
 ing out the ends of your Beneficent Creator, look 
 at this ! , 
 
 " Forgive me, IMeg ! So dear, so dear ! For- 
 give 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 INIercy and Compassion ! " 
 
 As she died, the Spirit of the child returning, 
 innocent and radiant, touched the old man with 
 its hand, and beckoned him away. 
 
 FOURTH QUARTER. 
 
 OME new remembrance of the ghostly 
 figures in the Bells; some faint im- 
 pression of the ringing of the Chimes; 
 some giddy consciousness of having 
 seen the swarm of phantoms repro- 
 5^ duced and reproduced until the recoUec- 
 1^^ tion 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, com- 
 fortable 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, un- 
 less 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 nodding 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 panes of window glass in the 
 door, and on the curtain half drawn across them, 
 but in the little shop beyond. A little shop, 
 quite crammed and choked with the abundance 
 of its stock ; a perfectly voracious little shop, 
 with a maw as accommodating and full as any 
 shark's. Cheese, butter, fire -wood, soap, pickles, 
 matches, bacon, table beer, pegtops, sweetmeats, 
 boys' kites, bird seed, cold ham, birch-brooms, 
 hearth-stones, salt, vinegar, blacking, red her- 
 rings, stationery, lard, mushroom ketchup, stay- 
 laces, 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 packthread, ropes of onions, 
 pounds of candles, cabbage nets, and brushes 
 hung in bunches from the ceiling, like extra- 
 ordinary fruit ; while various odd canisters, emit- 
 ting aromatic smells, established the veracity of 
 the inscription over the outer door, which in- 
 formed 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 
 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 parlour 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 expostulate 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 gene- 
 rally 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 recol- 
 lection of them too. At length, in Mrs. Chicken- 
 stalker'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 
 
68 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 apoplectic innocent, who had connected himself 
 in Tiotty's mind with Mrs. Chickenstalker years 
 ago, by giving him admission to the mansion 
 where he had confessed his obligations to that 
 lady, and drawn on his unlucky head such 
 grave reproach. 
 
 Trotty had little interest in a change like this, 
 after the changes he had seen ; but association 
 is very strong sometimes : and he looked invo- 
 luntarily behind the parlour door, where the 
 accounts of credit customers were usually kept in 
 chalk. There was no record of his name. Soms 
 
 ♦•HCYER MORE, MEG; NEVER MURE! 
 
 here! llEREl CLOSE TO VOU, HULDiiMG lU VOU, 1' EELING YOUR DEAR 
 BREATH UPON MY FACE ! " 
 
 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 prett" -jharp 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 former porter of Sir Joseph Bowley, stretch- 
 
MR. TUGBY'S BACK- ATTIC GOING. 
 
 69 
 
 ing 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 che 
 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 ? " 
 
 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. 
 
 " 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 tem- 
 porary elevation. 
 
 " Hard weather indeed/' returned his wife, 
 shaking her head. 
 
 "Ay, ay! 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 risen. 
 
 " 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 gentleman in black, 
 who, with his wristbands tucked up, and his hat 
 cocked loungingly on one side, and his hands in 
 his pockets, sat down astride on the table-beer 
 barrel, and nodded in return. 
 
 " This is a bad business ujvstairs, Mrs. Tugby " 
 said 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 gentle- 
 man, " 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 gentle- 
 man : Tugby having stood in silent consternation 
 for some time : " is Going." 
 
 " 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 
 gentleman, shaking his head. " I wouldn't take 
 the responsibility of saying it could be done 
 myself. You had better leave him where he is. 
 He can't live long." 
 
 " It's the only subject," said Tugby, bringing 
 the butter scale down upon the counter with a 
 crash, by weighing his fist on it, " that we've ever 
 had a word upon ; she and me : and look what 
 it comes to ! He's going to die here, after all. 
 Going to die upon the premises. Going to die 
 in our house ! " 
 
 "And where should he have died, Tugby?" 
 cried his wife. 
 
 " In the workhouse," he returned. " What 
 are workhouses 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 widow'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 knownj 
 but to its honest credit and its good report :- 
 when my widow's name stood over that door., 
 Tugby, I knew him as a handsome, steady, 
 manly, independent youth ; I knew her as the 
 sweetest-looking, sweetest-tempered girl eyes ever 
 saw ; I knew her father (poor old creetur, he fell 
 down from the steeple walking in his sleep, and 
 
THE CHIMES. 
 
 killed himself), for the simplest, hardest-work- 
 ing, 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 more than balanced that account by 
 being not a little depressed in the shop, where 
 he now stood staring at his wife, without attempt- 
 ing a reply ; secretly conveying, however — either 
 in a fit of abstraction or as a precautionary 
 measure — all the money from the till into his 
 own pockets as he looked at her. 
 
 The gentleman upon the table-beer cask, who 
 appeared to be some authorised medical attend- 
 ant 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 
 Chickenstalker : 
 
 " 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 gentlemen 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 gentlemen frightened her, and 
 made her melancholy, 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 
 another 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 afterwards, 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 under- 
 stood himself, you see. I think his mind was 
 troubled by their having broke with one another ; 
 and that but for being ashamed before the 
 gentlemen, 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 ; m ore'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, his health, his 
 strength, his friends, his work : everything ! " 
 
 " He didn't lose everything, Mrs. Tugby," re- 
 turned 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 gentleman, 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." 
 
 " iVnd 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 
 
THE BACK- ATTIC GONE. 
 
 It 
 
 she never could forget that. So they were married ; 
 and when they came home here, and I saw tliem, 
 I hoped that such prophecies as parted them 
 when they were young may not often fulfil them- 
 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 
 himself, observing : 
 
 " I suppose he used her ill as soon as they 
 were married ? " 
 
 " 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 
 tremblings, 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 ! " 
 
 " / 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 discuss 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 be- 
 side 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 ascended. " Learn it frcn the 
 creature dearest to your heart ! " 
 
 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 de- 
 served that name, and pressing to her breast, 
 and hanging down her head upon, an 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 i " 
 
 * The gentleman, not otherwise hard-hearted or 
 indifferent 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 calculations — 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 comfort 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 / 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, " Fol- 
 low 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 w^as still; encourage her, shed 
 tears with her, set nourishment 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 herself and 
 to the child ; he heard it moan and cry ; he saw 
 it harass her, and tire her out, and, when she 
 slumbered in exhaustion, drag her back to con- 
 sciousness, and hold her with its little hands 
 upon the rack; but she was constant 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 wane. 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 
 
72 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 for as many farthings as there were figures on 
 the dial. If she liad 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 wan- 
 dered abroad in the day, lest she should be 
 questioned by her only friend : for any helj) she 
 received from her hands occasioned fresh dis- 
 putes between the good woman and her hus- 
 band ; 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 Fern ! " 
 
 " For the last time." 
 
 He listened like a man pursued : and spoke 
 in whispers. 
 
 " Margaret, my race is nearly run. I couldn't 
 finish it without a parting word with you. With- 
 out one grateful word." 
 
 " What have you done ? " she asked : regard- 
 ing 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." 
 
 He put his hat upon the floor, and took it. 
 And he trembled, as he took it, Irom 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," sne 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 !" \ 
 
 " 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 repeated 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. Some- 
 times 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 ! " was sounded through tlie 
 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 youi 
 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, re- 
 moving 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'll be blazing. When you see the 
 distant sky red, think of me no more ; or, if yoa 
 do, remember what a Hell was lighted up inside 
 of me, and think you see its flames reflected iB 
 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 hunger, cold, and darkness. She 
 paced the room with it the livelong night, hush- 
 ing 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 love 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 un- 
 usual care — ah, vain expenditure of care upon 
 such squalid robes ! — and once more tried ta 
 find some means of life. It was the last day oi 
 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 ofticer ap- 
 pointed to dispense the public charity (the law- 
 ful charity ; not that once preached upon a 
 
LOVE AND DESPERATION. 
 
 73 
 
 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 foot-ball 
 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 doorway 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 till 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. 
 
 She repeated the same mute appeal. 
 
 " Suppose you try and deal somewhere else," 
 he said. " And suppose you provide yourself 
 with another lodging. Come ! Don't you think 
 you could manage it ? " 
 
 She said, in a low voice, that it was very late. 
 To-morrow. 
 
 " 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 de- 
 termined." 
 
 She put her hair back with her hand, and 
 looked in a sudden manner at the sky, and the 
 dark lowering distance. 
 
 " This is the last night of an Old Year, and I 
 won't carry ill-blood and quarrellings and dis- 
 turbances into a New One, to please you nor 
 anybody else," said Tugby, who was quite a 
 retail P'riend and Father. " I Avonder you an'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 I" 
 
 " 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 recol- 
 lections 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 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 1 
 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, composed 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. 
 
 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 
 
74 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 its shadow on the deep, impenetrable, melan- 
 choly shade. 
 
 To the River ! To that portal of Eternity 
 her desperate footsteps tended with the swift- 
 ness 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 distem- 
 pered form, the fierce and terrible love, the 
 desperation that had left all human check or 
 hold behind, 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. 
 
 " 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 i'elt 
 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, I slandered 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 
 stih. 
 
 " Have mercy on her ! " he exclaimed, " as 
 one in whom this dreadful crime has sprung 
 from Love perverted ; from the strongest, deepest 
 Love we fallen creatures 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. 
 
 " 1 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 v.'hich 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, merci- 
 ful and good, I am grateful ! " 
 
 He might have said more ; but, the Bells, the 
 old familiar Bells, his own dear, constant, steady 
 friends, the Chimes, began to ring tlie joy-peals 
 for a New Year : so lustily, so merrily, so hap- 
 pily, 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 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 pro- 
 mise, 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 some- 
 body ; a generous 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 
 happy year ! A life of hapi:)y 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 INIeg; 
 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 hands and kissing it, 
 going from her backwards not to lose sight of 
 it, and running up again like a figure in a magic 
 lantern ; 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 himself 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 
 
TO BE MARRIED TO-MORROW. 
 
 75 
 
 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, deep-mouthed, noble Bells; cast 
 in no common metal ; made by no common 
 founder ; when ^^A they ever chimed like that 
 before? ^-- 
 
 "But, to-day, my pet," said Trotty. "You 
 and Richard had some words to-day." 
 
 " Because he's such a bad fellow, father," said 
 Meg. " An't you, Richard ? Such a head- 
 strong, 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 
 
 " 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, my pet, when I came home ! 
 Why did you cry by the fire ? " 
 
 " I was thinking of the years we've passed 
 together, father. Only that. And thinking you 
 might miss me, and be lonely." 
 
 Trotty was laacking 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 ! " Stop- 
 ping 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 ob- 
 ligations 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 fragmentary good 
 wishes of that sort. The Drum (who was a pri- 
 vate friend of Trotty's) then stepped forward, 
 and said : 
 
 " Trotty Veck, my boy ! It's got about that 
 your daughter is going to be married to-n:orrow. 
 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 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-humouretl 
 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 port- 
 able 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 th'c 
 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 bedridden. 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 an ecstasy — " I 
 should ssiy, 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, Chickenstalker — 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 Dor- 
 setshire ! " 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 by both hands ; 
 saluted Trotty on his cheek again of her own 
 free-will ; and took the child to her capacious 
 breast. 
 
 " \W\\\ Fern ! " said Trotty, pulling on his 
 right-hand muffler. "Not the friend that you 
 was hoping to find ? " 
 
 " Ay ! " returned Will, putting a hand on each 
 of Trotty's shoulders. " And like to prove 
 
76 
 
 THE CHIMES. 
 
 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 mar- 
 row-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 sha- 
 dows come ; and in your sphere — none is too 
 wide and none too limited for such an end — 
 endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them. 
 So may the New Year be a happy one to you, 
 happy to many more whose happiness 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. 
 
 END OF "THE CHIMES. 
 
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 
 
 A FAIRY TALE OF HOME. 
 
 CHlkP THE FIRST. 1 to know, I hope ? The kettle began it, full 
 
 Tfive minutes by the little waxy-faced Dutch clock 
 
 HE kettle began it ! Don't tell me what ' in the corner, before the Cricket uttered a chirp. 
 
 Mrs. Peerybingle said. I know better, i As if the clock hadn't finished striking, and 
 
 Mrs. Peerybmgle may leave it on record to the i the convulsive little Hay-maker at the top of it, 
 
 end of tmie that she couldn't say which of them I jerking away right and left with a scythe in front 
 
 began it ; but, I say the kettle did. I ought > of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half 
 
78 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 an acre of imaginary grass before the Cricket 
 joined in at all ! 
 
 Why, I am not naturally j^ositive. Every one 
 knows that I wouldn't set my own opinion 
 against the opinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless 
 I were quite sure, on any account whatever. 
 Nothing should induce me. But, this is a ques- 
 tion of fact. And the fact is, that the kettle 
 began it at least five minutes before the Cricket 
 gave any sign of being in existence. Contradict 
 me, and I'll say ten. 
 
 Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I 
 should have proceeded to do so, in my very first 
 Avord, 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 skill, you must understand, between 
 the kettle and the Cricket. And this is what 
 led to it, and how it came about. 
 
 Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twi- 
 light, and clicking over the wet stones in a pair 
 of pattens that worked innumerable rough im- 
 pressions of the first proposition 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 mislaid it for an instant ; 
 for, the water being uncomfortably 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 our- 
 selves particularly neat in point of stockings, we 
 find this, for the moment, hard to bear. 
 
 Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obsti- 
 nate. 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 quarrel- 
 some, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the 
 fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. 
 Peerybingle's fingers, first of all turned topsy- 
 turvy, 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 handle 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. Peerybingle, 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 Hay- 
 maker at the top of the Dutch clock, until one 
 might have thought he stood stock-still before 
 the Moorish Palace, and nothing was in motion 
 but the flame. 
 
 He was on the move, however ; and had his 
 spasms, two to the second, all right and regular. 
 But, his sufferings 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 
 Hay-maker 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, growing mellow and musical, began to 
 have irrepressible gurghngs 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 morose- 
 ness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song 
 so cosy and hilarious as never maudlin nightin- 
 gale 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 could 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 rebellious lid — such is the 
 
WELCOME FROM THE CRICKET AND THE KETTLE. 
 
 79 
 
 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. 
 
 That this song of the kettle's was a song of 
 invitation and welcome to somebody out of 
 doors : to somebody at that moment coming on 
 towards the snug small home 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 ; .".nd 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 to- 
 gether ; set a brand upon the clouds for being 
 guilty of such Aveather ; 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 disproportionate to its size, as com- 
 pared with the kettle ; (size ! you couldn't see 
 it !) that, if it had then and there burst itself like 
 an overcharged 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 in- 
 evitable consequence, for which it had expressly 
 laboured. 
 
 The kettle had had the last of its solo per- 
 formance. 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 indescrib- 
 able 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 enthu- 
 siasm. Yet they went very well together, 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 Hay-maker 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 she might have looJced a long way 
 and seen nothing half so agreeable. ^Vhcn 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 i)]ay 
 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 ! Kettle 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 Avould 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, lite- 
 rally 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 ofi" the fire. Mrs. 
 Peerybingle then w^ent 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. 
 Peerybingle got hold of it in that flash of time, 
 / don't know. But a live baby there was in 
 Mrs. Peerybingle'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 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. | 
 
io 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 " Oh goodness, John ! " said Mrs. P. " What 
 a state you're in with the Aveather ! " 
 
 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 
 tire 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. Peerybingle : 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 huge 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 of spirit ; so rough upon the surface, but 
 so gentle at the core ; so dull Avithout, 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 inclining 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 awkwardness, endeavouring to adapt 
 his rude support to her slight need, and make 
 his burly middle age a leaning-staff not inappro- 
 priate to her blooming youth. It was pleasant 
 to observe how Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the 
 background for the baby, took special cogni- 
 zance (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, bend- 
 
 ing 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 founil 
 himself, one day, the father of a young canary. 
 
 " An't he beautiful, John ? Don't he look 
 precious in his sleej)?" 
 
 " Very precious," said John. " Very rr.uch 
 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 Lo 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 ! ^Vhy, he's gasping like a 
 gold and silver fish ! " 
 
 " You don't deserve to be a father, you clon'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 
 north-east, straight into the cart, the v.hole way 
 home." 
 
 " Poor old man, so it has ! " cried Mrs. Peery- 
 bingle, 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 1 Hie, Boxer, bo}' 1 Only let me make 
 the tea first, John ; and then I'll help you with 
 the parcels, like a busy bee. ' How doth the 
 little' — and all the rest of it, you know, Johr. 
 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 ! " 
 
 Notat'all disputing this pi.oition, John went 
 out to see that the boy widi 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 
 
MISS TILLY SLOIVBOY. 
 
 8i 
 
 mists of antiquity. Boxer, feeling that his 
 attentions were due to the family in general, 
 ami 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 sudilen stops; now eliciting a shriek 
 from Till)' Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair 
 near the fire, by the unexpected application of 
 his moist nose to her countenance ; now exhibit- 
 ing 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 teapot, 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 rejecting the caution with some vivacity, 
 that she had a rare and surprising talent for 
 getting this baby into difficulties : 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 garments appeared to be in constant 
 danger of sliding of!" those sharp pegs, her 
 shoulders, on which they were loosely hung. 
 Her costume was remarkable for the partial 
 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 admi- 
 ration at everything, and absorbed, besides, in 
 the perpetual contemplation of her mistress's 
 perfections 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, 
 dressers, 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 
 Christmas Books, 6. 
 
 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 
 difi"erent in meaning, and expresses quite another 
 thing. 
 
 To have seen little ]\Irs. Peerybingle come 
 back with her husband, tugging at the clothes- 
 basket, and making the most strenuous exer- 
 tions 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, cer- 
 tainly, 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 ye= ! John remembered. I should think 
 so ! 
 
 " 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 the}'- 
 were. And really he had reason. They 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 ! " 
 
 "Why, so do I, then," said the Carrier. 
 " So do I, Dot." 
 
 " I love it for the many times I have heard it, 
 and the many thoughts its harmless music has 
 given me. Sometimes, in the twilight, when I 
 have felt a little solitary and down-hearted, 
 John — before baby was here, to keep me 
 
82 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 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 mc, 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 to be an 
 ill-assorted marriage, I being such a child, and 
 you more like my guardian than my husband ; 
 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 think- 
 ing 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 ! 
 /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 mis- 
 tress. 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 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 pastrycook's." 
 
 "And it weighs I don't know what- — whole 
 hundredweights ! " 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 re- 
 turned. 
 
 " 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; screwing 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 toymakers 
 then, and Would it call at Pastrycooks for 
 wedding-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 to- 
 gether, John." 
 
 He might have been thinking of her, or nearly 
 thinking of her, perhaps, as she was in that same 
 school-time. He looked upon her with a thought- 
 ful pleasure, but he made no answer. 
 
 " 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 Tackle- 
 ton 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 enjoy. 
 Dot." 
 
 Even this, his usual sentiment at meal-times, 
 one of his innocent delusions (for his appetite 
 was always obstinate, 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 DEAF STRANGER. 
 
 83 
 
 the room was not so cheerful as it had been. 
 Nothing hkc 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 ?" 
 
 " Tliat'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 Avas 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. Hal- 
 loa ! Yahip there ! Rouse up ! That's my 
 hearty ! " 
 
 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 connect- 
 ing, in her mystified imagination, certain asso- 
 ciations of a religious nature with the phrase, 
 w'as 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 oft'ensive instrument within her 
 reach. This instrument 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 he should walk off 
 with a few young poplar-trees that w-ere tied up 
 behind the cart ; and he still attended on him 
 very closely, worrying his gaiters, in fact, and 
 making dead sets at the buttons. 
 
 " You're such an undeniably good sleeper, 
 sir," said John, when tranquillity was restored ; 
 in the meantime the old gentleman had stood, 
 bareheaded and motionless, 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 1" 
 
 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 inclining 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. 
 O'.i 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 eighteen-pence. Then he got in. And 
 there he is." 
 
 " He's going, John, I think !" 
 Not at all. He was only going to si)eak. 
 " 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 an- 
 other, and leisurely 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 
 perplexity. 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. 
 " Wiie ! " roared John. 
 
 " Indeed ? " observed the Stranger. " Surely ? 
 Very young ! " 
 
 He quietly turned over, and resumed his read- 
 ing. But, before he could have read two lines, 
 he again interrupted himself to say : 
 " Baby yours ? " 
 
 John gave him a gigantic nod : equivalent to 
 an answer 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 doctor, a remarkably beautiful chi-ild ! 
 Equal to the general run of children at five 
 months o-ld ! Takes notice in a way quite won- 
 der-ful ! May seem impossible to you, but feels 
 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 crim- 
 soned, held up the Baby before him as a stub- 
 born and triumphant fact ; while Tilly Slowboy, 
 with a melodious cry of " Ketcher, Ketcher "-— 
 
84 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 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." 
 
 Lefore she could reach it, however, it was 
 opened from without ; being a primitive sort of 
 door, with a latch that any one coukl 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, hough he was no 
 great talker himself. Being opened, it gave 
 admission to a little, meagre, Lhoughtful, dingy- 
 faced man, who seemed to have made himself a 
 great-coat from the sackcloth 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, Unbeknown ! How's Baby, 
 mum ? Boxer's pretty well I hope ? " 
 
 " All thriving, Caleb," replied Dot, " I am 
 sure you need only look at the dear child, for 
 one, to know that." 
 
 "And I'm sure I need only look at you for 
 another," said Caleb. 
 
 He didn't look at her, though ; he had a wan- 
 dering and thoughtful eye, which seemed to be 
 always projecting itself into some other time and 
 place, no matter what he said; a description 
 which will equally apply to his voice. 
 
 " 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 distraught 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 on 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 com- 
 pared with elephants, you know ! Ah, well ! 
 Have you got anything in the parcel line for me, 
 John ? " 
 
 The Carrier put his hand into a pocket of the 
 coat he had taken off; and brought out, care- 
 fully preserved in moss and paper, a tiny flower- 
 pot. 
 
 " There it is ! " he said, adjusting it with great 
 care. " Not so much as a leaf damaged. Full 
 of buds ! " 
 
 Caleb's dull eye brightened as he took it, and 
 thanked him. 
 
 " Dear, Caleb," said the Carrier. "Very dear 
 at this season." 
 
 " Never mind that. It would be cheap to me, 
 whatever it cost," returned the little man. " Any- 
 thing else, John ? " 
 
 " A small box," replied the Carrier. " Here 
 you are ! " 
 
 " ' For Caleb Plummer,' " said tlie 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 Americas had lived, 
 John. You loved him like a son ; didn't you ? 
 You needn't say you did. / 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." 
 
 "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 pinch 
 Boxer's tail, mum, for half a moment, could 
 you ? " 
 
 " Why, Caleb, what a question ! " 
 
 " Oh, never mind, mum ! " said the little man. 
 
TACKLETON'S TOYS. 
 
 85 
 
 " 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 
 receiving 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 ser- 
 vice 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 com- 
 pliments, ]\Ir. Tackleton," said Dot, not with 
 the best grace in the world, '" but for your con- 
 dition." 
 
 " You know all about it, then ? " 
 
 " I have got myself to believe it somehow," 
 said Dot. 
 
 " After a hard struggle, I suppose ? " 
 
 " 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 Dictionary meaning, 
 in the business — Tackleton the Toy merchant 
 was a man whose vocation had been quite mis- 
 understood by his Parents and Guardians. If 
 they had made him a Money Lender, or a sharp 
 Attorney, or a Sherift"'s Officer, or a Broker, he 
 might have sown his discontented oats in his 
 youth, and, after having had the full run of him- 
 self in ill-natured transactions, might have turned 
 out amiable, at last, for the sake of a little fresh- 
 ness and novelty. But, cramped and chafing in 
 the peaceable pursuit of toy making, he was a 
 domestic 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 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 inventions. 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, whereon 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 fjuite a little capital ; 
 and, though no painter himself, he could indi- 
 cate, for the instruction of his artists, with a 
 piece of chalk, a certain furtive leer for the 
 countenances of those monsters, which was safe 
 to destroy the peace of mind of any young gen- 
 tleman between the ages of six and eleven, for 
 the whole Christmas or Midsummer Vacation. 
 
 What he was in toys, he was (as most men are) 
 in other things. You may easily suppose, there- 
 fore, that within the great green cape, which 
 reached down to the calves of his legs, there was 
 buttoned up to the chin an uncommonly plea- 
 sant 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 
 mahogany-coloured tops. 
 
 Still, Tackleton, the toy merchant, was going 
 to be married. In spite of all this, he was going 
 to be married. 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 peer- 
 ing 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. 
 
 Did I mention that he had always one eye 
 wide open, and one eye nearly shut ; and that 
 the one eye nearly shut was always the expres- 
 sive eye ? I don't think I did. 
 
 " That's my wedding-day ! " said Tackleton, 
 rattling his money. 
 
 " Why, it's our wedding-day too," exclaimed 
 trip C Tmpr 
 
 " 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 Tackle- 
 
86 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 ton, nudging the Carrier with his elbow, and 
 taking him a Httle apart. '• You'll come to 
 the wedding ? \Ve're in the same boat, you 
 know." 
 
 "How in the same boat?" inquired the 
 Carrier. 
 
 " A little disparity, you know," said Tackle- 
 ton 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 plea- 
 sure — sociability, you know, and all that." 
 
 " I thought you were never sociable," said 
 John in his plain way. 
 
 " Tchah ! It's of no use to be anything but 
 free Avith you, I see," said Tackleton. " Why, 
 then, the truth is, you have a — what tea-drink- 
 ing people call a sort of a comfortable appear- 
 ance 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 ; Avhat does it matter ? I was going to 
 say, as you have that sort of appearance, 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 appearance 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 ? / 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. What- 
 ever one woman says, another woman is deter- 
 mined 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 un- 
 likely 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 Tackle- 
 ton. 
 
 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 explanatory. 
 
 " I have the humour," said Tackleton : hold- 
 ing 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 \ 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, thought- 
 fully 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 i7ie. But do 
 you think there's anything 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 un- 
 usual alacrity of assent. " To be sure ! Doubt- 
 less you would. Of course. I'm certain of it. 
 Good night. Pleasant dreams ! " 
 
 The Carrier was puzzled, and made uncom- 
 fortable and uncertain, in spite of himself. He 
 couldn't help showing it in his manner. 
 
 " Good night, my dear friend ! " said Tackle- 
 ton compassionately. " I'm oft". We're exactly 
 alike in reality, I 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 
 rine; like a glass vessel. She had risen from her 
 
DOT ASTONISHES THE CARRIER. 
 
 87 
 
 seat, and stood like one transfixed by terror and 
 surprise. The Stranger had advanced towards 
 the fire to warm liimself, and stood within a 
 short stride of her chair. But quite still. 
 
 " Dot ! " cried the Carrier, '" Mary ! Dar- 
 ling ! 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 to- 
 gether, and falling into a wild fit of laughter. 
 Then, sinking from 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'm better, John," she said. " I'm quite 
 well now — I " 
 
 '' John ! " 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 ? ' 
 
 " Onl)- a fancy, John dear — a kind of shock 
 — a something 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 nutcracker \ 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 as he stands !" 
 
 " Not half ugly enough," said Tackleton. 
 " Nothing in him 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, J ohn 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 sooth- 
 ing and tending her, that he had scarcely been 
 conscious of the Stranger's 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 jxirdon, 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 in- 
 dispensable, 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. AVould 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 oft", and frighten it, a precious Pets, a sit- 
 ting 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, 
 v/hen Tilly, after administering as much friction 
 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 Carrier, pacing to and fro. 
 
 He scoutedj from his heart, the insinuations^ 
 
88 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 of the toy merchant, and yet they filled him 
 with a vague, indefinite uneasiness. For, 
 Tackleton was (juick and sly ; 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 '"eady ; and the 
 
 "DID ITS MOTHF.RS MAKE IT UP A BKDS, THEN ! " CRIED MISS SLOWBOV 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 ! " 
 
 visitor, declining all refreshment but a cup of 
 tea, retired. Then, Dot — quite well again, she 
 said, quite well again — arranged the great chair 
 in the chimney-corner for her husband ; filled 
 his pipe and gave it him ; and took her usual 
 little stool beside him on tlie hearth. 
 
 She always 7c>ouId sit on that little stool. I 
 think she must liave 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 
 
CALEB FLUMMER AND HIS BLIND DAUGHTER. 
 
 89 
 
 in the bowl, and then blow down the pipe to 
 clear the tube, and, wlien 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 pro- 
 voking twist in her capital little flice, as she 
 looked down it, was quite a brilliant thing. As 
 to the tobacco, she was perfect mistress 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 scorching it — was Art, high Art. 
 
 And the Cricket and the Kettle, tuning up 
 again, acknowledged it ! The bright fire, blaz- 
 ing up again, acknowledged it ! The little 
 Mower on the clock, in his unheeded work, 
 acknowledged it ! The Carrier, in his smooth- 
 ing 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, gather- 
 ing flowers in the fields ; coy Dots, half shrink- 
 ing from, half yielding to, the pleading of his 
 own rough image ; newly-married Dots, alight- 
 ing at the door, and taking wondering posses- 
 sion 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 grand- 
 children ; withered Dots, who leaned on sticks, 
 and tottered as they crept along. Old Carriers, 
 too, api)eared 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 remained 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 fi.illen on his hearth .^ 
 
 CHIRP THE SECOND. 
 
 ALEE PLUMMER and his Blind 
 Daughter lived all alone by them- 
 selves, as the Story Books say — and 
 my blessing, with yours to back it I 
 hope, on the Story Books, for saying 
 anything in this work-a-day world \ 
 — Caleb Plummer and his Blind Daugh- 
 ter lived all alone by themselves, in a 
 litde 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 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 be- 
 fore 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 enchanted home of 
 Caleb's furnishing, where scarcity and shabbi- 
 ness were not, and trouble never entered. Caleb 
 was no sorcerer ; but in the only magic art that 
 still remains to us, the magic of devoted, death- 
 less love, Nature had been the mistress of his 
 study ; and, from her teaching, all the wonder 
 came. 
 
 The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were 
 discoloured, 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 
 
90 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH.^ 
 
 knew that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper 
 peeling off; the size, and shape, and true pro- 
 portion of the dwelHng, withering away. The 
 BHnd Girl never knew that ugly shapes of delf 
 and earthenware were on the board ; that sor- 
 row 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, exact- 
 ing, and uninterested — never knew that Tackle- 
 ton was Tackleton, in short ; but lived in the 
 belief of an eccentric humorist, who loved to have 
 his jest with them, and who, while he was the 
 Guardian Angel of their lives, disdained 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 potent 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 gentle 
 and more true, that may be so implicitly relied 
 on, or that are so certain to give none but ten- 
 derest counsel, as the Voices in which the 
 Spirits of the Fireside and the Hearth address 
 themselves to humankind. 
 
 Caleb and his daughter were at work together 
 in their usual working-room, which served them 
 for their ordinary 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 mode- 
 rate means ; kitchens and single apartments for 
 Dolls of the lower classes; capital town resi- 
 dences for Dolls of high estate. Some of these 
 establishments were already furnished according 
 to estimate, with a view to the convenience of 
 Dolls of limited income ; 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 nobihty 
 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 respec- 
 tive stations (which experience 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 mis- 
 take. Thus, the Doll-lady of distinction had 
 wax limbs of perfect symmetry ; but, only she 
 and her compeers. The next grade in the social 
 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, be- 
 yond 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 uncommonly tight fit, 
 I assure you ; though they could be crammed 
 in, anyhow, at the roof, and rattled and shaken 
 into the smallest compass. By a bold poetical 
 licence, 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 build- 
 ing. There were scores of melancholy little 
 carts, which, when the wheels Avent round, per- 
 formed most doleful music. Many small fiddles, 
 drums, and other instruments of torture ; no end 
 of cannon, shields, swords, spears, and guns. 
 There were little tumblers in red breeches, in- 
 cessantly sAvarming up high obstacles of red 
 tape, and coming down, head first, on the other 
 side ; and there were innumerable old gentle- 
 men of respectable, not to say venerable appear- 
 ance, insanely flying over horizontal pegs, in- 
 serted, for the purpose, in their own street-doors. 
 There were beasts of all sorts ; horses, in par- 
 ticular, of every breed, from the spotted barrel 
 on four pegs with a small tippet for a mane, to 
 the thorough-bred 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 re- 
 mote, in Caleb Plummer's room. And not in 
 an exaggerated form, for very little handles will 
 move men and women to as strange perform- 
 ances as any Toy was ever made to untler- 
 takc. 
 
 In the Hiidst of all these objects, Caleb and 
 his daughter sat at work. The Blind Girl busy 
 as a Doll's dressmaker; 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 sat well on some alchemist 
 
CALEB'S INNOCENT DECEPTION. 
 
 91 
 
 or abstruse student, were at first sight an odd 
 contrast to his occupation and the triviaUties 
 about him. But trivial things, invented and 
 I)ursued for bread, become vcr}' 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 Chamberlain, 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. 
 
 " In my beautiful new great-coat," answered 
 Caleb, glancing towards a clothesdine in the 
 room, on which the sackcloth garment previously 
 described was carefully 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 brightening 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 Honour ! Bless 
 your Honour, don't say that ! ' I was quite 
 ashamed. I really felt as if I hadn't a right to 
 wear it." 
 
 Happy Blind Girl ! How merry she was in 
 her exultation ! 
 
 " 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, laughing 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 ! " 
 
 " Halloa ! Halloa ! " said Caleb. " I shall 
 be vain presently ! " 
 
 " / 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 foot- 
 fall counterfeited for her ear ; and never had he^ 
 when his heart was heaviest, forgotten the light 
 tread that was to render hers so cheerful and 
 courageous ! 
 
 Heaven knows ! But I think Caleb's vague 
 bewilderment of manner may have half origi- 
 nated in his having confused himself about him- 
 self and everything around him, for the love of 
 his Blind Daughter. How could the little man 
 be otherwise than bewildered, after labouring^ 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 sixpence. 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 
 animation. " What should tire me, Bertha ? / 
 was never tired. What does it mean ? " 
 
 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 weariness from the waist 
 upwards ; and hummed a fragment of a song. 
 It was a Bacchanalian song, something about a 
 Sparkling Bov/l. He sang it with an assumption 
 of a Devil-may-care voice, that made his face a 
 thousand times more meagre and more thought- 
 ful than ever. 
 
 " \\\\3.t ! You're singing, are you ? " said 
 Tackleton, putting his head in at the door. 
 " Go it ! / 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 you 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 
 
92 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 man to joke ! You'd think, if you didn't know 
 him, he was in earnest — wouldn't you now?" 
 
 The r.hnd Oirl smiled anil 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. 
 
 "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 con- 
 sciously or not, upon her being fond of him. 
 
 " Well ! and being there, — how are you ? " 
 said Tackleton 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 Avas such unspeakable affec- 
 tion 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 red sun, father ? " 
 
 " Red in the mornings and the evenings, 
 Bertha," said poor Caleb with a woeful glance 
 at his employer. 
 
 " ^\^len it rose, and the bright light I almost 
 fear to strike myself against in walking, came 
 into the room, I turned the litde 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-waist- 
 coat 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 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 w'ith his own hands he had 
 brought the little rose-tree home for her so care- 
 fully, 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 I 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 
 Picnic 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'm 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 com- 
 prehend me. Ah, Bertha ! INIarried ! Church, 
 parson, clerk, beadle, glass coach, bells, break- 
 fast, bridecake, favours, marrow-bones, cleavers, 
 and all the rest of the tomfoolery. A wedding, 
 you know ; a wedding. Don't you know what 
 a wedding is ? " 
 
 " 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. 
 
A CHECK UPON BERTHA'S GAIETY. 
 
 93 
 
 " I don't think you will," muttered Tackleton, 
 looking at her ; " for you seem to have forgotten 
 all about it already. Caleb ! " 
 
 " I may venture to say I'm here, I suppose," 
 thought Caleb. " Sir ! " 
 
 ^ " Take care she don't forget what I've been 
 saying to her." 
 
 " S/ic never forgets," returned Caleb. " It's 
 one of the few things she an't clever in." 
 
 " Every man thinks his own geese swan"-,'' 
 
 "THE EXTENT TO WHICH HE's WIXKING AT THIS MOMENT!" WHISPERED CALEB TO HIS DAUGHTER. "OH, 
 
 MY GRACIOUS ! " 
 
 observed the toy merchant with a shrug. " Poor 
 devil ! " 
 
 Having delivered himself of which remark 
 with infinite contempt, old Gruff and Tackleton 
 withdrew. 
 
 Bertha remained where he had left her, lost 
 in meditation. 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 remembiancc or some loss; but her sorrow- 
 ful reflections found no vent in words. 
 
 It was not until Caleb had been ocltupied 
 some time in yoking a team of horses to a 
 waggon by the summary process of nailing the 
 
94 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 harness to the vital parts of their bodies, that 
 she drew near to his working-stool, and, sitting 
 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 four-and-twenty. What shall your 
 eyes do for you, dear ? " 
 
 " Look round the room, father." 
 
 " All right," said Caleb. " No sooner said 
 than done, Bertha." 
 
 " 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 cheerfulness and neatness possible in the 
 old crazy shed which Caleb's fancy so trans- 
 formed. 
 
 " You have your working dress on, and are 
 not so gallant 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, kind, and tender. Honest and true, 
 1 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 desperation. 
 
 " 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 com- 
 panion in infirmity 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," 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 happi- 
 ness upon her. 
 
 In the meantime there had been a pretty 
 sharp commotion at John Peerybingle's, for, 
 little Mrs. Peerybingle naturally couldn't think 
 of going anywhere without the Baby; and to 
 get the Baby under way 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 oft", and turn him out a 
 tiptop Baby challenging the world, he was un- 
 expectedly 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 generally — of a 
 slight repast. After which he went to sleep 
 again. Mrs. Peer3-bingle took advantage of this 
 interval, to make lierself as smart in a small way 
 
THE CARRIER MYSTIFIED AGAIN. 
 
 95 
 
 as ever you saw anybody in all your life ; and, 
 during the same short truce, Miss Slowboy in- 
 sinuated herself into a spencer of a fashion so 
 surprising and ingenious, that it had no connec- 
 tion with herself, or anything else in the uni- 
 verse, but was a shrunken, dog's-eared, inde- 
 ]:>endent fact, pursuing its lonely course without 
 the least regard to anybody. By this time, the 
 Baby, being all alive again, was invested, by the 
 \mited eftbrts of Mrs. Peerybingle and Miss 
 Slowboy, with a cream-coloured mantle for its 
 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 u young 
 lady's legs on any terms, I would observe of 
 Miss Slowboy's that there was a fatality about 
 them which rendered them singularly liable to 
 be grazed ; and that she never effected the 
 smallest ascent or descent, without recording the 
 circumstance upon them with a notch, as Robin- 
 son Crusoe marked the days upon his wooden 
 calendar. But, as this might be considered un- 
 genteel, 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 be- 
 hind 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 Veal and Ham Pie and 
 things, and the bottles of Beer. Way ! " 
 
 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 enoudi." 
 
 - " 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 Picnic 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 gentleman " 
 
 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 man- 
 ner. " I am glad you feel so certain of it, be- 
 cause it's a confirmation to me. It's curious 
 that 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 gentle- 
 man," 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 ques- 
 tions 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 left from 
 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." 
 
96 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 " 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 something else. I was 
 very near it, I'll be bound." 
 
 Dot making no re])ly, they jogged on, for 
 some little time, in silence. But, it was not 
 easy to remain silent very long in John Peery- 
 bingle'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 
 nothing 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, passengers 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 gave 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 — espe- 
 cially 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, immediately withdrew into remote back- 
 settlements, without waiting for the honour of a 
 nearer acquaintance. He had business else- 
 where ; 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 forthwith, accompa- 
 nied by at least two or three other some- 
 bodies, to g:ve John Peerybingle and his pretty 
 wife Good day. 
 
 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 parcels, 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 disposition of 
 which councils had to be holden by the Carrier 
 
 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 barking himself hoarse. Of all these 
 little incidents, Dot was the amused and open- 
 eyed spectatress from her chair in the cart ; and 
 as she sat there, looking on — a charming littie 
 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 be- 
 yond measure ; for he was proud to ha\-e his 
 little wife admired, knowing 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 watching 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 waved a multitude 
 of blighted garlands in the wind ; but there was 
 no discouragement in this. It was agreeable to 
 contemplate ; for, it made the fireside warmer in 
 possession, and the summer greener in expect- 
 ancy. 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 bai-ges, frozen up 
 somewhere near a wharf, would smoke their rusty 
 iron chimney-pipes all da}', 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 PICNIC. 
 
 97 
 
 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 advance 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 before 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 dis- 
 tinctions 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 atten- 
 tion by looking at her, as he often did with other 
 l^cople, but touched her invariably. What expe- 
 rience 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, perhaps, but he had got hold of it some- 
 how ; and therefore he had hold of Bertha too, 
 by the skirt, and kept hold, until Mrs. Peery- 
 bingle 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 peevish face, who, in right of having 
 preserved a waist like a bedpost, was supposed 
 to be a most transcendent 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 particularly 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 unques- 
 tionably in his ow^n element, as a fresh young 
 salmon on the top of the Great Pyramid. 
 
 " May ! INIy 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 be- 
 lieve me, quite a pleasant sight to see them 
 embrace. Tackleton Avas a man of taste, be- 
 yond 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 opinion you have 
 had of it. Now, this was not at all the case, either 
 Christmas Books, 7. 
 
 with Dot or May ; for May's face set off Dot's, 
 antl 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 th.e 
 only improvement: you could have suggested. 
 
 Tackleton had brought his leg of mutton, and, 
 wonderful 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 everyday — and, 
 in addition to these dainties, there were the Veal 
 and Ham Pie, and " things," as Mrs. Peery- 
 bingle called them ; which were chiefly nuts and 
 oranges, and cakes, and such small deer. When 
 the repast was set forth on the board, flanked 
 by Caleb's contribution, which was a great 
 wooden bowl of smoking potatoes (he was pro- 
 hibited, 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 senti- 
 ments of awe. She also wore her gloves. But 
 let us be genteel, or die ! 
 
 Caleb sat next his daughter ; Dot and her old 
 schoolfellow 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 leap^_,':^, 
 as if they w-ere 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 proceedings. 
 
 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 Avas a regular dog in the 
 manger, was Tackleton ; and; when they laughed 
 and he couldn't, he t(;ok it into his head, imme- 
 diately, that they must be laughing at him. 
 
 "Ah, May!" said Dot. "Dear, dear, what 
 changes ! To talk of those n>ury school days 
 makes one young again." 
 
 " Wh}', you an't particularly old at any time, 
 are you?" said Tackleton. 
 
98 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 " 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_iv//'ll add to INIay's, I am sure I 
 <lon'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 remem- 
 ber how we used to talk, at school, about the 
 husbands we would choose. I don't know how 
 young, and how handsome, 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." 
 
 May seemed to know which to do ; for the 
 colour Hashed into her face, and tears stood in 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Even the very persons themselves — real live 
 young men — we fixed on sometimes," said DgL 
 " 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 
 j\Ir. Tackleton, why, you'd have slapped me. 
 Wouldn't you. May ? " 
 
 ^Though May didn't say yes, she certainly 
 didn't say no, 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 Tackle- 
 ton'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 bridegrooms 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 cou/d forget them so. No ! they 
 would not believe one word of it ! " 
 
 " Why, Dot ! " exckiimed the Carrier. " Little 
 woman ! '\ 
 
 She had spoken with such earnestness and fir3, 
 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 Tackleton ; 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 rnaae 
 no sign of interest in what had passed. The 
 good lady her mother now interposed, observing, 
 in the first instance, that girls were girls, and 
 bygones bygones, and that, so long as young 
 people were young and thouglitlcss, they would 
 probably conduct themselves like young and 
 thoughtless persons : with two or three other 
 positions of a no less sound and incontrovertible 
 character. She then remarked, 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, althougli reduced in 
 purse, it had some pretensions to gentihty ; and 
 that if certain circumstances, not wholly uncon- 
 nected, 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 romantically and sillily called love, 
 were always the happiest ; and that she antici- 
 pated 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 dis- 
 posed 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 — theychanged 
 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, 
 
DOT FORGETS THE PIPE. 
 
 99 
 
 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 evening, he called for 
 Dot, and took another rest on his way home. 
 This was the order of the day on all the Picnic 
 occasions, and had been ever since their insti- 
 tution. 
 
 There were two persons present, besides the 
 bride and bridegroom elect, who did but in- 
 different honour to the toast. One of these was 
 Dot, too flushed and discomposed to adapt her- 
 self 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 ajixious wonder- 
 ing 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 fur- 
 nishing ; " good-bye ! Time will come, I sup- 
 pose, when yoiiW turn out into the cold, my little 
 friend, and leave your old father to enjoy his 
 pipe and his rheumatics in the chimney-corner ; 
 eh? Where's Dot?" 
 
 " Pm here, John ! " she said, starting. 
 " Come, come ! " returned the Carrier, clap- 
 ping his sounding hands. " Where's the pipe ?" 
 " I quite forgot the pipe, John." 
 Forgot the pipe ! Was such a wonder ever 
 heard of? She ! Forgot the pipe ! 
 
 " I'll— Pll 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 Avas 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 ofiices in 
 which I have commended her discretion, were 
 vilely done from first to last. During the whole 
 process, Tackleton stood looking on maliciously 
 with the half-closed eye ; which, whenever it met 
 hers — or caught it, for it can hardly be 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. 
 
 " ^Vhy, what a clumsy Dot you are this after- 
 noon!" 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, watching his blind 
 daughter, with the same expression on his face. 
 " Bertha ! " 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 
 answered 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 faltered, " is a great affliction ; but " 
 
 " I have never felt it ! " cried the Blind Girl. 
 " I have never felt it in its fulness. 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 sorrow that so weighs 
 me down ! " 
 
 Her father could not choose but let his moist 
 eyes overflow ; 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 ! " 
 
lOO 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 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 cours- 
 ing 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 tlie deep remembrance which is stored there 
 of the many many times when, in the full i)ride 
 of sight and beauty, you have had consideration 
 for Blind Bertha, even when we two were chil- 
 dren, 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 vou are to 
 be His wife has wrung my heart almost to 
 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 good- 
 ness ! " 
 
 While speaking, she had released May Field- 
 ing's hands, and clasped her garments in an 
 attitude of mingled supphcation and love. Sink- 
 ing 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. 
 
 "Grjj"/- Tower !" exclaimed her father, smit- 
 ten at one blow with the truth, " have I deceived 
 her from her cradle, but to break her heart at 
 last ? " 
 
 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, 
 interposed, before May could reply, or Caleb say 
 another word. 
 
 " Come, come, dear Bertha ! come away with 
 me ! Give her your arm. May. So ! How com- 
 posed she is, you see, already ; and how good it is 
 of her to mind us," said the cheery little woman. 
 
 kissing her upon the forehead. " 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 pre- 
 sently came bouncing back, — the saying is, as 
 fresh as any daisy ; / say fresher — to mount 
 guard over that bridling little piece of conse- 
 quence 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 juggling 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 further- 
 more, of two or three people having been talk- 
 ing 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 convulsion in the 
 Indigo Trade, for four-and-twenty hours. But 
 this -becoming deference to her experience, on 
 the 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 infollible 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 needle- 
 work — she carried the contents of a whole work- 
 box in her pocket ; however she contrived it, / 
 don't know — then did a little nursing ; then a 
 little more needlework ; then had a little whis- 
 pering 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 after- 
 noon. Then, as it grew dark, and as it was a 
 solemn part of this Institution of the Picnic that 
 she should perform all Bertha's household tasks, 
 she trimmed the fire, and swept the iiearth, and 
 
AN IMPENDING CRISIS. 
 
 lOI 
 
 set the tea-board out, and drew the curtain, and 
 Jighted a candle. Then, she played an air or 
 two on a rude kind of harp, which Caleb had 
 contrived 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 had 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. 
 
 Caleb and Bertha had returned some time 
 before, and Caleb had sat down to his after- 
 noon'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 wist- 
 fully, 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 expecting 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. The gradual approach of all the sounds. 
 The scratching paw of Boxer at the door ! 
 
 " Whose step is that ? " cried Bertha, starting 
 up. 
 
 " Wiiose step ? " returned the Carrier, stand- 
 ing 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 ;"',aTi's 
 tread behind you ! " 
 
 " She is not to be deceived," observed the 
 Carrier, laughing. " Come along, sir. You'll 
 be welcome, never fear ! " 
 
 He spoke in a loud tone ; and, as he spoke, 
 the deaf old gentleman entered. 
 
 " 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 i)leased." 
 
 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 
 seemed to have no further interest concerning 
 him. 
 
 The Carrier was in high spirits, gooil fellow 
 that he was, and fonder of his little wife than 
 ever. 
 
 "A clumsy Dot she was, this afternoon !" he 
 said, encircling her with his rough arm, as she 
 stood, removed from the rest ; " and yet I like 
 her somehow. See yonder, 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 way here. Why, he's a brave old 
 boy ! I like him for it ! " 
 
 " 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 no 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, accepting it with gracious readiness, they 
 were soon engaged 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 occasional 
 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 ab- 
 sorbed 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. 
 
102 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 " Hush ! John Peerybingle," said Tackleton, 
 
 " I am sorry for this. I am indeed. I have been 
 
 afraid of it. I have suspected 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 ware-room, 
 which was closed for the night. There was no 
 light in the counting-house itself, but there were 
 lamps in the long narrow ware-room; and con- 
 sequently the window was bright. 
 
 "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 Avhisper 
 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 lie loved so, so 
 presented to his view ! — and saw her, with her 
 own hands, adjust the lie upon his head, laugh- 
 ing, 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, open- 
 ing it immediately again, he spread it out before 
 the eyes of Tackleton (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 tliis. 
 
 Tilly was hushing the baby, and she crossed 
 and rccrossed Tackleton a dozen times, repeat- 
 ing 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 ! " 
 
 " Now, Tilly, give me the Baby ! Good night, 
 Mr. Tackleton. Where's John, for goodness' 
 sake ? " 
 
 " He's going to walk beside tlie horse's head," 
 said Tackleton ; who helped her to her seat. 
 
 " My dear John ! Walk ? To-night ? " 
 
 The muftled 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, running 
 back, running round and round the cart, and 
 barking as triumphantly and merrily as ever. 
 
 When Tackleton had gone off likewise, escort- 
 ing 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 de- 
 ceived 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 imper- 
 turbably calm dolls, the agitated rocking-horses 
 with distended eyes and nostrils, the old gentle- 
 men at the street-doors, standing half doubled 
 up upon their failing knees and ankles, the wry- 
 faced nut-crackers, the very Beasts upon their 
 Avay into the Ark, in twos, like a Boarding- 
 School out Avalking, might have been imagined 
 to be stricken motionless with fantastic wonder 
 at Dot being false, or Tackleton beloved, under 
 any combination of circumstances. 
 
 CHIRP THE THIRD. 
 
 HE Dutch clock in the corner 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 
 
 1^1^?) melodious announcements as short as 
 ^^ possible, plunged back into the Moorish 
 '^P Palace again, and clapped his little door 
 behind him, as if the unwonted spectacle were 
 too much for his feelings. 
 
 If the little Hay-maker had been armed with 
 
THE VOICE OF HEARTH AND HOME. 
 
 103 
 
 the sharpest of scythes, and had cut at every 
 stroke into the Carrier's heart, he never could 
 have gashctl 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 endear- 
 ment ; it was a heart in wliich 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 dixk 
 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. 
 
 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 
 Avhom 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 httle stool at his feet. He only knew it 
 when he felt her hand upon his own, and saw 
 her looking up into his face. 
 
 With wonder ? No. It was his first impres- 
 sion, 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. 
 
 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, ta 
 have turned one feather's weight of it against 
 her. But he could not bear to see her crouching 
 down upon the little seat wliere he had often 
 looked on her, with love and pride, so innocent 
 and gay ; and, when she rose and left him, sob- 
 bing as she went, he felt it a relief to have the 
 vacant place beside him rather than Iier 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 pre- 
 maturely 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 complete pos- 
 session 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, gentle- 
 ness into blind ferocity. Her image, sorrowing, 
 humbled, but still pleading to his tenderness 
 and mercy wdth 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 gim 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 
 
I04 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 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 nianv 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." 
 
 " 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. 
 
 SUFI'ERIXG liiil TU CLAi>r HER KuUND 
 
 GALLERY. 
 
 IHEV MOVED SLOWLY DOWN THE DIM WOODEN 
 
 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 s,je has — how often ! — blessed 
 and brightened," 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 trancpil 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 in- 
 fluences and associations ; hear her ! Hear me ! 
 Hear everything that speaks the language of 
 your hearth and home ! " 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD SPIRITS. 
 
 lo? 
 
 " And pleads for her ? " inquired the Carrier. 
 
 •' All things that speak the language of your 
 learth an-l 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 hearth-stone, 
 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 with- 
 out, and the cupboard within, and the house- 
 hold implements ; from everything and every 
 place with which she had ever been fLuniliar, and 
 with which she had ever entwined one recollec- 
 tion of herself in her unhappy husband's mind ; 
 Fairies came trooping forth. Not to stand be- 
 side him as the Cricket 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 know- 
 ledge of it — none but their playful and approv- 
 ing selves. 
 
 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 mourning for ? " 
 
 There were sounds of gaiety outside, musical 
 instruments, 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 partners, one by 
 one, as they passed out, with a comical indiffer- 
 ence, 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 indifterence was not 
 
 her character. Oh no I For presently there 
 came a certain Carrier 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 forsaken 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 nimble 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 Carrier'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 consternation, 
 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 manner. 
 
 They never showed her otherwise than beauti- 
 ful and bright, for they were Household Spirits 
 to whom falsehood 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 her, with the Baby, gossiping 
 among a knot of sage old matrons, and affect- 
 ing to be wondrous 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 t,he 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 mincing merrily 
 about that very room to teach him how to dance 1 
 
 They turned, and stared immensely at him 
 when they showed her with the Blind Girl ; for, 
 though she carried cheerfulness and animation 
 
io6 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTIL 
 
 with her wheresoever she went, she bore those 
 influences into Caleb Plummer's home, heaped 
 up and running over. The BHnd 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 feign- 
 ing 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 won- 
 derful expression in her whole self, from her neat 
 foot 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 thoughtful night, they showed her to him 
 sitting on her favourite seat, with her bent head, 
 her hands clasped on her brow, her failing 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 com- 
 forted and kissed her, and pressed on one another, 
 to show sympathy and kindne?': lo her, and for- 
 got 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 Fairies had 
 been busy with him. All night she had been 
 amiable and blameless 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 — he 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 
 wedding-day too. Ah ! how little he had looked 
 for such a close to such a year ! 
 
 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 mer- 
 chant coming in his chaise along the road. As 
 
 the chaise drew nearer, he perceived that Tackie- 
 ton was dressed out sprucely for his marriage, 
 and that he had decorated his norse's head with 
 flowers and favours. 
 
 The horse looked much more like a bride- 
 groom 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 yourself this morning ? '' 
 
 " I have had but a poor night, Master Tackle- 
 ton," returned 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 hay." 
 
 The 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." 
 
 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 mistress 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 em- 
 phasized with various ne\v raps and kicks at the 
 door, which led to no result whatever. 
 
 " Shall I go ? " said Tackleton. " It's curi- 
 ous." 
 
 The Carrier, who had turned his face from the 
 door, signed him to go if he would. 
 
 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, looked in, went in,; and 
 soon came 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 window's open. I don't see any marks — to 
 be sure, it's almost on a level with the garden ; 
 
THE CARRIER'S RESOLVE. 
 
 107 
 
 but I was afraid there might have been some — 
 some scuflle. Eh ? " 
 
 He nearly shut up the expressive eye alto- 
 gether ; 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 
 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. 
 
 '• You showed me last night," he said at length, 
 " my wife ; my wife that I love ; secretly " 
 
 " And tenderly," insinuated Tackleton. 
 
 " — Conniving at that man's disguise, arid 
 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." 
 
 " I confess to having had my suspicions 
 always," said Tackleton. " And that has made 
 me objectionable here, I know." 
 
 " 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 
 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 companion. Plain and un- 
 polished as it was, it had a something 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 hus- 
 band, and perhaps know her value better than 
 another : and in this way I reconciled it to my- 
 self, and came to think it might be possible that 
 we should be married. And, in the end, it came 
 about, and we were married ! " 
 
 " Hah ! " said Tackleton with a significant 
 shake of his head. 
 
 " I had studied myself; I had had experience 
 of myself; 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 con- 
 sidered 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 under- 
 stand 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 ! " 
 
 The toy merchant gazed at him in astonish- 
 ment. He went on in a softer tone : 
 
 " Did I consider," said the Carrier, " that I 
 took her — at her age, and with her beaut)^ — 
 from her young companions, 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 plod- 
 ding 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. 1 
 took advantage of her hopeful 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 wink- 
 ing. Even the half-shut eye was open now. 
 
 " Heaven bless her ! " said the Carrier, " for 
 the cheerful 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 ! / not to find it out, who have seen her 
 
io8 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 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 suspected it, till last night ! Poor 
 girl ! That I could ever hope she would be 
 fond of me ! That I could ever believe 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 //////. 
 
 " 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 happi- 
 ness I have known under this roof bear witness ! 
 It will be some help and comfrs^^ to me when I 
 am here alone." 
 
 " Here alone ?" said TackletOn. " Oh ! Then 
 you do mean to take some notice of this ? " 
 
 " I mean," returned the Carrier, " to do her 
 the greatest kindness, and make her the best 
 reparation, in my power. I cani release her from 
 the daily pain of an unequal marriage, and the 
 struggle to conceal it. She shall "be as free as I 
 can render her." 
 
 " Make her reparation ! " exclaimed Tackle- 
 ton, twisting 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," 
 exclaimed 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 surprise, 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 wit- 
 nessed. It was wrong. But, otherwise than this, 
 she is innocent, if there is truth on earth ! " 
 
 " If that is your opinion " Tackleton 
 
 began. ^ 
 
 " So, let her go ! " pursued the Carrier. " Go, 
 wuh 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 wlien I'm not 
 a drag upon her, and she wears the cliain I have 
 riveted more lightly. This is the day on which 
 I took her, with so little thought for her enjoy- 
 ment, 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, pretend- 
 ing to be ignorant of what has affected 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 remained there. She never looked at Tackle- 
 ton, 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 earnestness, she went no 
 nearer to him even then. How difterent 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 Carrier 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 that." 
 
 " Well ! " muttered Tackleton. " I must be 
 off, for, when the clock strikes again, it'll be 
 necessary for me to be upon my way to church. 
 Good morning, John Peerybingle. 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, 
 accompanying him to the door. 
 
BEFORE THE CLOCK STRUCK. 
 
 109 
 
 " Oh, quite ! " 
 
 " And you'll remember what I have said ? " 
 
 " Why, if you compel me to make the obser- 
 vation," 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 ! " 
 
 " I wish I could give it to you" said Tackle- 
 ton. " As I can't, thankee. Between ourselves, 
 (as I told you before, eh ?) I don't much think 
 I shall have the less joy in my married life be- 
 cause 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 neighbouring elms ; 
 unwilling to return until the clock was on the 
 eve of striking. 
 
 His little wife, oeing left alone, sobbed pite- 
 ously; 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 hsve gone to 
 my old home ? " 
 
 " Ow, if you please, don't ! " cried 'Jilly, throw- 
 ing 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 encountered 
 Caleb Plummer leading in his daughter. This 
 spectacle restoring her to a sense of the pro- 
 prieties, 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, St. Vitus manner on the 
 floor, and at the same time rummaged with her 
 face and head among the bedclothes, apparently 
 
 deriving much relief from those extraordinary 
 operations. 
 
 " jMary ! " said Bertha. " Not at the mar- 
 riage ! " 
 
 " I told her you would not be there, mum," 
 whispered Caleb. " I heard as much last night. 
 But bless you," said the little man, taking her 
 tenderly by both hands, " /don't care for what 
 they say. / 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 eft'ect 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 poor father 
 aftenvards. But it's best for her that she should 
 be undeceived, and I must bear the conse- 
 quences 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 v»'ife 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 remained 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 re- 
 stored to sight this instant, and not a word were 
 spoken, I could choose her from a crowd ! My 
 sister ! " 
 
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 *' Bertha, my dear ! " said Caleb. " I have 
 something on my mind I want to tell you while 
 we three are alone. 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 bewildered face. " I have 
 wandered from the truth, intending 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," 
 sa d Caleb, " and I meant to smooth it for 
 you. I have altered objects, changed the cha- 
 racters of people, invented many things that 
 never have been, to make you happier. I have 
 had concealments from you, put deceptions on 
 you, God forgive me ! and surrounded you with 
 fancies." 
 
 " But living people are not fancies ? " she 
 said hurriedly, 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 
 answered in a term of keen reproach. " What 
 and whom do / know ? I who have no leader ! 
 I so miserably blind ! " 
 
 In the anguish of her heart, she stretched out 
 her hands, as if she were groping her way ; 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 looks, and in his nature. 
 Cold and callous always. Unlike what I have 
 painted him to you in everything, my child. In 
 everything." 
 
 " Oh, wh}^," cried the Blind Gid, 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 ? O Heaven, 
 how blind I am ! How helpless and alone ! " 
 
 Her afflicted father hung his head, and offered 
 no reply but in his penitence and sorrow. 
 
 She had been but a short time in this passion 
 of regret when the Cricket on the Hearth, un- 
 heard by all but her, began to chirp. Not mer- 
 rily, 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 Giri, " tell me what 
 my home is. What it truly is." 
 
 " It is a poor place. Bertha ; very poor and 
 bare indeed. The house will scarcely keep out 
 wind and rain another winter. It is as roughly 
 shielded from the weather. Bertha," Dot con- 
 tinued 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 Gii I spread her hands before her face 
 again. But in quite another 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 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 sor- 
 rowfully on the back, with his face resting on 
 his hand. As if his child should comfort him, 
 Bertha." 
 
 " Yes, yes. She will. Go on." 
 
 " Pie 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, 
 
WHOSE STEP WAS IT? 
 
 Ill 
 
 I have seen him many times before, and striv- 
 ing hard in many ways, for one great sacred 
 object. And I honour his grey head, and bless 
 him ! " 
 
 The BHnd 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," 
 exclaimed the Blind Girl, holding him in her 
 embrace, " that I would love so dearly, and 
 would cherish so devotedly, as this ! The greyer, 
 and more worn, the dearer, fother ! Never let 
 them say I am blind again. There's not a fur- 
 row in his face, there's not a hair upon his head, 
 that shall be forgotten in my prayers and thanks 
 to Heaven ! " 
 
 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 bene- 
 factor whom I first began to reverence 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 looking, now, towards the little 
 Hay-maker in the Moorish meadow, she saw 
 that the clock was within a few minutes of strik- 
 ing, 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 anything of her that was not true ? " 
 
 " I should have done it, my dear, I'm afraid," 
 returned 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 hap- 
 pen, 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 evi- 
 dently 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 recollect 
 you did say. Bertha, ' Whose step is that ? ' and 
 why you should have taken any greater observa- 
 tion 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 sur- 
 prised at hardly anything." 
 
 Caleb wondered what this meant ; perceiving 
 that she 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 de- 
 light ; 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 cer 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 
 clear son. Your own dear living, loving brother, 
 Bertha ! " 
 
112 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 All honour to the little creature for her trans- 
 ports ! All honour to her tears and laughter, 
 when the three were locked in one another's 
 arms ! All honour to the heartiness with which 
 she met the sunburnt sailor-fellow, with his dark 
 streaming hair, half-way, and never turned her 
 rosy little mouth aside, but suftered him to 
 kiss it freely, and to press her to his bounding 
 heart ! 
 
 And honour to tlie Cuckoo too — why not ?— 
 for bursting out of the trap-door in the Moorish 
 Palace like a housebreaker, and hiccougliing 
 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 yourself! Him that you 
 were always such a friend to !" 
 
 The Carrier advanced to seize him by the 
 hand ; but, recoiling, as some feature in his face 
 awakened a remembrance of the Deaf Man in 
 the Cart, said : 
 
 " Edward ! Was it you ? " 
 
 " Now tell him all ! " cried Dot. " Tell him 
 all, Edward ; 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 kept far away from him, replied, 
 " Well ! that's but fair. I 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 per- 
 haps (you may tell me) didn't know her own 
 mind. But I knew mine, and I liad a passion 
 for her." 
 
 " You had ! " exclaimed the Carrier. " You !" 
 
 " Indeed I had," returned the other. " And 
 she returned it. I have ever since believed she 
 did, and now 1 am sure she did." ' 
 
 " Heaven help me ! " said the Carrier. " This 
 is worse than all." 
 
 " Constant to her," said Edward, " and return- 
 ing, full of hope, after many hardships 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 bestowed 
 herself upon another and a richer man. I had 
 no mind to reproach her ; but I wished to see 
 her, and to 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 obstruc- 
 tion on the one hand, or presenting my own in- 
 fluence (if I had any) before her, on the other ; 
 I dressed myself unlike 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 
 for herself, as she had burned to do, all through 
 this narrative ; " and when she knew his pur- 
 pose, 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 artifice — being 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 believed him to be 
 dead ; and how she had at last been over-per- 
 suaded 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 be- 
 tween them, as she had often done before in 
 old times, John, and would sound his sweet- 
 heart, and be sure that what she — me again, 
 John — said and thought was right. And it was 
 right, John ! And they were brought together, 
 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 
 anything to the purpose ; and never so com- 
 pletely irresistible as in her present transports. 
 There never were congratulations so endearing 
 and delicious as those she lavished on herself 
 and on the Bride. 
 
DOT TELLS ALL. 
 
 "3 
 
 Amid the tumult of emotions in his breast, 
 ihe honest Carrier had stood confounded. Fly- 
 ing, 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 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 
 Peerybingle 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 re- 
 membered May and Edward such young lovers ; 
 and knew that her heart was far away from 
 Tackleton. You believe that, now don't you, 
 John ? " 
 
 John was going to make another rush at tLis 
 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." 
 
 " 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 because 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. 
 
 " 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 
 Christmas Books, 8. 
 
 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 affection that I had (it was a great deal, 
 John) I gave you, as you well deserve, long, long 
 ago, and I have no more left 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, unmitigated, 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 congratulations, 
 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 
 outside the door ; and somebody exclaimed that 
 Gruff and Tackleton was coming back. Speedily 
 that worthy gentleman appeared, looking warm 
 and flustered. 
 
 " Why, what the Devil's this, John Peery- 
 bingle ? " said Tackleton. " There's some mis- 
 take. 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 parti- 
 cular 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 being vexed," returned the other 
 with a smile, " I am as deaf to harsh dis- 
 course this morning as I was to all discourse 
 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 little piece of silver paper, apparently 
 containing a ring, from his waistcoat pocket. 
 
114 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 
 
 "■ Miss Slowboy," said Tacklcton, " will you 
 have the kindness to throw that in the fire ? 
 Thankee." 
 
 " It was a previous engagement, quite an old 
 engagement, that prevented my wife from keep- 
 ing her appointment 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, blushing. 
 
 " Oh, certainly ! " said Tackleton. " Oh, to 
 be sure ! Oh, it's all right, it's quite correct ! 
 Airs. Edward Plummer, I infer ? " 
 
 " That's the name," returned the bridegroom. 
 
 " Ah ! I shouldn't have known you, sir," 
 said Tackleton, scrutinising his face narrowly, 
 and making a low boAV. " I give you joy, 
 sir ! " 
 
 " Thankee." 
 
 " 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 Peery- 
 bingle, I am sorry. You understand me ; that's 
 enough. It's quite correct, ladies and gentle- 
 men all, .■"<nd perfectly satisfactory. Good 
 morning ! " 
 
 With these words he carried it off, and carrier 
 himself off too : merely stopping at the door to 
 take the 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 noAv to 
 make such a day of it as should mark these 
 events for a high Feast and Festival in the 
 Peerybingle Calendar for evermore. Accord- 
 ingly, 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 tur- 
 nips, 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 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 every- 
 body 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 minutes past two ; a 
 man-trap in the kitchen at half-past two pre- 
 cisely; and a pitfall in the garret at five-and- 
 twenty minutes to three. The Baby's head was, as 
 it were, a test and touchstone for every descrip- 
 tion 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 circumstances 
 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 with- 
 out 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 Expe- 
 dition embraced her; and she very soon had 
 her gloves on, and was on her way to John 
 Peerybingle's in a state of unimpeachable gen- 
 tility ; with a paper parcel at her side containing 
 a cap of state, almost as tall, and quite as stift, 
 as a mitre. 
 
 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 direction ; 
 and, being apprised thereof, hoped she might 
 take the liberty of looking where she pleased. 
 At last they came ; a chubby little couple, jog- 
 ging along in a snug and comfortable little way 
 that quite belonged to the Dot family ; and Dot 
 
MK. TALKLETON IN A NEW ASPECT. 
 
 *i5 
 
 and her mother, si'le by side, were wonderful to 
 see. They were so hke each other. 
 
 Then, Dot's mother had to renew her ac- 
 quaintance 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 INIrs. Fielding'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 
 Sparkling 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 
 occurred, just as he finished the last verse. 
 
 There was a tap at the door ; and a man came 
 staggering 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." 
 
 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 knowledge, 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 re- 
 joicing. 
 
 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 again. 
 
 The whole party would have experienced great 
 difficulty in finding v/ords for their astonishment, 
 even if they had liad 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 Tacklcton himself 
 walked in. 
 
 ''Mrs. Peerybingle ! " said the toy merchant, 
 hat in hand, " I'm sorry. I'm more sorry than 
 I was this morning. I have had time to think 
 of it. John Peerybingle ! I am sour by dis- 
 position ; but I can't help being sweetened, 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 night, 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 Jiad 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 even- 
 ing, will you ? " whispered Dot. 
 
 He had been very near it, though. 
 
 There wanted but one living creature to make 
 the 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 rebeUious 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 taproom, and laid him- 
 self down before the fire. But, suddenly yielding 
 to the conviction that the Deputy was a humbug, 
 and must be abandoned, he had got up again, 
 turned tail, and come home. 
 
 There was a dance in the evening. With 
 which general mention of that recreation, I 
 should have left it alone, if I had not some 
 reason to suppose that it was quite an original 
 dance, and one of a most uncommon figure. It 
 was formed in an odd way ; in this way. 
 
 Edward, that sailor-fellow — a good free dash- 
 
%i6 
 
 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 
 
 ing sort of fellow he was — had been telling them 
 various marvels 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 Bertlia'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 ; / think because 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 every- 
 
 <♦ AFTER DINNER CALEB SANG THE SONQ ABOUT THE SPARKLING BOWL.** 
 
 body said the same, except May ; May was 
 ready. 
 
 So, May and Edward get up, amid great 
 applause, to dance alone ; and Bertha plays her 
 liveliest tune. 
 
 Well ! if you'll believe me, they had 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 wonderfully. Tackleton 
 no sooner sees this than he skims across to Mrs. 
 Fielding, takes her round the waist, and follows 
 
A DANCE TO FINISH WITH, 
 
 1 1.7 
 
 suit. Old Dot no sooner sees this than up he is, 
 all alive, whisks oft" 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 diving hotly in 
 among the other couples, and eftecting 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 ! 
 
 But what is this ? Even as I listen to them 
 blithely, and turn towards Dot, for one last 
 glimpse of a little figure very pleasant to me, she 
 and the rest have vanished 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. 
 
 END OF "the cricket ON THE HEARTH." 
 

 09, -r'5riSii,#0S^^i' 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE= 
 
 A LOVE STORY. 
 
 PART THE FIRST. 
 
 NCE upon a time, it matters little 
 when, and in stalwart England, it 
 matters little where, a fierce battle 
 was fought. It Avas 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, deriv- 
 ing 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 quag- 
 mire, 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 souglit 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 
 
THE BA TTLE-FIELD. 
 
 119 
 
 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 mourn- 
 lul watch upon it, and many a wind from every 
 quarter of the earth blew over it, befo'-e the 
 ti'aces of the fight were worn away. 
 
 They lurked and lingered for a long time, but 
 survived in little things; for, Nature, far above 
 tlie 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 swallows 
 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, Avhere the red sunsets faded. Crops were 
 sown and grew up, and Avere gathered in ; the 
 stream that had been crimsoned turned a w'ater- 
 mill ; men whistled at the plough ; gleaners and 
 hay-makers w-ere 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 chimneys ; Sabbath bells 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, underneath those fertile 
 spots, heaps of men and horses lay buried indis- 
 criminately, enriching the ground. The hus- 
 bandmen who ploughed those places shrunk 
 i'rom the great worms abounding 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, w'here deadly struggles had been made; 
 and trampled parts where not a leaf or blade 
 ■would grow. For a long time, no village girl 
 would dress her hair or bosom with the sweetest 
 flower from that field of death : and, after many 
 a year had come and gone, the berries growing 
 there were 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, obliterated, 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 re- 
 membered 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 chil- 
 dren 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 plough- 
 share 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 
 corselet, 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 whitewashed 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 soldiers would have stared in, hun- 
 dreds 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 between 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 riek-yard 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 hun- 
 dred years ago, than in one little orchard at- 
 tached 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 w-omen 
 stan'iing on ladders, gathering the apples from 
 the trees, stopped in their work to look down, 
 and share 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. 
 
 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 
 
X20 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 agreeable company than we are. It was charm- 
 ing to see how these girls danced. They had 
 no spectators but the apple-pickers on the lad- 
 ders. 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 admiring than they could help danc- 
 ing. How they did dance ! 
 
 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 acci- 
 dent, a trifle in the Spanish style, which is a free 
 and joyous one, I am told, deriving a delightful 
 air of off-hand inspiration 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 — every- 
 thing 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 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, bestirred themselves to work again 
 like bees. 
 
 The more actively, perhaps, because an elderly 
 gentleman, who was no other than Doctor Jed- 
 dler 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, 
 
 stopping short, and speaking to himself. " 1 
 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, ha, ha ! — its impos- 
 sible 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 pretty face, still close to his^ 
 " I suppose it's jour birthday." 
 
 " 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, imprinting 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, ha, ha ! " 
 
 Doctor Jeddler was, as I have said, a great 
 philosopher, 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 beginning, 
 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, adjusting 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?" re- 
 tu;ned 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 
 
DOCTOR JEDDLER AND HIS TWO DA UGHTERS. 
 
 i2r 
 
 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 AHred'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 scatter- 
 ing 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 him. If he 
 
 expects that I But, dear Grace, why need 
 
 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 earnest- 
 ness opposed to lightness, yet with love respond- 
 ing 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 happens 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 sym- 
 pathy and true affection, in her wayward fancies, 
 than their ages seemed to warrant. Great cha- 
 racter of mother, that, even in this shadow 
 and faint reflection of it, purifies the heart, and 
 raises the exalted nature nearer to the angejs ! 
 
 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 themselves 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 ami 
 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 ridi- 
 culous business as it was. 
 
 The Doctor never dreamed of inquiring whe- 
 ther his cliildren, or either of them, helped in 
 any way to make the scheme a serious one. But 
 then he was a Philosopher. 
 
 A kind and generous man by nature, he had 
 stumbled, by chance, over that common Philo- 
 sopher's stone (much more easily discovered 
 than the object of the alchemist's 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 
 discontented face, emerged from the house, and 
 returned to this call the unceremonious acknow- 
 ledgment of " Now then ! " 
 
 " Where's the breakfast - table ? " said the 
 Doctor. 
 
 " In the house," returned Britain. 
 
 *' Are you going to spread it out here, as you 
 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 women had done getting in the apples, could 
 I ? " said Britain, his voice rising with his reason- 
 ing, 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 Cle- 
 mency ? " 
 
 " 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 
 vigorously ; presenting, as she did so, an appear- 
 ance 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 tight- 
 
TJIE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 ness that made it comical. But, the extraordi- 
 nary homehness of her gait and manner would 
 have superseded any face in the world. To say 
 iliat 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 olifer the 
 mildest outHne 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 themselves just as it happened, is to render 
 faint justice to her equanimity. Her dress was 
 a prodigious pair of self-willed shoes, that never 
 wanted to go where her feet went ; blue stock- 
 ings ; a printed gown of many colours, 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 laud- 
 able anxiety to be tidy and compact in her O'.ni 
 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 sym- 
 metrical arrangement. 
 
 Such, in outward form and garb, was Clemency 
 Newcome ; who was supposed to have uncon- 
 sciously originated a corruption of her own 
 Christian name, from Clementina (but nobody 
 knew, for the deaf old mother, a very pheno- 
 menon 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 com- 
 posedly, until she suddenly remembered some- 
 thing else it wanted, and jogged off to fetch it. 
 
 " Here are them two lawyers a-coming, mis- 
 ter ! " 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 morn- 
 ing ! 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 preparations for departure, that 
 he was up and out by daybreak. Good morn- 
 ing, 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 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 thought- 
 fully, with his hands in his pockets. " The great 
 farce in a hundred acts I " 
 
 " You wouldn't, I am sure," said Mr. Snitchey, 
 standing 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, peep- 
 ing sharply into his blue bag, " was wrong, 
 Doctor Jeddler, and your philosophy is alto- 
 gether 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, 
 looking out of the blue bag. 
 
 " Never," returned the Doctor. 
 
 " If you ever do," said j\Ir. Snitchey, " per- 
 haps 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 seised 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, 
 nowadays. 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 difficult 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 
 
ALFRED HEATHFIELD. 
 
 123 
 
 sound. Whereas they ought to grate upon their 
 lunges, sir." 
 
 Mr. Craggs seemed positively to grate upon 
 his own hinges as he delivered this opinion ; to 
 which he communicated immense cftect — being 
 a cold, hard, dry man, dressed in grey and white, 
 like a Hint ; 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 dis- 
 ])utants : for Snitchey was like a magpie or raven 
 (only not so sleek), and the Doctor had a 
 streaked fiice like a winter pippin, with here and 
 there a dimple to express the peckings of the 
 birds, and a very little bit of pigtail behind that 
 stood for the stalk. 
 
 As the active figure of a hardsome 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 accorded 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 
 prophets 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. 
 
 " Returns ! " Craggs murmured in a deep 
 voice, all alone. 
 
 " Why, what a battery ! " exclaimed Alfred, 
 stopping short, " and one — two — -three — all fore- 
 boders 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, plea- 
 sant Grace — so I defy you all ! " 
 
 " If you please, mister, / was the first, you 
 know," said Clemency Newcome. '' 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, maybe," 
 said Alfred, shaking hands heartily with the 
 Doctor, and also with Snitchey and Craggs, and 
 
 then looking round. " Where are the Good 
 
 heavens ! " 
 
 With a start, productive for the moment of a 
 closer partnership between Jonathan Snitchey 
 and Thomas Craggs than the subsistmg 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 J cddler 
 made a hasty move towards the breakfast, and 
 they all sat down at table. Grace presided ; 
 but so discreetly stationed herself as to cut oft* 
 her sister and Alfred from the rest of the com- 
 pany. Snitchey and Craggs sat at opposite 
 corners, with the blue bag between them for 
 safety ; the Doctor took his usual position, oppo- 
 site to Grace. Clemency hovered galvanically 
 about the table as waitress ; and the melancholy 
 Britain, at another and a smaller board, acted 
 as Grand Carver of a round of beef and a ham. 
 
 "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 
 supplied the Doctor (he seemed to know that 
 nobody else wanted anything to eat), he lin- 
 gered 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 off. 
 
 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 '' 
 
 " Farce as this, sir," hinted Alfred. 
 
 " — 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 associations pleasant to 
 us four, and with the recollection of a long and 
 amiable intercourse. TThat's not to the purpose." 
 
 " Ah ! yes, yes. Doctor Jeddler," said the 
 young man. " It is to the purpose. Much to 
 the purpose, as my heart bears witness this 
 morning ; and as ycoirs 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 
 
124 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 tender 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 con- 
 siderations 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 I 
 Ha, ha, ha ! Of all days in the foolish year ! 
 Why, on this day, the great battle was fought on 
 
 ' BY-THE-BYE," AND HE LOOKED INTO THE PRETTY FACE, STILL CLOSE TO HIS, *' I SUPPOSE IT'S YOUR 
 
 BIRTHDAY." 
 
 this ground ! On this ground where we now 
 sit, where I saw my two girls dance this morn- 
 ing, where the fruit has just been gathered for 
 our eating from these trees, the roots of which 
 are struck in Men, not earth, — so many lives 
 were lost, that, within my recollection, genera- 
 
 tions 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 inconsiderate rejoicers in the victory, why 
 
INFIDELITY AND FAITH. 
 
 "5 
 
 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 dis- 
 tinct about it, but the mourners of the slain. 
 Serious, too !" said the Doctor, laughing. " Such 
 a system ! " 
 
 " 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 a mountain, and 
 turn hermit." 
 
 *' Besides — so long ago," said Alfred. 
 
 " 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? /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," pur- 
 sued Mr. Snitchey, " having been already put a 
 thousand times in possession of my opinion in 
 the course of our discussions, that, in its having 
 gone to law, and in its legal system altogether, 
 I do observe a serious side — now, really, a some- 
 thing 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 ? " ex- 
 claimed the Doctor. 
 
 " It's this evil-inclined blue bag," said Cle- 
 mency, " always tripping up somebody ! " 
 
 •' With a purpose and intention in it, I was 
 saying," resumed Snitchey, " that commands re- 
 spect. 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, he ! 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 pro- 
 perty ; 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 ; tliink of the infinite number of in- 
 genious and interminable Chancery suits, to 
 which this pleasant prospect may give rise ; 
 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 ? " 
 
 Mr. Craggs having signified assent, Mr, 
 Snitchey, somewhat freshened by his recent 
 eloquence, observed that he would take a little 
 more beef and another cup of tea. 
 
 " I don't stand up for life in general," he 
 added, rubbing his hands and chuckling ; *' it's 
 full of folly ; full of something worse. Profes- 
 sions 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, he ! 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 ? " 
 
 " 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 terrible 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 apparent lightnesses and contradic- 
 tions — not the less difficult to achieve, because 
 they have no earthly chronicle or audience — done 
 every day in nooks and corners, and in little house- 
 holds, 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 
 
126 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 hope 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 
 liere, or my good spinster sister, Martha Jeddler ; 
 who had what she calls her domestic trials ages 
 ago, and has led a sympathising life with all 
 ^orts 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 everything. One must either laugh or 
 cry at such stupendous 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 preference, if a deep sepulchral 
 sound that escaped him might be construed into 
 a demonstration of risibility. His face, how- 
 ever, 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 ainysterious 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 re- 
 proachful 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 getting 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 anything. I don't make out anything. 
 I don't believe anything. And I don't want 
 anything." 
 
 Although this forlorn summary of his general 
 condition may have been overcharged in an 
 access of despondency, Benjamin Britain — some- 
 times called Little Britain to distinguish him 
 from Great ; as we might say Young England, | 
 
 to express Old England with a decided differ- 
 ence — 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 suggestions 
 from within and 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 com- 
 prehended 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 Doctor a species 
 of advantage 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 Doctor. " 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 pro- 
 bation appointed by your poor father being over, 
 away you go now, your own master, to fulfil his 
 second desire. And long before your three 
 years' tour among the foreign schools of medi- 
 cine 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, INIarion ? " 
 
 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. 
 
 " I haven't been, I hope, a very unjust stev/ara 
 in the execution of my trust," pursued the Doc- 
 tor; "but I am to be, at any rate, fomially dis- 
 charged, and released, and wliat not this morn- 
 ing ; and here are our good friends Snitchey and 
 Craggs, with a bag-full of papers, and accounts, 
 and documents, for the transfer of the balance 
 of the trust fund to you (I wish it was a more 
 difticult 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." 
 
CLEMENCY GIVES A READING. 
 
 127 
 
 " And duly witnessed as by law required," said 
 Snitchey, pushing away his plate, and taking out 
 the papers, whicli his partner proceeded to spread 
 upon the table ; '' and Self and Craggs having 
 been co-trustees with you. Doctor, in so far as 
 the lund was concerned, we shall want your two 
 servants to attest the signatures. Can you read, 
 Mrs. Newconie ? " 
 
 "■ I an't married, mister," said Clemency. 
 
 "Oh! I beg your pardon. I should think 
 not," chuckled Snitchey, casting his eyes over 
 her extraordinary figure. " You can read ? " 
 
 " A little," answered Clemency. 
 
 " The marriage service, night and morning, 
 eh?" observed the lawyer jocosely. 
 
 " No," said Clemency. " Too hard. I only 
 reads a thimble." 
 
 " Read a thimble ! " echoed Snitchey. " What 
 arc 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 the 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 an't married, mister," observed Clemency. 
 
 " Well, Newcome. Will that do?" said the law- 
 yer. '-What does the thimble say, Newcome?" 
 
 How Clemency, before replying to this ques- 
 tion, 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 handkerchief, an 
 end of wax candle, a flushed apple, an orange, 
 a lucky penny, a cramp-bone, a padlock, a pair 
 of scissors in a sheath more expressly describ- 
 able 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 
 biacuit, all of which articles she intrusted indi- 
 vidually and severally to Britain to hold, — is of 
 no consequence. Nor how, in her determina- 
 tion 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 as- 
 sumed, and calmly maintained, an attitude 
 apparently inconsistent with the human anatomy 
 and the laws of gravity. It is enough that at 
 last she 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 ex- 
 pense. " 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. 
 
 " And the nutmeg-grater ? " inquired the head 
 of the Firm. 
 
 " The grater says," returned Clemency, " * Do 
 as you — wold — be — done by.' " 
 
 " Do, or you'll be done brown, you mean," 
 said Mr. Snitchey. 
 
 " I don't understand," retorted Clemency, 
 shaking her head vaguely. " I an'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 clients. They are 
 serious enough in that — whimsical as your world 
 is — and lay the blame on us afterwards. We, 
 in our profession, are litde else than mirrors, 
 after all, Mr. Alfred ; but, we are generally con- 
 sulted by angry and quarrelsome people who 
 are not in their best looks, and it's rather hard 
 to quarrel with us if we reflect unpleasant 
 aspects. I think," said Mr. Snitchey, " that I 
 speak for Self and Craggs ? " 
 
 " Decidedly," said Craggs. 
 
 " And so, if Mr. Britain will oblige us with a 
 mouthful 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 Jic was ; for 
 he stood in a state of abstraction, mentally 
 balancing the Doctor against the lawyers, av.^l 
 the lawyers against the Doctor, and their cHents 
 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 philo- 
 
128 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LiFE. 
 
 sophy ; and, in short, bewildering himself as 
 much as ever his great namesake has done with 
 theories and schools. Eat Clemency, who was 
 his good Genius — though he had the meanest 
 possible opinion of her understanding, by reason 
 of her seldom troubling herself with abstract 
 speculations, and being always at hand to do 
 the right thing at the right time — having pro- 
 duced the ink in a twinkling, 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 
 literal construction of that phrase than usual, 
 that he soon became quite fresh and brisk. 
 
 How he laboured under an apprehension not 
 uncommon 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 committing 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 (the 
 cramped hand, to say nothing of the phraseo- 
 logy, being so much Chinese to him), and also 
 on turning them round to see whether there 
 was anything fradulent 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 mys- 
 terious 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 r^tch for the coach. Time flies, 
 Alfred 1 " 
 
 " Yes, sir, yes," returned the young man hur- 
 riedly. " Dear Grace ! a moment ! Marion — 
 so young and beautiful, so winning and so much 
 .'.^niired, dear to my heart as nothing else in life 
 ii — remember ! I len.ve Marion to you ! " 
 
 " She has always been a sacred charge to me, 
 Alfred. She is doubly so now. I will be faith- 
 ful 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 tranquil 
 mind, how bravely I would leave this place to- 
 day!" 
 
 "Would you?" she answered with a quiet 
 smile. 
 
 " And yet, Grace Sister seems the natu- 
 ral word." 
 
 " Use it I " 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 serving 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 Bri- 
 tain. 
 
 " 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 before 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, admira- 
 tion, 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 
 
SNITCHEY AND CRAGGS. 
 
 129 
 
 those honest eyes looked back, so calm, serene, 
 and cheerful, on herself and on her lover. 
 
 " And when all that is past, and we are old, 
 and living (as we must !) together — close to- 
 gether — 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 lioped 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 happily in spite of all ; we'll make this 
 day the happiest in all the year, and keep it as 
 a treble birthday. Shall we, dear ? " 
 
 " 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 engagements 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 con- 
 tinue 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 some- 
 times, 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. 
 
 " He waves his hat to you, my love," said 
 Grace. "Your chosen husband, darling. 
 Look ! " 
 
 The younger sister raised her head, and, for a 
 moment, turned it. Then, turning back again, 
 Christmas Books, q. 
 
 and fully meeting, for the first time, those calm 
 eyes, fell sobbing on her neck. 
 
 '* Oh, Grace ! God bless you ! But I cannoi" 
 bear to see it, Grace ! It breaks my heart." 
 
 PART THE SECOND. 
 
 NITCHEY 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 
 ^^^5 pitched battles for a great many con- 
 "p^^ tending parties. Though it could hardly 
 \^P 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 
 Plaintift", and now aimed a chop at that De- 
 fendant, now made a heavy charge at an estate 
 in Chancery, and now had some light skirmish- 
 ing among an irregular body of small debtors, 
 just as the occasion served, and the enemy hap- 
 pened 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 convenient, 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 
 consideration 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 
 fallen out — or had been picked out, perhaps, by 
 the wandering thumbs and forefingers of be- 
 wildered 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 fire-proof, with people's 
 names painted outside, which anxious visitors 
 
THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 felt themselves, by a cruel enchantment, obliged 
 to spell backwartls 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 prin- 
 ciple suspicious of ]\Ir. Craggs ; and Mrs. Craggs 
 Avas on principle suspicious of Mr. Snitchey. 
 " Your Snitcheys, indeed ! " the latter lacly 
 would observe, sometimes, to Mr. Craggs ; using 
 that imaginative plural as if in disparagement of 
 an objectionable pair of pantaloons, 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, / 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 Craggs's eye." Notwith- 
 standing this, how^ever, they were all very good 
 iriends \\\ general ; and Mrs. Snitchey and Mrs. 
 Craggs maintained 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 comfort- 
 ably. 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 
 papers on the tables. Here, nearly three years' 
 flight had thinned the one and swelled the other 
 since the breakfast in the orchard, when they 
 sat together in consultation at night. 
 
 Not alone ; but with a man of thirty, or about 
 that time of life, negligently dressed, and some- 
 what haggard in the face, but well made, well 
 attired, and well-looking ; who sat in the arm- 
 chair of state, with one hand in his breast, and 
 the other in his dishevelled hair, pondering 
 moodily. Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs sat op- 
 
 posite each other at a neighbouring desk. One 
 of the fire-proof boxes, unpadlocked and ojjened, 
 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 premises 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 Eng- 
 land .? 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. 
 
 Mr. Snitchey coughed as if to deprecate the 
 being supposed to participate in any figurative 
 illustration of a legal position. Mr. Craggs, as 
 if to express that it was a partnership view of 
 the subject, also coughed. 
 
 " Ruined at thirty ! " said the client. " Humph i '' 
 
 "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 nursing " 
 
 " A little Devil ! " said the client. 
 
 '' ]\Ir. 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 attention 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 in- 
 
MR. WARDEN IS IN LOVE. 
 
 i3t 
 
 volved estate, sir? In good hands? S. and 
 C.'s, say ? Six or seven years." 
 
 " To starve for six or seven years ! " said the 
 dient widi 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. ]kit, 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 of 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 ; 3-ou 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 i\Ir. 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 Jiis man ; at any 
 rate, his dry, shrewd, whimsical manner had a 
 favourable influence on the client's moody state, 
 and disposed him to be more free and unre- 
 served. Or, perhaps the client knew his man, 
 and had elicited such encouragement as he had 
 received, to render some purpose he was about 
 to disclose the more defensible in appearance. 
 Gradually raising his head, he sat looking at his 
 immovable 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 — excuse me — Craggs." 
 
 " I beg Mr. Craggs's })ardon," 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. 
 
 " 1 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 and merit." 
 
 "A single lady, I trust?" said Mr. Snitchey 
 with great 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 corroborate 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 certainlyJiave been actions for breach," 
 said Mr. Snitchey, " brought against both spin- 
 sters and widows, but, in the majority of 
 cases " 
 
 " Cases ! " interposed the client impatiently. 
 " Don't talk to me of cases. The general pre- 
 cedent 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 no- 
 tliing ? " 
 
 " I thinlc, sir," observed Mr. Snitchey, gravely 
 addressing 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 expen- 
 sive, 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 Ave 
 knew he was going on well under the Doctors 
 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 
 
132 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 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, part- 
 ners 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, evi- 
 dently anxious and disc mfited. " He can't do 
 it, sir. She dotes on Mr. Alfred." 
 
 " 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 : 
 shrunk from the least allusion to it, with evident 
 distress." 
 
 " 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 conversation, 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 faller> in love with me, as I 
 have fallen in love with her." 
 
 " He, he ! Mr. Alfred, her old playfellow 
 too, you remember, Mr. Craggs," said Snitchey 
 with a disconcerted 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 libertine," thought the shrewd 
 lawyer, " to seem to catch the spark he wants 
 from a young lady's eyes." 
 
 " 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, v/hich 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 intention, 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. 
 Craggs?" said Snitchey, looking at him across 
 the client. 
 
 " / 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 Doctors 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 knoiv — she dreads, and con- 
 templates with misery : that is, the return of this 
 old lover. If anything in the world is true, it is 
 true that she dreads his return. 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 oft" my own 
 grounds ; but, that house, and those grounds, 
 and many an acre besides, will come back to me 
 
THIS DAY MONTH. 
 
 "^IZ 
 
 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 
 leturn she dreadr (remember that), and in whom, 
 
 or in any man, my passion is not surpassed. 
 Who is injured yet? It is a fair case through- 
 out. 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 
 
 I THINK IT WILL BE BETTER NOT TO HEAR THIS, MR. CRAGGS ? " SAID SNITCHEY, LOOKING AT HIM 
 ACROSS THE CLIENT. — " I THINK NOT," SAID CRAGGS. — BOTH LISTENING ATTENTIVELY. 
 
 this, and I will tell you no more. Now you 
 
 know my purpose 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 tlie client after attentively 
 
 watching the two faces. " This day month. 
 To-day is Thursday. 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 1 " 
 
134 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 "Good night !" returned the client, shaking 
 hands with the Firm. " You'll live to see me 
 making a good use of riches yet. Henceforth 
 the star of my destiny is, Marion ! " 
 
 " Take care of the stairs, sir," rei)lied 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. 
 A\' hen 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 fire-proof 
 box, and putting it away ; " or, if he don't, a 
 litde 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 cha- 
 racter becoming stronger and mote resolved of 
 late. More like her sister's." 
 
 " Mrs. Craggs was of the same opinion," re- 
 turned Craggs. 
 
 " I'd really give a trifle to-night," observed 
 Mr. Snitchey, who was a good-natured man, " if 
 I could believe that Mr. Warden was reckoning 
 without his host ; but, light-headed, capricious, 
 and unballasted as he is, he knows something of 
 the world and its jjeople (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 philo- 
 sophy. 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, ]\Ir. 
 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 
 Avorking at her needle. Marion read aloud from 
 a book before her. The Doctor, 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 ear- 
 nest nature that her own motherless youth had 
 rii^ened in the elder sister long ago. But she still 
 appeared 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 cheerful, 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 be- 
 tween the cradle and the grave ' " 
 
 " Marion, my love !" said Grace. 
 
 "Why, Puss!" exclaimed her father, "what's 
 the matter?" 
 
 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 
 eftbrt to command it when thus interrupted. 
 
 " ' — To part with whom, at any step betw-een 
 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 footsteps too 
 reproachfully ! Let no kind looks, no well- 
 remembered smiles, be seen upon thy phantom 
 face. Let no ray of affection, welcome, gentle- 
 ness, forbearance, cordiality, shine from th}- 
 white head. Let no old loving word, or tone, 
 rise up in judgment against thy deserter; 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. 
 
ALFRED COMING HOME. 
 
 135 
 
 "What! overcome by a story book!" said 
 Doctor Jeddler. " 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. 
 
 "And what's the matter \\\\\\youV' said the 
 Doctor. 
 
 " Oh, bless you, nothing ain't the matter with 
 me!" returned Clemency — and truly too, to 
 judge from her well-soaped 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 v/orld, to have 
 the arms chafed in that narrow passage than the 
 temper : and 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 know," 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 or ecstasy which 
 pervaded her elbows, as if she were embracing 
 herself, that " one," in its most favourable inter- 
 pretation, meant a chaste salute. Indeed, the 
 Doctor himself seemed alarmed for the moment ; 
 but quickly regained his composure, as Cle- 
 mency, having had recourse to both her pockets 
 — beginning with the right one, going away to 
 the wrong one, and afterwards coming back to 
 tlie right one again — produced 'c ^3tter 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, 
 gradually rising higher and higher on tiptoe, in 
 lier impatience to hear the news, and making a 
 cork-screw of her apron, and a bottle of her 
 
 mouth. At last, arriving at a climax of sus- 
 pense, and seeing the Doctor still engaged in 
 the i)erusal 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." 
 
 " Directly J " 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 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 INIarion 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, picturing the happiness of this re- 
 turn, 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 gratitude 
 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 fluttered light, until the sympathetic figure 
 trembles. 
 
 Doctor Jeddler, in spite of his system of phi- 
 losophy — which he was continually contradict- 
 ing 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, look- 
 ing at the fire, " when you and he, Grace, usetl 
 to trot about arm-in-arm, in his holiday-time, 
 
Tt3^ 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 like a couple of walking dolls. You re- 
 member ? " 
 
 " I remember," she answered with her plea- 
 sant laugh, and plying her needle busily. 
 
 " This day month, indeed ! " mused the Doc- 
 tor. " That hardly seems a twelvemonth ago. 
 And where was my little Marion then ? " 
 
 " Never far from her sister," said Marion 
 cheerily, " however little. Grace was every- 
 thing 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 antici- 
 pating our wishes, and always ready to forget 
 her own, even in those times. I never knew 
 you positive or obstinate, Grace, my darling, 
 even then, on any subject but one." 
 
 " 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. "No- 
 thing 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 Duchess, 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 bur- 
 den of an old song which the Doctor 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 all 
 the time, and that he has never once needed my 
 good services. May I tell him so, love ? " 
 
 "Tell him, dear Grace," replied Marion, 
 " that there never was a trust so generously, 
 nobly, steadfastly discharged ; 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 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 
 accomplished her mission and lingered in the 
 room until she had made herself a party to the 
 news, descended to tlie kitchen, where her co- 
 adjutor, Mr. Britain, was regaling after supper, 
 surrounded by such a plentiful collection of 
 bright pot-lids, well-scoured saucepans, bur- 
 nished dinner-covers, 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 unani- 
 mous 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 con- 
 descendingly to Clemency when she stationed 
 herself at the same table. 
 
 " Well, Clemmy," said Britain, " how are you 
 by this time, and what's the news ? " 
 
 Clemency told him the news, which he re- 
 ceived 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, pufiing 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 ! " 
 
 " 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 idea. " Yes," 
 she assented, "I'm a likely subject for that; 
 an't I ? " 
 
 " Ybu^ll never be married, you know," c-aid 
 Mr. Britain, resuming his pipe. 
 
CLEMENCY AND MR. BRITAIN. 
 
 137 
 
 " Don't you think I ever shall, though ? " said 
 Clemency in perfect good faith. 
 
 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 mo- 
 mentous, required consideration. After blow- 
 ing out a great cloud of smoke, and looking at 
 it with his head now on this side, and new on 
 that, as if it were actually the question, and he 
 Avere surveying it in various aspects, Mr. Britain 
 replied that he wasn't altogether clear about it, 
 but — ye-es — he thought he might come to that 
 at last. 
 
 " 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 joy- 
 ful life as she will lead, and wouldn't have had 
 quite such a sociable sort of husband as she will 
 have," said Clemency, 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 
 aftbrd 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 abruptly reminiscent of its heal- 
 ing qualities as a balsam, she anointed her left 
 elbow with a plentiful application of that re- 
 medy. 
 
 " You see I've made a good many investiga- 
 tions of one sort and another in my time," pur- 
 sued 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 
 things, for ,1 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 book-stall, ready 
 
 to fly out if anybody pocketed a volume ; and, 
 after that, I was light porter to a stay and 
 mantua maker, in which capacity I was em- 
 ployed to carry about, in oil-skin baskets, 
 nothing but deceptions — which soured my 
 spirits and disturbed my confidence in human 
 nature ; and, after that, I heard a world of dis- 
 cussions 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 ofl'er 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 comfort- 
 ably 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 wears 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 hugged 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 Cle- 
 menc3^ " 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, without the smallest 
 inclination to dispute it, did the like, and laughed 
 as heartily as he. 
 
 " 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. 
 
i.^S 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 " 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 ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 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 myself, for satisfaction's sake. Undo 
 the door while I light this, Clemmy ! " 
 
 Clemency comphed 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 widi the poker, and casting 
 the light of the lantern far and near in all direc- 
 tions. 
 
 *' It's as quiet as a churchyard," said Cle- 
 mency, looking 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 re- 
 tire ! Not now ! " 
 
 Clemency started with surprise and trouble 
 as, following the direction of the speaker's eyes, 
 she saw a dark figure standing in the doorway. 
 
 " In another moment you maybe discovered," 
 said Marion. " Not now. Wait, if you can, in 
 some concealment. 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 expressive, in its jjassion of en- 
 treaty, than the most eloquent appeal in words 
 — Marion withdrew ; as the light of the return- 
 ing 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 imagination. 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 hei ^ ■* and were, after the noise and the 
 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 imme- 
 diately, 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 ISIarion returned. 
 
 " Open the door," she said ; " and stand 
 there, close beside 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 key, looked round on the 
 young creature waiting to issue fordi 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 interposed 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 so 
 keenly on the tender heart of Clemency, and so 
 filled it to overflowing with sorrow and compas- 
 sion, that, bursting into tears, she threw her arms 
 round Marion's neck. 
 
 "It's little that I know, my dear," cried Cle- 
 mency, "very little ; but I know that this should 
 not be. Think of what you do ! " 
 
 " I have thought of it many times," said 
 Marion gently. 
 
 " Once more," urged Clemency. " Till to- 
 morrow." Marion shook her head. 
 
 " For Mr. Alfred's sake," said Clemency Avith 
 homely earnestness. " Him that you used to 
 love so dearly once ! " 
 
 She hid her face, upon the instant, in her 
 
"77/AS £>AV MONTir' IS COME. 
 
 139 
 
 hands, repeating " 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 
 ]\Ir. 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 frienil 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 together earnestly and long ; and the hand 
 that held so fast b)- Clemency's, now trembled, 
 now turned deadly cold, now clasped and closed 
 on hers, in the strong feeling of the speech it 
 emphasized unconsciously. When they returned, 
 he followed to tlie 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 ex- 
 pression 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 con- 
 fidence, implicitly. Her chamber safely reached, 
 she fell upon her knees; and, with her secret 
 weighing on her heart, could pray ! 
 
 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, of its own will, protectingly and tenderly 
 even in sleep — and breathe upon tha 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 (juick 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 de- 
 lights. To shed a ruddier glow upon the faces 
 gathered round the hearth, and draw each fire- 
 side 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 cheer- 
 ful 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 ; 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 1 
 
 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 danc- 
 ing-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 noise- 
 lessly presided everywhere, and was the cheerful 
 mind of all the preparations. Many a time that 
 day (as well as many a time Avithin the fleeting 
 month preceding it), did Clemency glance anx- 
 iously, and almost fearfully, at Marion. She saw 
 her paler, perhaps, than usual ; but there was a 
 sweet composure on her face that made it love- 
 lier than ever. 
 
 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 sor- 
 rowful, 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 prophet, dear." 
 
 Her sister smiled, and held her in her 
 arms, 
 
 " A moment, Grace, Don't leave me yet. 
 Are you sure that I v/ant nothing more ? '' 
 
 Her care was not for that. It was her sister's 
 
Z40 
 
 THE BA TTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 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." 
 
 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 mid- 
 night — 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, Bri- 
 tain ! 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 
 ue'U be nonsensical 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 for- 
 give her. That you will forgive her. That slie 
 
 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 ! U'hat have I to forgive ? Heyday, 
 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 supplication. Kiss me 
 again, Puss. There ! Prospective and retrospec- 
 tive — 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 111 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 arrived, 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 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 disgrace 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 be- 
 come oi him V inquired the Doctor, 
 
 The feather of a Bird of Paradise in Mrs, 
 Snitchey's turban trembled as if the Bird of 
 Paradise were alive again, 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 busi- 
 ness 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 per- 
 haps the reason why Mrs. Snitchey's Bird-of- 
 Paradise feather quivered so portentously, and 
 why all the pendent bits on Mrs. Craggs's ear- 
 rings shook like little bells. 
 
 " I wonder _;w/; 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 v/ith an ofliice has no business to 
 be married 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, ]\Ir. Craggs, without much heeding these 
 remarks, looked uneasily about him until his 
 eye rested on Grace, to whom he immediately 
 presented himself, 
 
 " Good evening, ma'am," said Craggs. "You 
 look charmingly. Your — Miss — your sister, Miss 
 Marion, is she " 
 
MARION NOT MISSING. 
 
 141 
 
 " Oh ! she's quite well, Mr. Craggs." 
 
 " 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 througli 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 com- 
 menced. The bright fire crackled and sparkled, 
 rose and fell, as though it joined the dance 
 itself, in right good fellowship. Sometimes, it 
 roared as if it would make music too. Some- 
 times, 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 
 chininey. 
 
 Another dance was near its close, when l\Ir. 
 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 arrange- 
 ments 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 partner ; 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 wind. There's no 
 such lonely road anywhere else. That's one 
 thing. The tide flows, he says, an hour before 
 midnight — about this time. I'm glad it's over." 
 
 Mr. Snitchey wiped his forehead, which looked 
 hot and anxious. 
 
 " \Vhat 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 
 suppose. 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. 1 haven't been so 
 nervous since we've been in partnership. I in- 
 tend to spend the evening now, Mr. Craggs." 
 
 Mrs. Craggs and Mrs. Snitchey joined them 
 as he announced 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. Snitchey," said Mrs. Snitchey. " I hope 
 the office is satisfied." 
 
 " Satisfied with what, my dear ? " asked Mr. 
 Snitchey. 
 
 " With the exposure of a defenceless woman 
 to ridicule 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 oflice 
 with everything opposed to domesticity, that 1 
 am glad to know it as the avowed enemy of m\- 
 peace. There is something honest in that, at 
 all events." 
 
 " My dear," urged Mr, Craggs, " your good 
 opinion is invaluable, but /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 " 
 
 Mrs. Snitchey cut this reference very short by 
 hitching 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 ; /'m no companion 
 to you, Mr. Snitchey." 
 
 " Yes, yes, you are, my dear," he interposed. 
 
 " No, no, I'm not," said Mrs. Snitchey with 
 
142 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 a majestic smile. "I know my station. Will 
 
 you look at your chosen companion, Mr. 
 Snitchey ; at your referee, at the kee])er of your 
 secrets, at the man you trust ; at your other self, 
 in short ? " 
 
 The habitual association of Self with Craggs 
 occasioned Mr. Snitchey to look in that direc- 
 tion. 
 
 " 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 fascination 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, 
 treachery, 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 con- 
 science), that wouldn't bear the light? Did 
 anybody but his Snitcheys come to festive enter- 
 tainments 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 noonday (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 proposed 
 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 decline," and " I wonder you 
 can dance out of the office •' (but this jocosely 
 now), each lady graciously accepted an^d took 
 her place. 
 
 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 were 
 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 them- 
 selves, these two shares in the business, rather 
 than be left out of it altogether. But, ceitain 
 it is that each wife went as gravely and steadily 
 to work in her vocation as her husband did in his, 
 and would have considered it almost impossible 
 for the Firm to maintain a successful and respect- 
 able existence Avithout her laudable exerdons. 
 
 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 pegtop highly varnished ; and 
 breathless j\Ir. 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 slily, 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 oft' their bright faces, and 
 it kindled up a general illumination in ]\Irs. 
 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 upon the trees ; 
 and the breeze rustled in the room as if an in- 
 visible company of fairies, treading in the foot- 
 steps of the good substantial revellers, Avere 
 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 tem- 
 pest, 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 ? "' 
 
 " 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? " 
 
MARION LOST. 
 
 143 
 
 " Just twelve, sir. He can't be long, sir." 
 
 " Stir I. ) the fire and throw another log upon 
 it," said tue Doctor. " Let him see his welcome 
 blazing out upon the night — good boy ! — as he 
 conies along 1 " 
 
 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. ?Ie knew that one 
 of those trees rustled musically in the summer- 
 time at the window of IMarion's chamber. 
 
 The tears were in his eyes. His heart throbbed 
 so violently that he could hardly bear his happi- 
 ness. 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 cf old ; and 
 he would be among them in an instant. 
 
 He dismounted from the chaise, and telling 
 the driver — even that was not easy in his agita- 
 tion — 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 re-passed 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 re- 
 coiled with a half-suppressed cry. 
 
 "Clemency," he cried, '' doc't you know me ?" 
 
 " Don't come in !" she answered, pushing him 
 back. " Go away. Don't ask me why. Don't 
 come in." 
 
 " What is the matter? " he exclaimed. 
 
 " I don't know. I — I am afraid to think. 
 Go back. Hark ! " 
 
 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, Avas heard ; 
 and Grace — distraction 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 looking 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. 
 
 " 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 w^e will not forget her — and is 
 gone."' 
 
 " With whom ? A\'herc ? " 
 
 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 attitude, clasping one 
 of Grace's cold hands in his own. 
 
 There was a hurried running to and fro, con- 
 fusion, noise, 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 consola- 
 tion ; some admonished him that Grace must 
 be removed into the house, and that he pre- 
 vented it. He never heard them, and he never 
 moved. 
 
 The snow fell fast and thick. He looked up 
 for a moment in the air, and thought that those 
 w'hite ashes strewn upon his hopes and misery 
 were suited to them well. He looked round on 
 the whitening ground, and thought how Marion's 
 
144 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 footprints would be hushed and covered up as 
 soon as made, and even that remembrance of her 
 blotted out. But he never felt the weather, and 
 he never stirred. 
 
 PART THE THIRD. 
 
 HE world had grown six years older since 
 that night of the return. It was a warm 
 autumn afternoon, and there had been heavy 
 
 T 
 
 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 joy- 
 ful 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, brown, red : its dif- 
 
 " WHAT IS THE MATTER ? " HE EXCLAIMED. 
 " I don't know. I — I AM AFRAID TO THINK. 
 
 GO BACK. HARK ! " 
 
 ferent forms of trees, with rain-drops 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 wherewith 
 to look up at the shining sky. Corn-fields, 
 hedgerows, fences, homesteads, 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 invigorated 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 tri- 
 umphant glory. 
 
THE NUTMEG GRATER. 
 
 M5 
 
 At such a time, one little roadside inn, snugly 
 sheltered behind a great elm-tree, with a rare 
 seat for idlers encircling its capacious bole, ad- 
 dressed a cheerful front towards the traveller, as 
 a house of entertainment ought, and tempted 
 him with many mute but significant assurances 
 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 prick up his ears. The 
 crimson curtains in the lower rooms, and the 
 pure white hangings in the little bedchambers 
 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 surfaces of bottles and 
 tankards. «. 
 
 On the door-step appeared a proper figure of 
 a landlord, 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 confidence — 
 too calm and virtuous to become a swagger — in 
 the general resources of the inn. The super- 
 abundant moisture, trickling from everything 
 after the late rain, set him off well. Nothing 
 near him was thirsty. Certain top-heavy dah- 
 lias, looking over the palings of his neat, 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- 
 brier, roses, wallflowers, the plants at the win- 
 dows, and the leaves on the old tree, were in the 
 beaming state of moderate company that had 
 taken no more than was wholesome for them, 
 and had served to develop their best quali- 
 ties. 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 esta- 
 blished, an uncommon sign. It was called The 
 Nutmeg Grater. And underneath that house- 
 hold word was inscribed, up in the tree, on the 
 Christmas Books, io. 
 
 same flaming board, and in the like golden cha- 
 racters. By IJenjamin Britain. 
 
 At a second glance, and on a more minute 
 examination of his face, you might have known 
 that it was no other than Benjamin Britain him- 
 self who stood in the doorway — reasonably 
 changed by time, but for the better ; 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 leisurely 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. 
 " Memorandum, 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 utterly cast away and helpless 
 without her. 
 
 " 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 ma- 
 tronly 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 cart 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 be- 
 longed to any one but Clemency 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. 
 
146 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 " Why, you see, Ben, I've had a deal to do ! " 
 she repUed, looking busily after the safe removal 
 into the house of all the packages and baskets ; 
 " eight, nine, ten — where's eleven ? 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. Bri- 
 tain, unbonneting her own round countenance 
 (for she and her husband were by this time in 
 the bar), and smoothing her hair with her open 
 hands. " Give us a kiss, old 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 done everything. 
 Bills all settled — turnips sold — brewer's account 
 looked into and paid— 'bacco-pipes ordered — 
 seventeen pound four paid into the Bank — 
 Doctor Heathfield's charge for little Clem — 
 you'll guess what that is — Doctor Heathfield 
 won't take nothing again, Ben." 
 
 " I thought he wouldn't," returned Britain. 
 
 " No. He says whatever family you was to 
 have, Ben, he'd never put you to the cost of a 
 halfpenny. Not if you was to have twenty." 
 
 Mr. Britain's face assumed a serious expres- 
 sion, and he looked hard at the w^all. 
 
 " Ain't 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 an't 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 Ben, 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 
 Nutmeg 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. — ' of- 
 fices,' &c., ' shrubberies,' &c., 'ring fence,' &c. 
 ' Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs,' &c., ' ornamental 
 portion of the unencumbered freehold property 
 of Michael Warden, Esquire, intending to con- 
 tinue to reside abroad.' " 
 
 " Intending to continue to reside abroad ! " 
 repeated Clemency. 
 
 " Here it is," said Mr. Britain. " Look ! " 
 
 " And it was only this very day that I heard 
 it whispered at the old house that better and 
 plainer news had been half promised of her 
 soon ! " said Clemency, shaking her head sorrow- 
 fully, 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 managed the whole house, 
 and made him, by her plain straightforward thrift, 
 good-humour, honesty, and industry, 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 flip- 
 pant liking of people for their outward oddities 
 and eccentricities, whose innate worth, if we 
 would look so far, might make us blush in the 
 comparison ! 
 
 It was comfortable to Mr. Britain to think of 
 his own condescension in having married Cle- 
 mency. 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 pre- 
 cept, 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 business — when, returning with the 
 news that the two Master 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 TRAVELLER. 
 
 147 
 
 very neat little bar, with the usual display of 
 bottles and glasses ; a sedate clock, right to the 
 minute (it was half-past five) ; everything in its 
 place, and everything furbished and polished up 
 to the very utmost. ; 
 
 " It's the first time I've sat down quietly to- 
 day, I declare," said Mrs. Britain, taking a long 
 breath, as if she had sat down for the night ; 
 but getting up again immediately to hand her 
 husband his tea, and cut him his bread-and- 
 butter. " How that bill does set me thinking of 
 old times ! " 
 
 "Ah I" said Mr. Britain, handling his saucer 
 like an oyster, and disposing of its contents on 
 the same principle. 
 
 " That same Mr. Michael Warden," said Cle- 
 mency, shaking 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 ]\Ir. Britain, 
 surveying her over his saucer. " I had somehow 
 got used to you, Clem ; and I found I shouldn't 
 be able to get on without you. So w-e went and 
 got made man and wife. Ha, ha ! 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 simplicity. " 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 thought- 
 fully 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 another, in which he made 
 believe to be interested ! — but only for the sake 
 of the days that are gone by, and because he 
 knows she used to like me, Ben ! " 
 
 "Why, how did you ever come to catch a 
 glimpse of tkat, Clem ? " asked her husband, 
 
 astonished that she should have a distinct per- 
 ception 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 you, I 
 couldn't tell you if you was to offer me a reward 
 of a hundred pound." 
 
 He might have pursued this metaphysical sub- 
 ject but for her catching a glimpse of a substan- 
 tial 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 Cle- 
 mency, admitting 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 Cle- 
 mency with the same observant curiosity as 
 
 before. " You were asking me " he said, 
 
 still looking at her. 
 
 " What you would please to take, sir," answered 
 Clemency, 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, AUthout being any inter- 
 ruption 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 this house ; adding, as he put 
 the tumbler down again : 
 
 " It's a new house, is it not ? " 
 
 " Not particularly new, sir," replied Mr. Britaia 
 
 " Between five and six years old," said Cle- 
 mency : speaking very distinctly. 
 
 " I think I heard you mention Doctor Jeddler's 
 name 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 
 
148 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 certain connections of mine. — Is the old man 
 
 living ? " 
 
 " Yes, he's living, sir," said Clemency. 
 " Much changed ? " 
 
 " Since when, sir ? " returned Clemency with 
 remarkable emphasis and expression. 
 " Since his daughter — went away." 
 " Yes ! he's greatly changed since then," said 
 Clemency. " 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 ilown ; 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. 
 " Vi'x^ 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 li^e 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 appa- 
 rent reference to him, or consciousness of having 
 auditors, " what would there be to tell ? That 
 they grieved together, and remembered her to- 
 gether, like a person dead ; that they were so 
 tender of her, never would reproach her, called 
 her back to one another as she used to be, and 
 found excuses for her ! Every one knows that. 
 I'm sure /do. No one better," added Clemency, 
 wiping her eyes with her hand. 
 
 ** And so " suggested the stranger. 
 
 " And so," said Clemency, taking him up me- 
 chanically, and without any change in her attitude 
 or manner, " they at last were married. They 
 
 were married on her birthday — it comes round 
 again to-morrow — very (juiet, 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 had no sorrow but this." 
 
 She raised her head as with a sudden atten- 
 tion to the circumstances under which she was 
 recalling these events, and looked quickly at the 
 stranger. Seeing that his face was turned to- 
 wards the window, and tliat 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 unintelli- 
 gible conduct reduced Mr. Britain to the con- 
 fines 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 walnuts" — 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 ?" 
 
 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 explain," said Clemency, drawing her 
 breath quickly. 
 
THE TRA VELLER RECOGNISED. 
 
 149 
 
 " Who may that be ? " asked the stranger. 
 
 " Mr. Michael Warden ! " answered Cle- 
 mency, almost in a shriek : at once conveying 
 to her husband what she wouUI 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 remember me that night in the 
 garaen. 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 some- 
 body here directly ! " 
 
 "Stay !" said Michael Warden, quietly inter- 
 posing 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 to- 
 wards the door, and still Mr. Warden stood 
 before it, with his hand stretched out, not angrily, 
 but sorrowfully. 
 
 " Or, perhaps," said Clemency, runnmg past 
 her husband, 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. 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. 1 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 Cle- 
 mency, " 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. Warden, 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 
 
 announced intention of continuing to live abroad, 
 explained it all. Marion was dead. 
 
 He didn't contradict her ; yes, she was dead ! 
 Clemency sat down, hid her face upon the table, 
 and cried. 
 
 At that moment a grey-headed old gentleman 
 came running in : quite out of breath, and pant- 
 ing so mucli that his voice was scarcely to be 
 recognised as the voice of Mr. Snitchey. 
 
 " Good Heaven, Mr. Warden ! " said the 
 lawyer, taking 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 per- 
 form impossibilities — what confusion and afflic- 
 tion 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 because 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 manner that you can tell mc. If it were 
 not for your confounded caution, 1 should have 
 been possessed of everything long ago." 
 
 " Our caution ! " returned the lawyer, " speak- 
 ing for Self and Craggs — deceased," — here Mr. 
 Snitchey, glancing at his hat-band, shook his 
 head, — "how can you reasonably 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 re- 
 spected 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 our- 
 selves, 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 sus- 
 picions, 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. 
 
ISO 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 " 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 recog- 
 nised — 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 : you're 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 roll of life too soon." 
 
 " Heaven forgive me for not condoling with 
 you," returned 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 locked 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's alive. You may observe that I speak for 
 Self and Craggs — deceased, sir — deceased," said 
 the tender-hearted attorney, waving his pocket- 
 handkerchief, 
 
 Michael Warden, who had still been observant 
 of Clemency, turned to ]\Ir. 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 
 ^^'larion ! Poor Marion ! Cheer up, mistress — 
 you aj-e 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 circum- 
 stances ; it may bring some comfort. Wait till 
 to-morrow ! " 
 
 So Clemency, shaking his proffered hand, 
 said she would ; and Britain, who had been ter- 
 ribly cast down at sight of his despondent wife 
 (which was like the business 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 clatter of plates and dishes, the hiss- 
 ing 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 preparations 
 in the kitchen for their dinner. 
 
 To-morrow was a bright and peaceful day; 
 and nowhere were the autumn tints more beauti- 
 fully seen than from the quiet orchard of the 
 Doctor's house. The snows of many Avinter 
 nights had melted from that ground, the withered 
 leaves of many summer-times had rustled there, 
 since she had fled. The honeysuckle porch was 
 green again, the trees cast bountiful and chang- 
 ing shadows on the grass, the landscape was as 
 tranquil and serene as it had ever been ; but 
 where was she? 
 
 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 Avhose 
 gentle lips 'ner name was trembling then. 
 
 The spirit of the lost girl looked out of those 
 eyes. Those eyes of Grace, her sister, sitting 
 with her husband in the orchard, on their wed- 
 ding-day, and his and Marion's birthday. 
 
 He had not become a great man ; he had not 
 grown rich ; he had not foigotten 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 visiting 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, 
 
GRACE AND HER HUSBAND. 
 
 «5J 
 
 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 olden time ; and how the most unlikely 
 forms — even some that Avere 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 husband, 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 collected 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, how- 
 ever happy she might be, she would look for- 
 ward 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 declin- 
 ing, and said that the appointed time was sun- 
 set. 
 
 " Alfred ! " said Grace, laying her hand upon 
 his shoulder earnestly, "there is something in 
 this letter — this old letter, which you say I read 
 
 go often — that I have never told you. But to- 
 night, dear husband, with that sunset drawing 
 near, and all our life seeming to soften and be- 
 come 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 re- 
 ject 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 blessed and 
 honoured in your love," was his wife's answer as 
 he held her in his arms. 
 
 " 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 1 " 
 
 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. " No- 
 thing veiled from me any more. That was the 
 promise. Was it not ? " 
 
 " It Avas," he answered. 
 
 "Before the sun went down on Marion's 
 birthday. And you see it, Alfred ? It is sinking 
 fast." 
 
 He put his arm about her waist, and, look- 
 ing steadily into her eyes, rejoined : 
 
 " 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. 
 
152 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 ** 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." 
 
 " ^Vhat messenger ? " she said. " And what 
 intelligence does he bring ? " 
 
 " I ara pledged," he answered her, preserving 
 his steady look, " to say no more. Do you think 
 you understand 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 firm ■ 
 ness to receive the messenger, the messenger is 
 waiting at the gate. The sun is setting on 
 Marion's birthday. Courage, 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 
 
 "GUESSED HALF ALOUD '.MILK AND WATER,' 'MONTHLY WARNING,' 'MICE AND WALNUTS' — AND COULDN'T 
 
 APPROACH HER MEANING." 
 
 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 litde 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 ; 
 standing on its threshold ? That figure, with its 
 white garments rustling in the evening air; its 
 
 head laid down upon her father's breast, and 
 pressed against it to his loving Keart ? Oh God ! 
 was it a vision that came bursting 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 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, Sfjeet Marion ! 
 
MARION FOUND. 
 
 1 53 
 
 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 visit- 
 ing the earth upon some 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 twining round her, and 
 never turning for an instant from her face — and 
 with the glory of the setting sun upon her brow, 
 and with the soft tranquillity of evening gather- 
 ing around them — Marion at length broke 
 silence : her voice, so calm, low, clear, and plea- 
 sant, 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 'oved 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 / left here." 
 
 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 gratitude? — and was content to sacrifice 
 itself to me. But, I knew something of its depths, 
 I knew the struggle it had made. I knew its 
 high, inestimable worth to him, and his apprecia- 
 tion 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 1 thought 
 of Alfred's own words on the day of his departure, 
 
 and how truly he had said (for I knew that, know- 
 ing 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 sus- 
 tained, 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 would 
 (Grace, I then loved him dearly, dearly !) be his 
 wife ! " 
 
 " Oh, Marion ! Oh, Marion ! " 
 
 " I had tried to seem indifferent to him ;" and 
 she pressed her sister's face against her own ; 
 " but that was hard, 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, under- 
 gone at that time, would save 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 some- 
 thing of my story, and she freely promised it. 
 While I was contesting that step with myself, 
 and with my love of you and home, Mr. \\'arden, 
 brought here by an accident, became, for some 
 time, our companion." 
 
 " I have sometimes feared, of late years, that 
 this might have been," exclaimed her sister ; and 
 her countenance 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 indifierent, I tried to 
 hide indiflerence — I cannot tell. But I wished 
 that you should feel me wholly lost to Alfred — 
 
154 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 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 mis- 
 placed passion, or would strive against some 
 cherished feeling of their hearts and conquer it, 
 retire into a hopeless solitude, and close the 
 world against themselves and worldly loves and 
 hopes for ever. 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 happiness, can say the 
 battle is long past, the victory long Avon. And 
 such a one am I ! You understand me now ? " 
 
 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 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 affection 
 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 ]\Iar- 
 tha, were standing near at hand, with Alfred. 
 
 " This is a weary day for me," said good Aunt 
 Martha, smiling through her tears as she em- 
 braced her nieces; "for I lose my dear com- 
 panion 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 consider 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 yoic say, 
 brother ? " 
 
 " I've a great mind to say it's a ridiculous 
 world altogether, and there's 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 Avith such eyes as those." 
 
 " 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 sepa- 
 rate the sisters ; " and a serious world, with all its 
 folly — even with niine, 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 Avorld 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 transports of this family, long severed 
 and now reunited. Therefore I will not follow 
 the poor Doctor through his humbled recollec- 
 tion 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 
 
CLEMENCY IN ECSTASIES. 
 
 ^55 
 
 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 Heathfiekl had been told the 
 truth, too, in the course of that then current 
 year ; and Marion had seen him, and had pro- 
 mised 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. 
 Snitchcy, looking into the orchard, " but have I 
 liberty to come in ? " 
 
 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- 
 tion. If he were open to conviction, now, I 
 
 This is weakness. j\Irs. Snitcliey, my dear," — 
 at his summons that lady appeared from behind 
 the door, — " you are among old friends." 
 
 Mrs. Snitchey, having delivered her congratu- 
 lations, took her husband aside. 
 
 " One moment, j\Ir. 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, i\Ir. Snitchey ; and if you 
 are not absolutely in your dotage ; I ask you to 
 connect this time with that — to remember how 
 I begged and prayed you, on my knees " 
 
 " Upon your knees, my dear ! " said Mr. 
 Snitchey. 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Snitchey confidently, " and 
 you know it — to beware of that man — to ob- 
 serve his eye — and now to tell me whether I 
 was right, and whether at that 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, 
 twitching her by the sleeve, " it happens that we 
 
 lioth 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 warn- 
 ing 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 
 yoic / " 
 
 " The matter ! " cried poor Clemency. — When, 
 looking up in wonder, and in indignant remon- 
 strance, 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, embraced 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 h3'Sterics 
 behind it. 
 
 A Stranger had come into the orchard after 
 Mr. Snitchey, and had remained apart, near the 
 gate, without 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 dejec- 
 tion about him (though he was a gentleman of a 
 gallant appearance), which the general happiness 
 rendered more remarkable. 
 
 None but the quick eyes of Aunt Martha, 
 however, remarked him at all ; but, almost as 
 soon as she espied him, she was in conversation 
 with him. Presently, going to where jNIarion 
 stood with Grace and her little namesake, she 
 whispered something in Marion's ear, at which 
 she started, and appeared surprised ; but, soon 
 recovering from her confusion, she timidly ap- 
 proached the stranger, in Aunt Martha's com- 
 pany, 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 tenement, at pre- 
 sent occupied and held by yourself as a licensed 
 
iS6 
 
 THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 
 
 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." -. / 
 
 " 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 conveyance, "just clap in the words, 'and 
 Thimble,' will you be so good ? and I'll have 
 the two mottoes painted up in the parlour, in- 
 stead 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 Doctor 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 demerits, with a shame I never 
 have forgotten, yet, with some profit too, I would 
 fain hope, from one," he glanced at Marion, " to 
 whom I made my humble supplication for for- 
 giveness, when I knew her merit, and my deep 
 unworthiness. In a few days I shall quit this 
 place for ever. I entreat your pardon. Do as 
 you would be done by ! Forget and Forgive ! " 
 
 Time— from whom I had the latter portion of 
 this story, and with whom I ha\'e 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 honour 
 of that country-side, whose name was Marion. 
 But, as I have observed that Time confuses facts 
 occasionally, I hardly know what weight to giv? 
 to his authority. 
 
 END OF "the battle OF LIFE. 
 
THE HAUNTED MAN, 
 
 AND THE GHOST'S BARGAIN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE GIFT BESTOWED. 
 
 pVERYBODY said so. 
 
 -*— ' Far be it from me to assert that what 
 
 j 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. Every- 
 body may sometimes be right ; " but thaf's, no 
 rule," as the ghost of Giles Scroggins says in the 
 
 everybody says must be true. Everybody is, I ballad. 
 
 often, as likely to be wrong as right. In the The dread word, Ghost, recalls me. 
 
155 
 
 THE HA UNTED MAN. 
 
 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 seaweed, 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 ? 
 
 AVho could have observed his manner, taci- 
 turn, thoughtful, gloomy, shadov;ed by habitual 
 reserve, retiring always, and jocund never, with 
 a distraught air of reverting to a bygone place 
 and time, or of listening to some old echoes in 
 his mind, but might have said it was the manner 
 di a haunted man ? 
 
 Who could have heard his voice, slow-speak- 
 ing, 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 uncorabine them, and to give 
 back their component parts to fire and vapour ; 
 — who that had seen him then, his work done, 
 and he pondering in his chair before the rusted 
 grate and red flame, moving his thin mouth as if 
 in speech, but silent as the dead, would not 
 have said that the man seemed haunted, and 
 the chamber too ? 
 
 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 an 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 overgrowing 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, insulted 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 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 com- 
 pensation for the sun's neglect, the snow would 
 lie for weeks when it lay nowhere 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 ceiling, 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 rum- 
 bling and grumbling till they were stifled in the 
 heavy air of the forgotten Crypt where the Nor- 
 man arches were half buried in the earth. 
 
 You should have seen him in his dwelling 
 about twilight, in the dead AAdnter-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, ambus- 
 cades and armies, in the coals. When people 
 in the streets bent down their heads, and ran 
 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 other- 
 wise. 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. 
 
GHOSTL V SURROUNDINGS. 
 
 159 
 
 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 dreadfully. 
 When lighthouses, on rocks and headlands, 
 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 firelight, trembled to think 
 of Cassim Baba cut into quarters, hanging in 
 the Robbers' Cave, or had some small mis- 
 givings 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 
 daylight 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 blacksmith 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 sha- 
 dows, prisoned up all day, that now closed in 
 and gathered like mustering swarms of ghosts. 
 When they stood lowering in corners of rooms, 
 and frowned out from behind half-opened doors. 
 When they had full possession 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, evidently smelling the blood 
 of Englishmen, and wanting to grind people's 
 bones to make his brfead. 
 
 When these shadows brought into the minds 
 of older people other thoughts, and showed them 
 different images. When they stole from the'r 
 retreats, in the 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 win- 
 dow 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 admission of himself and a wooden tray 
 he carried, and letting 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 had 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 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 iijade 
 the pleasant alteration. 
 
 " Mrs. William is of course subject at any 
 time, sir, to be taken off her balance by the 
 
i6o 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN. 
 
 elements. She is not formed superior to 
 thatr 
 
 " No," returned Mr. Redlaw good-naturedly, 
 though abrujjtly. 
 
 " 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 oft" her balance by Air ; as being once 
 over-persuaded by a friend to try a swing at 
 Peckham Fair, which acted on her constitution 
 instantly 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 mile in her nightcap. Mrs. William may be 
 taken off" her balance by Water; as at Battersea, 
 when rowed into the piers by her young nephew, 
 Charley Swidger, junior, aged twelve, which had 
 no idea of boats whatever. But these are ele- 
 ments. 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. 
 
 " Yes, sir. Oh dear, yes ! " said Mr. Swidger, 
 still proceeding with his preparations, and check- 
 ing them off" as he made them. " That's 
 where it is, sir. That's what I always say my- 
 self, sir. Such a many of us Swidgers ! — Pepper. 
 Why, there's my father, sir, superannuated keeper 
 and custodian of this Institution, eigh-ty-seven 
 year old. He's a Swidger ! — Spoon." 
 
 " True, William," was the patient and ab- 
 stracted 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 succes- 
 sor, my unworthy self — Salt — and Mrs. William, 
 Swidgers both. — Knife and fork. Then you 
 come to all my brothers and their 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 degree, 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 thought- 
 ful man whom he addressed, Mr. William ap- 
 proached him nearer, and made a feint of ac- 
 cidentally knocking the table with a decanter 
 to rouse him. The moment he succeeded, he 
 went on, as if in great alacrity of aquiescence. 
 
 "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 — Casters — 
 to take care of; and it hai)pens 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 his walking, and an ex- 
 pression of interest appeared in him. 
 
 " What I always say myself, sir. She juill 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," re- 
 turned 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 Mrs. William in 
 that light. Every day, right through 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 ap- 
 pellation 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 some- 
 thing 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, bear- 
 ing another tray and a lantern, and followed 
 
MERRY AND HAPPY. 
 
 i6i 
 
 by a venerable old man with long grey 
 hair. 
 
 Mrs. William, like Mr. William, was a simple, 
 innocent-looking person, in whose smooth cheeks 
 the cheerful red of her husband's official waist- 
 coat 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 care- 
 fully smoothed down, and waved away under a 
 trim, tidy cap, in the most exact and quiet man- 
 ner imaginable. 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 not 
 appealed against disturbance, like the innocent 
 slumber of a child ? O 
 
 " Punctual, of course, Milly," said her hus- 
 band, reheving 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. William, striking in with the butter-boat. 
 " Berries is so seasonable to the time of year ! — 
 Brown gravy ! " 
 
 " Another Christmas come, another year 
 gone ! " murmured 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 all together, 
 Christmas Books, ii. 
 
 apd rubs all out. So, Philip ! " breaking off, 
 and raising his voice as he addressed the old 
 man standing apart, with his glistening burden 
 in his arms, from which the quiet Mrs. Wil- 
 liam 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. Redlaw — 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-seven ! " 
 
 " 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 expected now," said Mr. Redlaw, turn- 
 ing to the son, and speaking lower. 
 
 " Not a morsel of it, sir," replied Mr. William. 
 " That's 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 ob- 
 servation 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 thos'^ 
 years were old and new, then ? " he said, ob- 
 serving him attentively, and touching him on 
 the shoulder. " Does it ? " 
 
 " Oh, many, many !" said PhiHp, half awaking 
 from his reverie. " I'm eighty-seven ! " 
 
 "Merry and happy, was it?" asked the Che- 
 mist in a low voice, " Merry and happy, old 
 man?" 
 
 " Maybe 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 questioner, " 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 birds' eyes wpre so 
 
iGs 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN. 
 
 bright, perhaps, because the berries that they 
 lived on in the winter were so bright. I recollect 
 ■that. And I'm eighty-seven ! " 
 
 " Merry and happy !" mused the other, bend- 
 ing 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 William? 
 Hadn't my match at foot-ball, William, wifhin 
 ten mile ! " 
 
 " 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 William's my youngest son — and I, 
 have sat among 'em all, boys and girls, little 
 children and babies, many a year, when the 
 berries like these w^ere not shining half so bright 
 all round us, as their bright faces. Many of 'em 
 are gone ; she's gone ; and my son George (our 
 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 garnish- 
 ing 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?" 
 
 " I know the portrait hangs there, Philip." 
 
 " Yes, sure, it's the second on the right, above 
 the panelling. I Avas going to say — he has 
 helped to keep my 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 de- 
 lighted 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 doi^'t sw-allow 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. Redlaw won't settle to his dinner, other- 
 wise, 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 ex- 
 cellent wife's honour. It will not be dis- 
 agreeable 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 
 
THE POOR STUDENT. 
 
 163 
 
 in considerable 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 Build- 
 ings." 
 
 Mr. William, standing behmd the table, and 
 rummaging 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 IMr. 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 quiet 
 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 holi- 
 day-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 INIilly, shaking her 
 head as at a most manifest and self-evident im- 
 possibility. " It couldn't be thought of! " 
 
 " What do you mean ? Why not ? " 
 
 " Why, you see, sir," said Mr. William Swidger 
 persuasively and confidentially, " that's what I 
 say. Depend 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 
 
 hifn; but woman, sir, and Mrs. William com- 
 bined !" 
 
 " There is good sense and delicacy in what 
 you say, William," returned Mr. Redlaw, ob- 
 servant 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 of!" 
 
 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 between her scissors and her apron when 
 she had arranged the holly. 
 
 Finding, when she rose from her stooping pos- 
 ture, that Mr. Redlaw 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 secrecy with 
 you, but I trust to your honour cornxjletely." 
 
 " 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. 
 
 " 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 !" 
 
 " 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 ! "' 
 
 Miily's voice resumed, like quiet music very 
 softly played : 
 
 " He muttered in his broken sleep yesterday 
 afternoon, after talking to me " (this was to her- 
 self), " about some 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— 
 
164 
 
 THE HA UNTED MAN. 
 
 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 appa- 
 rently 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 Christmas morning ! If it ever felt a fire be- 
 fore, 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, correct- 
 ing himself, on reflection, " unless it's bolted ! " 
 
 " Heaven keep her happy ! " said the Chemist 
 aloud, " and you too, Philip ! and you, William ! 
 I must consider 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 ! / 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 gentlemen 
 commuted, our great Dinner Hals. ' Lord, 
 keep my 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 thundering 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 doom 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 
 brigh; eyes, and his grizzled hair, and dressed 
 in the gloomy shadow of his dress, it came into 
 its terrible appearance of existence, motionless, 
 without a sound. As he leaned his arm upon 
 the elbow of his chair, ruminating before the 
 fire, // leaned upon the chair-back, close above 
 him, with its appalling copy of his face looking 
 where his face looked, and bearing the expres- 
 sion 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 thoughtfulness, he seemed to 
 listen to the music. It seemed to listen too. 
 
 At length he spoke j without moving or lift- 
 ing up his face. 
 
 " 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 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 sud- 
 denly, 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 build- 
 ing, 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, glit- 
 tering 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 
 
MORBID REMEMBRANCE. 
 
 i<^5 
 
 he, neglected in my youth, and miserably poor, 
 who strove and suttered, and still strove and 
 suftered, 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 
 Phantom, " 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 struggle upward, found a friend. I made 
 him — won him — bound him to me ! We worked 
 together, side by side. All the love and confi- 
 dence that in my earlier youth had had no out- 
 let, and found no expression, I bestowed on 
 him." 
 
 " Not all," said Redlaw hoarsely. 
 
 " No, not all," returned the Phantom. " I 
 had a sister." 
 
 The haunted man, with his head resting on 
 his hands, replied, " I had ! " The Phantom, 
 with an evil smile, drew closer to the chair, and 
 resting its chin upon its folded hands, its folded 
 hands upon the back^ and looking down into 
 his face with searching eyes, that seemed instinct 
 with fire, went on : 
 
 " Such glimpses of the light of home as I had 
 ever known, had streamed from her. Plow 
 young she was, how fair, how loving ! 1 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 before 
 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. 
 
 " Did he love her ? " said the Phantom, echo- 
 ing his contemplative tone. " I think he did 
 once. I am sure he did. Better had she loved 
 him less — less secretly, less dearly, from the 
 shallower depths of a more divided heart ! " 
 
 *' 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," pursuctl the Phantom, 
 " as my inferior nature might cherish, arose in 
 my own heart. I was too poor to bind its ob- 
 ject to my fortune, then, by any thread of pro- 
 mise 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 com- 
 panion !) 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 mur- 
 mured. " 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 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 
 delusions. 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 sys- 
 tem of my hopes and struggles, won her to him- 
 self, 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 ambition so rewarded when its spring was 
 broken, and then " 
 
 " Then died," he interposed. " Died, gentle 
 as ever, happy, and with no concern but for her 
 brother. Peace ! " 
 
 The Phantom watched him silently. 
 
 " Remembered ! " 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. Pearly unhappiness, a 
 wound from a hand I loved and trusted, and 
 
i66 
 
 THE HA UNTED MAN. 
 
 a loss that nothing can replace, outHve such 
 fancies." 
 
 " Thus," said the Phrintom, " I bear within 
 me a Sorrow and a Wrong. Thus I prey upon 
 myself. Thus, men^jiy 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 wratliful liand, 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 its unearthly 
 features as it reared its dark figure in triumph. 
 
 " If I could forget my sorrow and wrong, I 
 would," the Ghost repeated. •• If I could forget 
 my sorrow and wrong, I \\'0uld ! " 
 
 " Evil spirit of myself," returned the haunted 
 man in a low, trembling tone, "' my life is dark- 
 ened by that incessant 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 be- 
 yond myself All men and women have their 
 sorrows, — most of them their wrongs ; ingrati- 
 tude, 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 better for it ? " said the Phantom. 
 
 " These revolutions of years, which Ave com- 
 memorate," proceeded Redlaw, "what do they 
 recall ? Are there any minds in which they do 
 not re-awaken 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, " unen- 
 lightened 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 foreshadow- 
 ing 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 ! For- 
 get the sorrow, wrong, and trouble you have 
 known !" 
 
 " Forget them !" he repeated. 
 
 " I have the power to cancel their remem- 
 brance — 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 terrified 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 would not deprive 
 myself of any kindly recollection, or any sym- 
 pathy 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 asso- 
 ciations, each in its turn dependent on, and 
 nourished by, the banished recollections. Those 
 will go." 
 
 " Are they so many ? "' said the haunted man, 
 reflecting 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 ! 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 know- 
 ledge 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 fofgd it if I could! Have / thought 
 that alone, or has it been the thought of thou- 
 sands upon thousands, generation after genera- 
 tion ? All human memory is fraught with sor- 
 row and trouble. My memory is as the memory 
 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,. 
 
A BABY SAVAGE. 
 
 167 
 
 you shall give again, go where you will. Without 
 recovering yourself 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 sorrow, wrong, 
 and trouble is the lot of all mankind, and that 
 mankind would be the happier, in its other 
 memories, 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 in- 
 alienable from you. Go ! Be happy in the 
 good you have won, and in 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 participate in the 
 terrible smile upon its face, but were a fixed, un- 
 alterable, steady horror ; melted from before 
 him, and was gone. ' 
 
 As he stood rooted to the Jpot, possessed by 
 fear and wonder, and imagining he heard re- 
 peated in melancholy echoes, dying away fainter 
 and fainter, the words, " Destroy its like in all 
 whom you approach ! " a shrill cry reached his 
 ears. It came, not from the passages beyond 
 the door, but from another part of the old build- 
 ing, 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 terror 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 interest in a mo- 
 ment, it was a ghostly place when all this Ufe 
 was. faded out of it, and stared upon him like an 
 emblem of Death. 
 
 " Holloa ! " he cried. " Holloa ! 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 crouched down in 
 a comer. 
 
 " 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 lialf- 
 " dozen years, but ]Mnched and twisted by the 
 experiences of a life. Bright eyes, but not 
 youthfu' 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 IWe 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 inter- 
 posed his arm to ward off the expected 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 re- 
 member something^ — he did not know what — 
 he asked the boy what he did there, and whence 
 he came. 
 
 " ^^^here'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 my- 
 self. 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 remember some association that ought 
 of right to bear upon this monstrous object. 
 " What is your name ? " 
 
 " Got none." 
 
 " Where do you live ? " 
 
 " Live ! What's that ? " 
 
 The boy shook his hair from his eyes to 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 repugnance and avoidance, growing 
 out of his coldness. " I'll take you to her." 
 
 The sharp eyes in the child's head, wandering 
 
i6S 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN. 
 
 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 hug- 
 ging 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 
 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,- 
 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, cover- 
 ing his face like one who was frightened at 
 himself. 
 
 For now he was indeed alone. Alone, alone. 
 
 -you 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GIFT DIFFUSED. 
 
 SMALL man sat in a small parlour, 
 partitioned off from a small shop by 
 a small screen, pasted all over with 
 small scraps of newspapers. In com- 
 pany 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 imposing effect, in point of 
 numbers. 
 
 Of these small frj-, two had, by some strong 
 machinery, been got into bed in a corner, where 
 they might have reposed snugly enough in the 
 sleep of innocence, but for a constitutional pro- 
 pensity to keep awake, and also to scufile in 
 and out of bed. The immediate occasion 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 harass- 
 ing descents (like those accursed Picts and Scots 
 who beleaguer the early historical studies of 
 most young Britons), and then withdrew to their 
 own territory. 
 
 In addition to the stir attendant on these in- 
 roads, and the retorts of the invaded, who pur- 
 sued hotly, and made lunges at the bedclothes, 
 under which the marauders took refuge, another 
 litUe boy, in another little bed, contributed 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, in- 
 offensive in themselves, though of a hard sub- 
 stance 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 aftected in 
 his knees by the weight of a large baby, which 
 he was supposed, by a fiction that obtains some- 
 times in sanguine families, to be hushing to 
 sleep. But oh ! the inexhaustible regions of 
 contemplation and watchfulness into which this 
 baby's eyes were then only beginning to com- 
 pose themselves to stare over his unconscious 
 shoulder ! 
 
 It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose 
 insatiate altar the whole existence of this par- 
 ticular 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 potboy. 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 Tumblers 
 or the Monkey, and came up, all on one side, a 
 little too late for everything that was attractive, 
 from Monday morning until Saturday night. 
 Wherever childhood congi-egated to play, there 
 was little ]\Ioloch making Johnny fag and toil. 
 Wherever Johnny desired to stay, little Moloch 
 became fractious, and would not remain. W^hen- 
 ever Johnny wanted to go out, Moloch was 
 asleep, and must be watched. AVhenever Johnny 
 wanted to stay at home, Moloch was awake, 
 and must be taken out. Yet Johnny was verily 
 persuaded that it was a fiiultless 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, 
 
'you're in spirits, TUGBY, my dear," observed his wife. • . . "NO," SAID TUGBY. 
 
 •'no. not particular. I'm a little elewated. the muffins came so p.vrl" — p. 69 
 
TETTERBY AND CO. 
 
 169 
 
 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. Tetteruy 
 AND Co., Newsmen. Indeed, strictly speak- 
 ing, he was the only personage answering to 
 
 " 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 TUMBLERS," ETC. 
 
 that designation ; as Co. was a mere poetical 
 abstraction, altogether baseless and impersonal. 
 Tetterby's was the corner shop in Jerusalem 
 Buildings. There was a good show of literature 
 in the window, 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 confectioner}^ line ; but 
 it would seem that those elegancies of life were 
 not in demand about Jerusalem Buildings, for 
 nothing connected with that branch of com- 
 merce remained in the window, except a sort 
 of small glass lantern containing a languishing 
 
lyo 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN. 
 
 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 for 
 ever. Tetterby's had tried its hand at several 
 things. It had once made a feeble little dart at 
 the toy business ; for, in another lantern, there 
 was a heap of minute wax dolls, all sticking to- 
 gether upside down, in the direst confusion, 
 with their feet on one another's heads, and a pre- 
 cipitate 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 a corner of the window to attest. It had 
 fancied that a living might lie hidden in the 
 tobacco trade, and had stuck up a representa- 
 tion of a native of each of the three integral 
 portions of the British empire in the act of con- 
 suming that fragrant weed ; with a poetic legend 
 attached, importing that united in one cause 
 they sat and joked, one chewed tobacco, one 
 took snuff, one smoked : but nothing seemed to 
 have come of it — except flies. Time had been 
 when it had put a forlorn trust 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 inscrutable in- 
 tention 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 in- 
 differently in all, that the best position in the 
 firm was too evidently Co.'s ; Co., as a bodiless 
 creation, being untroubled with the vulgar in- 
 conveniences of hunger and thirst, being charge- 
 able neither to the poor's-rates nor the assessed 
 taxes, and having no young family to provide 
 for. ... 
 
 Tetterby himself, however, in his little parlour, 
 as already mentioned, having the presence of a 
 young family impressed upon his mind in a 
 manner too clamorous to be disregarded, or to 
 comport with the quiet perusal of a newspaper, 
 laid down his paper, wheeled, in his distraction, 
 a few times round the parlour like an undecided 
 carrier pigeon, made an ineffectual rush at one 
 or two flying little figures in bedgowns that 
 skimmed past him, and then, bearing suddenly 
 down upon the only unoffending 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 anxieties of a hard winter's day, 
 since five o'clock in the morning, but must you 
 wither his rest, and corrode his latest intelli- 
 gence, 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 ]\Ir. Tetterby, 
 heaping this up as a great climax of blessings, 
 " but must you make a wilderness of home, and 
 maniacs pf your parents ? Must you, Johnny ? 
 Hey?" At each interrogation, Mr. Tetterby 
 made a feint of boxing his ears again, but 
 thought better 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?" indi- 
 cating Moloch ; " isn't it enough that you were 
 seven boys before, without 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 behave 
 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. Tetterby concluded by embrac- 
 ing him, and immediately breaking away to' 
 catch one of the real dehnquents. 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 con- 
 dignly punished, and bore to bed. This example 
 had a powerful, and apparently mesmeric, influ- 
 ence on him of the boots, who instantly fell into 
 a deep sleep, though he had been, but a moment 
 before, broad awake, and in the highest possible 
 feather. Nor was it lost upon the two young 
 architects, who retired to bed, in an adjoining 
 closet, with great privacy and speed. The com- 
 rade of the Intercepted One also shrinking into 
 his nest with similar discretion, Mr. Tetterby, 
 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 appropriate to be impressed upon his 
 children's minds on the occasion, and read the 
 following : 
 
MR. TETTERBY'S LrnXE WOMAN. 
 
 171 
 
 " * 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 composed 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 pro- 
 clamation, delivered in a very soft-hearted 
 manner, "and astonishment will be the portion 
 of that respected contemporary ! " — which ex- 
 pression 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 de- 
 votedly crushed himself beneath the weight of 
 Moloch. 
 
 "Ah, what a gift that baby is to you, 
 Johnny!" said his father; "and how 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 accu- 
 rate 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." 
 
 ISIr. Tetterby desisting, Johnny, with a pro- 
 founder 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 ? " 
 
 "Here's mother, and 'Dolphus too, father," 
 exclaimed Johnny, " I think ! " 
 
 " You're right ! " returned his father, listen- 
 ing. " Yes, that's the footstep of my little 
 woman." 
 
 The process of induction, by which Mr. 
 Tetterby had come to the conclusion that his 
 A\nfe 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 dimensions 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 exacting 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, flitigued, commanded 
 Johnny to bring his sweet charge to her straight- 
 way for a kiss. Johnny having complied, and 
 gone back to his stool, and again crushed him- 
 self. 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 com- 
 plied, 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 
 rektions. 
 
 " Whatever you do, Johnny," said Mrs. Tet- 
 terby, 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," added Mr. Tet- 
 terby. 
 
 Johnny, much affected by this conditional 
 renunciation 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, smooth- 
 ing himself down with his hands. " I an't very 
 wet, I don't think. Does my face shine much, 
 father?" 
 
 " Well, it docs look waxy, my boy," returned 
 Mr. Tetterby. 
 
 " 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 thrivmg 
 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 fortunate discovery he made of 
 
172 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN. 
 
 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 oil-skin 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. 
 
 Mrs. 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. 
 
 " Oh, nothing ! " said Mrs. Tetterby. 
 
 Mr. Tetterby elevated his eyebrows, folded 
 his newspaper 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, Pll 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 / don't know," she retorted. 
 " Don't ask me. Who said I was put out at 
 all ? / 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 accord- 
 ing 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 decided subsidence of her animosity towards 
 the table, finished her preparations, and took 
 from her ample basket a substantial slab of 
 hot pease-pudding wrapped 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. Tet- 
 terby, 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 accord, raised a dismal cry, 
 which had the eff'ect of immediately shutting 
 up the round eyes in the beds, and utterly rout- 
 ing 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 j\Irs. 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 
 l\Irs. Tetterby. — " 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 
 
MRS. TETTERBY RECOVERS HER TEMPER. 
 
 173 
 
 idea, I hadn't, than that darHng, of being cross 
 
 when I came home ; but somehow, 'Dolphus " 
 
 Mrs. Tetterby i)auscd, and again turned her 
 wedding-ring round and round upon her finger. 
 
 " I see ! " said Mr. Tetterby. " I understand ! 
 My httle woman was put out. Hard times, and 
 hard weather, and liard work, make it trying 
 now and then. I see, bless your soul ! No 
 wonder ! 'Dolf, my man," continued Mr. Tet- 
 terby, 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 crack- 
 ling 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 sum- 
 mons, received his portion with eyes rendered 
 moist by appetite, and, withdrawing to his par- 
 ticular 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 re- 
 quired, for similar reasons, to keep his pudding, 
 when not on active service, in his pocket. 
 
 There might have been more pork on the 
 knuckle-bone, — which knuckle-bone the carver 
 at the cook's shop had assuredly not forgotten 
 in carving for previous customers, — but there 
 was no stint of seasoning, and that is an acces- 
 sory 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 Tetterbys 
 in bed, who, though professing to slumber 
 peacefully, 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 skir- 
 mishers in nightgowns were careering about the 
 parlour all through supper, which harassed Mr. 
 Tetterby exceedingly, and once or twice im- 
 posed upon him the necessity of a charge, before 
 which these guerrilla troops retired in all direc- 
 tions, 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 husband was con- 
 founded. 
 
 " ]\Iy Httle woman," said ]\Ir. 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. Tet- 
 terby, struggling with herself, " and don't speak 
 to me for the present, or take any notice of it. 
 Don't do it ! " 
 
 Mr. Tetterby, having administered the water, 
 turned suddenly on the unlucky Johnny (who 
 was full of sympathy), 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. Johnny 
 immediately approached, borne down by its 
 weight ; but Mrs. Tetterby liolding out her hand 
 to signify that she was not in a condition to bear 
 that trying appeal to her feelings, he was inter- 
 dicted from advancing another inch, on pain of 
 perpetual hatred from all his dearest connections ; 
 and accordingly 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 dubi- 
 ously, " 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 myself" 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 moment ! " 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. 
 Tetterby 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 
 soldiers — sergeants." 
 
 " 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 husband, and would do as 
 much to prove that I was fond of him, as " 
 
 " As any little woman in the world," said Mr. 
 Tetterby. " Very good. Very good." 
 
 If Mr. Tetterby had been ten feet high, he 
 could not have expressed a gentler considera- 
 tion for Mrs. Tetterby's fairy-like stature ; and, 
 if Mrs. Tetterby had been two feet high, she 
 
174 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN. 
 
 could not have felt it more appropriately 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 to spend some, I did, some- 
 how, 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 cal- 
 culating necessary, before I durst lay out a six- 
 pence 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-r — You hate me, don't you, 
 'Dolphus?'' 
 
 " Not quite,'' said Mr. Tetterby, " as yet." 
 
 " Well ! I'll tell you the whole truth," pur- 
 sued his wife penitently, " and then perhaps you 
 will. I felt all this so much, when I was trudg- 
 ing 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 down- 
 cast head as she turned it. 
 
 " I see," said her husband quietly ; " if you 
 hadn't married at all, or if you had married some- 
 body else ? " 
 
 " Yes," sobbed Mrs. Tetterby. " That's really 
 ■what I thought. Do you hate me now, 'Dol- 
 phus?" 
 
 " Why, no," said Mr. Tetterby, " I don't find 
 that I do as yet." 
 
 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, Avell, my dear," said Mr. Tetterby, 
 shaking her hand encouragingly, " that's truth, 
 after all. We are poor, and there ore 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 different ! 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 Avronged 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 un- 
 steady 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 : " 111 ? No, I 
 am quite well," and stood looking vacantly at 
 the floor. 
 
 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. 
 
INFECTED AIR. 
 
 ^IS 
 
 " What may be your pleasure, sir," he asked, 
 "with us?" 
 
 " I fear that my coming in unperceived," re- 
 turned 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 ob- 
 served her, for a few moments only, in the street. 
 I had no intention 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 gentle- 
 man, who is a student there, lodges in your 
 house, does he not ? " 
 
 " Mr. Denham ? " said Tetterby. 
 
 " 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 fore- 
 head, 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 to- 
 wards the wife, stepped back, and his face turned 
 paler. 
 
 " The gentleman's room," said Tetterby, " is 
 up-stairs, sir. There's a more convenient pri- 
 vate 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 commu- 
 nicating directly with the parlour, " 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 
 inexplicable distrust that darkened it, seemed to 
 trouble Mr. Tetterby. He paused ; and, looking 
 fixedly at him in return, stood for a minute or 
 so, like a man stupefied or foscinated. 
 
 At length he said, " I'll light you, sir, if you'll 
 follow me." 
 
 " No," replied che Chemist, " I don't wish to 
 be attended, 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 news- 
 man, he touched him on the breast. With- 
 drawing 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 slopped and 
 looked down. The wife was standing in the 
 same place, twisting her ring round and round 
 upon her finger. The husband, with his head 
 bent forward on his breast, was musing heavily 
 and sullenly. The children, still clustering 
 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 glancing 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 himself 
 to the chimney-corner, and, impatiently raking 
 the small fire together, bent over it as if he would 
 monopolise 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 dreading 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. 
 
 He looked round, but there was nothing 
 there; and a passage now shutting out the little 
 parlour 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? Alymind 
 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 attracted 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 
 
176 
 
 THE HA UNTED MAN. 
 
 hearth that it could scarcely warm, contained 
 the fire, to which his face was turned. Being 
 so near the windy housetop, 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 nature 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 prohibited 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 
 remembrances of other and less solitary scenes, 
 the little miniatures 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 engraving of him- 
 self, the looker-on. The time had been, only 
 yesterday, when not one of these objects, in its 
 remotest association of interest with the living 
 figure before him, would have been lost on Red- 
 law. Now, they were but objects ; or, if any 
 gleam of such connection shot upon him, it per- 
 plexed, and not enlightened him, as he stood 
 looking round with a dull wonder. 
 
 The student, recalling the thin hand which 
 had remained 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 m.c. 1 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 lean- 
 ing with his hand upon the couch, spoke with 
 his eyes averted towards the ground. 
 
 " I heard, by an accident, by what accident is 
 no matter, that one of my class was ill and soli- 
 tary. 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 better. I cannot 
 say I have been solitary in my illness, or I 
 should forget the ministering hand that has been 
 nf ar mc." 
 
 " 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 this 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 communication together ? " 
 
 " 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 earnestness, and with trembling 
 lips : 
 
 " Mr. Redlaw ! You have discovered me. 
 You know my secret ! " 
 
 " Secret ? " said the Chemist harshly. " / 
 know ? " 
 
 " 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 between us." 
 
 A vacant and contemptuous laugh was all his 
 answer. 
 
 •'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 participa- 
 
MR. REDLAW!" HE EXCLAIMED, AND STARTED VV. — The Hatmtcd Matt. — P. XV6 
 
HER SON. 
 
 177 
 
 tion in any wrong inflicted on you, or in any 
 sorrow you have borne." 
 
 "Sorrow!"' said Redlaw, laugliing. "Wrong! 
 What are those to me ?" 
 
 " For Heaven's sake," entreated the shrinking 
 student, " do not let the mere interchange of a 
 icw words with me change you Hke this, sir ! 
 Let me pass again from your knowledge and 
 notice. Let me occupy my old reserved and 
 distant place among those whom you instruct. 
 Know me only by the name I have assumed, 
 and not by that of Longford " 
 
 " Longford 1" exclaimed the other. 
 
 He clasped his head with both his hands, 
 and for a moment turned upon the young man 
 his own intelligent 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," hesitating, " I believe I know that 
 history. Where my information 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 some- 
 thing that was almost reverence. I have heard 
 of such devotion, of such fortitude and tender- 
 ness, 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 
 tr)' 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, however lightly, on that theme. But to 
 one who — I may say, who felt no common in- 
 terest in my mother once — it may be something 
 to hear, now that is all past, with what inde- 
 scribable feelings of aflection I have, in my 
 obscurity, regarded him ; Avith what pain and 
 reluctance I have kept aloof from his encourage- 
 ment, when a word of it would have made me 
 rich ; yet how I have felt it fit that I should 
 Christmas Books, 12. 
 
 hpld 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 any- 
 thing unworthy in this fraud of mine, forgive me, 
 and for all the rest forget me ! " 
 
 The staring frown remained on Redlaw's face, 
 and yielded to no other expression until the 
 student, with 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 sternness of 
 his repulsion ; and he passed his hand thought- 
 fully 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 distempered 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, 
 holding his head again with both his hand^. 
 " There ca?i 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 
 ofter." 
 
 " You do ? " he retorted, with a wild light in 
 his eyes. " You do ? " 
 
 "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 exulta- 
 tion. " All best forgotten, are they not ? " 
 
 The student did not answer, but again passed 
 his hand confusedly across his forehead. Red- 
 law still held him by the sleeve, when Milly's 
 voice was heard outside. 
 
 " I can sec 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 gentle- 
 man 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 
 
178 
 
 THE HA UNTED MAN. 
 
 a steady quality of goodness in her that I dread 
 to influence, I may be tlic 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, 
 communicating, where the garret roof began to 
 slope towards the floor, with a small inner room. 
 Redlaw passed in hastily, and shut it after 
 Lim. 
 
 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." c 
 
 " There is no one here but I." 
 
 "There has been some one?" 
 
 " Yes, yes, there has been some one. 
 
 She put hei- 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." 
 
 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 cushions on the couch, which she touched 
 with so light a hand, that he hardly seemed to 
 know it, as he lay looking at the fire. When 
 all this was done, and she had swept the hearth, 
 she sat down, in her modest little bonnet, to her 
 work, and was quietly busy on it directly. 
 
 " It's the new muslin curtain for the window, 
 Mr. Edmund," said ]\Iilly, stitching away as she 
 talked. " It will look very clean and nice, 
 though it costs very little, and will save your 
 eyes, too, from the light. My William says the 
 room should not be too light just now, when 
 you are recovering so v»ell, 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 resumed 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 afliict those 
 who are dearest to you, your home wall be 
 doubly dear and doubly blessed. Now, isn't 
 that a good, true thing?" 
 
 She was too intent upon her w^ork, 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 in- 
 clining thoughtfully on one side, as she looked 
 down, following her busy fingers with her eyes. 
 " Even on me — and I am very dift'erent 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 experience some repay- 
 ment 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," 
 
 His getting up from the couch interrupted 
 her, or she w'as 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. 
 
A DREADFUL GIFT, 
 
 179 
 
 - ■ " I cant be made to feel the more obliged by 
 your exaggerating 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 i)referring enormous claims upon 
 me ? Trouble, sorrow, affliction, adversity ! 
 One miglit suppose I had been dying a score of 
 deaths here ! " 
 
 " Do you believe, ]\Ir. Edmund," she asked, 
 rising and going nearer to him, " that I spoke of 
 the i)Oor people of the house with any reference 
 to myself? To me?" laying her hand upon 
 her bosom with a simple and innocent smile of 
 astonishment. 
 
 '• Oh ! I think nothing about it, my good 
 creature," he returned. " I have had an indis- 
 position, 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 : 
 
 " ]\Ir. Edmund, would you rather be alone?" 
 
 " There is no reason why I should detain vou 
 here," he replied. 
 
 " Except " said Milly, hesitating, and show- 
 ing her work. 
 
 " Oh ! the curtain," he answered with a super- 
 cilious 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 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 \ery sorry." 
 
 If she had been as passionate as she was quiet, 
 
 2m indignant as she was calm, as angry in her 
 look as she was gentle, as loud of 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 Rcdlaw 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 ///yself ! " exclaimed Redlavv 
 like a madman. " I am infected. I am in- 
 fectious ! I am charged with poison for my 
 own mind, and the minds of all mankind. Where 
 I felt interest, compassion, sympathy, I am turn- 
 ing 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 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 endurances 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 ])ut it in his mind — he suddenly be- 
 thought himself, as he Avas 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 disappear- 
 ance, that boy alone had shown no sign of being 
 changed. 
 
I So 
 
 THE HA UNTED MAN. 
 
 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 Col- 
 lege, and to that part of it where the general 
 porch was, and where, alone, the pavement was 
 worn by the tread of the students' 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 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 ceil- 
 ing 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 forgotten 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 submis- 
 sion to be raised upon his feet, and looked at. 
 
 " Who washed them, and put 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, thougli 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?" 
 
 " The woman's husband, d'ye mean ? " in- 
 quired the boy. 
 
 " Ay. Where are those two ? " 
 
 " Out. Something's the matter somewhere. 
 They were fetched out in a hurry, and told me 
 to stop here." 
 
 " Come with me," said the Chemist, " and I'll 
 give you money." 
 
 "Come where? and how much will you 
 give?" 
 
 " 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 httle 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 babj'-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 withdrawing the hand with which he 
 threatened, and beginning to get up. 
 
 " I will ! " 
 
 " And let me go before, behind, or anyways I 
 hke ? " 
 
 " I will ! " 
 
 " Give me some money first, then, and I'll 
 go." 
 
 The Chemist laid a few shilHngs, one by one. 
 
ALL GOOD IMAGINATION GONE. 
 
 in his extended hand. To count them was 
 beyond the boy's knowledge, but he said " one," 
 every time, and avariciously looked at each as 
 it was given, and at the donor. He had no- 
 where to put them, out of his hand, but in his 
 mouth ; anil 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 to him to 
 follow. Keeping his rags together, as usual, 
 the boy complied, and went out with his 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 re- 
 treated 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, somewhat less sus- 
 piciously ; 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 shuddered as it forced upon him 
 one reflection. 
 
 The first occasion was when the;' vere cross- 
 ing an old churchyard, and Redlaw stopped 
 among the graves, utterly at a loss how to con- 
 nect them with any tender, softening, or conso- 
 latory thought. 
 
 The second was when the breaking forth of 
 the moon induced him to look up at the hea- 
 vens, 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 woixC 
 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 manifest to him by the dry mecha- 
 nism 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, power- 
 less 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 respects, the exi)res- 
 sion on the boy's face was the expression on his 
 own. 
 
 They journeyed on for some time — now 
 througli 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, 
 (^uick, 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 win- 
 dows, 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, un fenced, undrained, unlighted, 
 and bordered by a sluggish ditch ; from that, to 
 the sloping line of arches, part of some neigh- 
 bouring 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 plundered little heap 
 of bricks ; from that, to the child, close to him, 
 cowering and trembling with the cold, and limp- 
 ing on one little foot, Avhile he coiled the other 
 round his leg to w-arm it, yet staring at all these 
 things w'ith 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. 
 
 " Sorrow, wrong, and trouble," said the 
 Chemist, with a painful effort at some more 
 distinct remembrance, " at least haunt this place 
 darkly. He can do no harm who brings forget- 
 fulness of such things here ! " 
 
 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 han-'s and knees. As it was not 
 
l83 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN. 
 
 easy to pass without treading on her, and as she 
 was perfectly regardlecs of his near approach, he 
 stopped, and touched her on the shoulder. 
 Looking 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. 
 
 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 lam?" she answered, 
 showing him her face again. 
 
 He looked upon the ruined temple of God, 
 so lately made, so soon disfigured ; and some- 
 thing, which was not compassion — for the springs 
 in which a true compassion for such miseries 
 has its rise were dried up in his breast — but 
 which was nearer to it, for the moment, 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. 
 
 "Arc you thinking of a wrong?" he asked 
 once more. 
 
 " I am thinking of my life," she said with a 
 momentary look at him. 
 
 He 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. 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 
 appearance, 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 tenderness 
 appeared to show itself. 
 
 He drew a little off, and, in doing so, observed 
 that her arms were black, her fiice cut, and her 
 bosom bruised. 
 
 "What brutal hand has hurt you so?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " My own. I did it myself I " she answered 
 quickl)-. 
 
 " It is impossible." 
 
 " I'll swear I did ! He didn't touch me. J 
 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, con- 
 fronting him with this untruth, he saw enough 
 of the last perversion and distortion of good 
 surviving in that miserable 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 con- 
 nects her with the state from which she has 
 fallen has those roots ! In the name of God, 
 let me go by !" 
 
 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 parti)'' 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 
 impulse, 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 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 
 wistfully 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 
 
THE FAVOURITE SON. 
 
 183 
 
 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 Ufe, but on whom 
 it was not hkely 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 efiects 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 i)erson who had recognised him, and who 
 had kept aloof in the remotest comer 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 w'hat 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 him- 
 self down any loAver ? " 
 
 " 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 way- 
 faring towards London with my unhappy brother 
 that you see here," — Mr. William passed his 
 coat-sleeve across his eyes, — " and being lodging 
 up-stairs for the niglit — 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 mourn- 
 ful spectacle, sir ! But that's where it is. It's 
 enough to kill my father ! " 
 
 Redlaw looked up at these words, and, recall- 
 ing 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 
 
 cA)served the memory of this old man to be s 
 tissue of sorrow and trouble, and shall I be 
 afraid, to-night, to shake it ? Arc such remem- 
 brances as I can drive away so precious to this 
 dying man, that I need fear for ////;/ i No, I'll 
 stay here." 
 
 But he stayed in fear and trembling none the 
 less for these Avords ; and, shrouded in Jiis 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 i)lace. 
 
 " 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 does me good, George. Oh, 
 think of it too, think of it too, and your heart 
 will be softened more and more ! Where's ray 
 son William ? William, my boy, your mother 
 loved him dearly to the last, and with her latesJ. 
 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 ! " 
 
 " 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, clasp- 
 ing his hands and looking up, " I was thankful,, 
 only yesterday, that I could remember this un- 
 happy son when he was an innocent child. But 
 what a comfort is it, now, to think that even 
 God himself 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 
 
i84 
 
 THE HA UNTED MAN. 
 
 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 tremjle as Redlaw 
 trembled in the silence that ensued? He knew 
 it must come upon them, knew that it was com- 
 ing fast. 
 
 " My time is very short, my breath is shorter," 
 said the sick man, supporting himself on one 
 
 "I'M NOT A-GOING TO TAKE YOU THERE. LET ME BE, OR I'LL HEAVE SOME EIRE AT YOU I " 
 
 arm, and with the other groping in the air, " and 
 I remember there is something on my mind con- 
 cerning 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. 
 
 " 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 llie 
 sight of my poor old father, and the thought of 
 
THE GIFT BESIDE A DEATH-BED. 
 
 i8s 
 
 all the trouble 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 wandering 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 completely 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 facfe out for a moment with the 
 hand that again wandered over his forehead, 
 and then it lowered on Redlaw, reckless, ruf- 
 fianly, 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 ! " 
 
 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 tremendous 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 
 hurriedly. " William, come away from here. 
 We'll go home." 
 
 " Home, father ! " returned William. " Are 
 you going to leave your own son ? " 
 
 " Where's my own son ? " replied the old man. 
 
 " AVhere ? Why, there ! " 
 
 "That's no son of mine," said Philip, trem- 
 bling 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 
 meat and 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 liis pockets. " I don't know what 
 good you are myself. We could have a deal 
 more pleasure without you." 
 
 " Aly 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 mc any pleasure," said William sulkily. 
 
 "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 uncomfort- 
 able, 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," addressing Redlaw with an impatience 
 and an irritation that were quite 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, childishly and weakly, " and I 
 don't know as I ever was much put out by any- 
 thing. 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 recollect 
 once — no, I don't — no, it's broken off. It was 
 something 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 tlie 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're not good to eat. I recollect 
 when I was a little chap about as high as that, 
 and out a walking with — .'et 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 repeated this, he nibbled at the leaves, and 
 
z86 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN. 
 
 spat the morsels out ; the cold, uninterested eye 
 with which his youngest son (so changed) re- 
 garded him ; the determined apathy witli which 
 his eldest son lay hardened in his sin; — im- 
 pressed themselves no more on Redlaw's obser- 
 vation ; for he broke his way from the spot to 
 which his feet seemed to have been fixed, and 
 ran out of the house. 
 
 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, shrouded in his 
 < loak, 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 munching, 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 
 increasing repugnance and fear, " is the only one 
 companion I have left on earth ! " 
 
 How long it was before he was aroused from 
 his contemplation 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. Nobody 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 ! " 
 
 " A\'hat 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 ter- 
 rible infatuation. William's father has turned 
 childish in a moment. William himself is 
 changed. The shock has been too sudden for 
 him ; I cannot understand him : he is not like 
 himself Oh, ISlr. Redlaw, pray advise me, 
 help me ! " 
 
 " No ! No ! No ! " he answered. 
 
 " ]\Ir. 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 won- 
 drous 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 memories of men. Pity me ! 
 Relieve me ! " 
 
 There was no response but her " Help me, 
 help me, let me in ! " and the boy's 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 
 
SEEK HER OUT. 
 
 187 
 
 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 fol- 
 lowed, how shall he be saved ? They are all 
 changed, there is no one else to help me : pray, 
 pray let me in ! " 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 THE GIFT REVERSED. 
 
 o||g|^IGHT was still heavy in tfoe sky. 
 ^ ^l^/j 0! On open plains, from hill-tops, and 
 ^^k from the decks of solitary ships at 
 ^^^ sea, a distant low-lying line, that 
 I'^Vi^^ promised by -and -by to change to 
 i^L^ ^ light, was visible in the dim horizon ; 
 ^^ but its promise was remote and doubt- 
 -.o" "^ ful, 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 conceal- 
 ments from him, and imperfect revelations to 
 liim ; 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 dark- 
 ness 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 mys- 
 tery 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 suc- 
 ceeded 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 playing still, and being borne 
 towards him on the night air, in a low, sweet, 
 melancholy strain — he rose, and stood stretch- 
 ing his hands about him, as if there were some 
 friend approaching within his reach, on whom 
 his desolate touch might rest, yet do no harm. 
 As he 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. i ■ 
 
 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 h.o\)Q. 
 that it was. But some dumb stir within him 
 made him capable, again, of being moved b;,- 
 what was hidden, afar off, in the music. If u 
 were only that it told him sorrovi-fully 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. Be- 
 yond the boy, so that his sleeping figure lay at 
 its feet, the Phantom stood, immovable and 
 silent, with its eyes upon him. 
 
 Ghastly it was, as it had ever been, 'out 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. 
 
 " Spectre ! " said the Chemist, newly troubled 
 as he looked, " I have not been stubborn or 
 presumptuous in respect 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 Avhat I am myself, and what I have 
 made of others ? " 
 
 "I have saidj 'Seek her out,'" returned the 
 Phantom. " I have said no more." 
 
 " Oh, tell me ! " exclaimed Redlaw, catching 
 
1 88 
 
 THE HA UNTED MAN. 
 
 at the hope which he fancied might He hidden 
 in the words. " Can I undo what I 1 ave 
 done?" 
 
 " No," returned the Phantom. 
 
 " I do not ask for restoration to myself," said 
 Redlaw. " What I abandoned, 1 abandoned of 
 my own will, and have justly lost. But for those 
 to whom I have transferred tlie fatal gift ; who 
 never sought it; who unknowingly 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 awhile ; then turned its head 
 suddenly, and looked upon the shadow at its 
 side. 
 
 " Ah ! Can she ? " cried Redlaw, still looking 
 upon the shade. 
 
 The Phantom released the hand it had re- 
 tained till now, and softly raised its own with a 
 gesture of dismissal. 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 
 consciousness of any power to set right what I 
 have done ? " 
 
 " She has not," the Phantom answered. 
 
 " Has she the power bestowed on her with- 
 out the consciousness ? " 
 
 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 bestowal of the gift, across the boy who 
 still lay on the ground between them, at the 
 Phantom's feet. 
 
 " Terrible instructor," said the Chemist, sink- 
 ing on his knee before it in an attitude of sup- 
 phcation, " by whom I was renounced, but by 
 whom I am revisited (in 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 
 hun^n 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 com- 
 panionship with mine?" 
 
 " This," said the Phantom, pointing to the 
 boy, " is the last, completcst illustration of a 
 human creature utterly bereft of such remem- 
 brances 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 make a 
 grain of such a memory spring up in his hardened 
 breast. All within this desolate creature is 
 barren wilderness. All within the man bereft of 
 what you have resigned is the same barren wilder- 
 ness. \soQ 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 man- 
 kind MUST reap. From every seed of evil in 
 this boy a field of ruin is grown tliat shall be 
 gathered in, and garnered up, and sown again in 
 many places in the world, until regions are over- 
 spread with wickedness 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 upon the boy in his 
 sleep. Redlaw, 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 nightly walk, 
 these creatures 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 country through- 
 out 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." 
 
 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 
 per.fect 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 
 
DAYBREAK. 
 
 189 
 
 thoughts have been in * terrible companionship ' 
 with yours, because you have gone down to his 
 unnatural level. He is the growth of man's in- 
 difference ; you are the growth of man's pre- 
 sumption. The beneficent design of Heaven is, 
 
 in each case, overthrown, 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 
 
 "you speak 10 ME OF WHAT li> LYiA'G HERE," THE rHANTOM INTERPOSED, AND POINTED WITH ITS FINGER 
 
 TO THE BOY. 
 
 as he slept, and no longer shrunk irom him with 
 abhorrence or indifference. 
 
 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 ancient 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 
 
ago 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN. 
 
 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 Norman 
 arches were half buried in tlie ground, and 
 stirred the dull sap in the lazy vegetation liang- 
 ing to the walls, and quickened the slow prin- 
 ciple 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. ]\Ir. Tet- 
 terby took down the shutters of the shop, and, 
 strip by strip, revealed the treasures of the win- 
 dow to the eyes, so proof against their seduc- 
 tions, of Jerusalem Buildings. Adolphus had 
 been out so long already, that he was half-way 
 on to Morning Pepper. Five small Tetterbys, 
 whose ten round eyes were much inflamed by 
 soap and friction, were in the tortures of a cool 
 wash in the back-kitchen ; INIrs. Tetterby pre- 
 siding. Johnny, who was pushed and hustled 
 through his toilet with great rapidity when INIo- 
 loch 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 Mo- 
 loch 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. Tetterby, to make a 
 handsome dental provision for the sign of the 
 3ju11 and Mouth. All sorts of objects were im- 
 pressed for the rubbing of its gums, notwith- 
 standing that it always carried, dangling at its 
 waist (which was immediately under its chin), a 
 bone ring, large enough to have represented the 
 rosary of a young nun. Knife handles, umbrella 
 tops, the heads of walking-sticks selected from 
 the stock, the fingers of the family in general, 
 but especially of Johnny, nutmeg-graters, crusts, 
 the handles of doors, and the cool knobs on the 
 tops of pokers, were among the commonest in- 
 struments indiscriminately 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 cal- 
 culated. 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 somebody else. 
 
 The tempers of the little Tetterbys had sadly 
 changed with a few hours. Mr. and Mrs. Tet- 
 terby themselves were not more altered than 
 
 their offspring. Usually they were an unselfish, 
 good-natured, yielding little race, sharing shoit 
 commons when it happened (which was pretty 
 often) contentedly, and even generously, and 
 taking a great deal of enjoyment out of a verj 
 little meat. Cut they were fighting now, nol 
 only for the soap-and-water, but even for the 
 breakfast which was yet in perspective. The 
 hand of every little Tetterby was against the 
 other little Tetterby's ; 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 i)arlour, 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. Tetterby. " Had you the heart to do it ? " 
 
 "Why don't her teeth come through, then."' 
 retorted Johnny in a loud rebellious voice, " in- 
 stead of bothering me ? How would you like it 
 yourself? " 
 
 "Like it, sir!" said INIrs. Tetterby, relieving 
 him of his dishonoured load. 
 
 " 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." 
 
 Mr. Tetterby, who had arrived upon the scene 
 of action, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, instead 
 of correcting the rebel, and seemed rather 
 struck by this view of a military life. 
 
 " I wish I v.as in the army myself, if the 
 child's in the right," said j\Irs, Tetterby, looking 
 at her husband, "for I have no peace of my 
 life here. I'm a slave — a Virginia slave," some 
 indistinct association with their weak descent on 
 the tobacco trade, perhaps, suggested this aggra- 
 vated expression to JNlrs. 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 ]\Irs. Tetterby, shak- 
 ing 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 subject much clearer by shaking it, Mrs. Tet- 
 terby put the baby away in a cradle, and, folding 
 her arms, sat rocking it angrily with her foot. 
 
 " How you stand there, 'Dolj^hus ! " said Mrs. 
 Tetterby to her husband. " Why don't you do 
 something ? " 
 
 " Because I don't care about doing anything," 
 Mr. Tetterby replied. 
 
THE SHADOW ON MR. AND MRS. TETTERBY. 
 
 191 
 
 " I'm sure / don't," said Mrs. Tetterby, 
 
 " I'll take my oath / don't," said Mr. Tet- 
 terby. 
 
 A diversion arose here among Johnny and his 
 five younger brothers, who, in preparing the 
 family breakfast-table, had fallen to skirmishing 
 for the temporary possession of the loaf, and 
 were buffeting one another with great hearti- 
 ness; the smallest boy of all, with precocious 
 discretion, hovering outside the knot of com- 
 batants, and harassing their legs. Into the 
 midst of this fray Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby both 
 precipitated themselves with great ardour, as if 
 such ground were the only ground on whicli they 
 could now agree ; and having, v/ith no visible 
 remains of their late soft-heartedness, laid about 
 them without any lenity, and done much execu- 
 tion, 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, nevertheless, for the gratifica- 
 tion of quarrelling with him. 
 
 " Oh ! you're a consistent man," said jNIrs. 
 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 ! " 
 
 *' Say used to, if you please," returned her 
 husband. " You won't find me doing so any 
 more. I'm Aviser now." 
 
 " Bah ! Wiser, indeed ! " said Mrs. Tetterby. 
 " Are you better ? " 
 
 The question sounded some discordant note 
 in Mr. Tetterby's breast. He ruminated de- 
 jectedly, and passed his hand across and across 
 his forehead. 
 
 " Better 1 " murmured 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 iwra- 
 graph of which he was in quest. 
 
 " This used to be one of the family favourites, 
 I recollect," 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 bicker- 
 ing or discontent among 'em, next to the story 
 of the robin redbreasts in the wood. ' Melan- 
 choly 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 between ten and two, the whole of whom 
 were evidently in a famishing condition, appeared 
 before the worthy magistrate, and made the fol- 
 lowing 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, dear 
 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 / 
 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 newsman, " 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, &he won't bear comparison with 
 most other women." ' 
 
 " He's common-looking, he has no air with 
 him, he's small, he's beginning to stoop, and he's 
 getting ball," muttered Mrs. Tetterby. 
 
 " I mM-ot 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 my- 
 self," 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 sedentary 
 occupation, but discussed it as a dance or trot ; 
 
192 
 
 THE HA UNTED MAN. 
 
 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 hopj)ings 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 tlie table, presented so lamentable 
 an instance of angry passions risen very high 
 indeed, that it was an outrage on the memory of 
 Doctor 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 ''Vdldren at all. They give 7is no 
 pleasure." 
 
 He was at that moment taking up the cup 
 which Mrs. Tetterby had rudely pushed towards 
 him, and Mrs. Tetterby w^as lifting her own cup 
 to her lips, when they both stopped, as if they 
 w^ere transfixed. 
 
 " Here ! Mother ! Father ! " cried Johnny, 
 running into the room. " Here's Mrs. William 
 coming down the street ! " 
 
 And if ever, since the world began, a young 
 boy took a baby from a cradle with the care of 
 an old nurse, and hushed and soothed it ten- 
 derly, and tottered 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. Tet- 
 terby 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. 
 
 " Why, Lord forgive me," said Mr. Tetterby 
 to himself, "what evil tempers have I been 
 giving way to ? What has been the matter 
 here?" 
 
 " 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 1 " 
 
 " 'Dolphus dear ! " returned his wife. 
 
 " I — I've been in a state of mind," said Mr. 
 
 Tetterby, "that I can't abcar to think of. 
 Sophy." 
 
 " Oh ! P'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 w'ondered how," gasped 
 Mr. Tetterby, supporting himself by his chair, 
 " I wondered how I had ever admired you — I 
 forgot the precious children you have brought 
 about me, and thought you didn't look as shm 
 as I could wish. I — I never gave a recollec- 
 tion," said Mr. Tetterby with severe self-accusa- 
 tion, " 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 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 may you 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 ! " 
 
MRS. WILLIAM ARRIVES. 
 
 193 
 
 " Hurrah . Here's Mrs. William ! ", cried 
 Johnny. 
 
 So she was, and all the children with her ; 
 and, as she cam> in, they kissed her, and kissed 
 one another, anc kissed the baby, and kissed 
 their father and mother, and then ran back and 
 flocked and danced about her, trooping 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 attracted to her as the children 
 were ; they ran towards her, kissed her hands, 
 pressed round her, could not receive her ardently 
 or enthusiastically enough. She came among 
 them like the spirit of all goodness, affection, 
 gentle consideration, love, and domesticity. 
 
 " What ! are yoti all so glad to see me, too, 
 this bright Christmas morning ? " said Milly, 
 clapping her hands in a pleasant wonder. " Oh 
 dear, how delightful this is ! " 
 
 More shouting from the children, more kiss- 
 ing, 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, 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. Rediaw 
 came to me at sunrise, 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 said 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 
 Christmas Bucks, 13. 
 
 *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 en- 
 treated 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. Red- 
 law 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 Mr. Rediaw 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 Rediaw 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 ; remaining there while the young 
 student passed him, and came running down. 
 
 " 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 some- 
 body else who likes me ! What shall I ever 
 do?" 
 
 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 touch- 
 ing 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 affec- 
 tion 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." 
 
194 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN. 
 
 " And will you come again ? and will you 
 finish the little curtain?" 
 
 " No," said Milly, drying her eyes, and shak- 
 ing her head. " You won't care for my needle- 
 work now." 
 
 " Is it forgiving me to say that ? " 
 
 She beckoned him aside, and whispered in his 
 ear. 
 
 " There is news from your home, Mr. Ed- 
 mund." 
 
 " 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 involuntarily 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 with- 
 out 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. 
 
 " Mr. Redlaw is much altered, and has told 
 me this morning that his memory is impaired. 
 Be very considerate to him, Mr. Edmund ; he 
 needs that from us all." 
 
 The young man assured her, by a look, that 
 her caution was not ill bestowed ; and, as he 
 passed the Chemist on his way out, bent re- 
 spectfully 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 Phan- 
 tom'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 calamity 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 in- 
 firmities. 
 
 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 
 inspired 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 
 tranquillity ; he thought of the unwholesome 
 blight he had shed upon it, and might, but for her, 
 have been diftusing then ; and perhaps 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 chimney-corner, 
 with his eyes fixed on the ground, and his son 
 was leaning against the opposite side of the fire- 
 place, looking at him. As she can:ie in at the 
 door, both started and turned round towards 
 her, and a radiant change came upon their 
 faces. 
 
 " Oh dear, dear, dear, they are pleased to see 
 me, like the rest ! " cried Milly, clapping her 
 hands in an ecstasy, 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 
 
A GOOD PRAYER. 
 
 195 
 
 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. Rut 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. I find that it's impossible 
 for me to get on without Mouse. I — where's 
 my son William ? — I fancy I have been dream- 
 ing, William." 
 
 '• That's what I say myself, father," returned 
 his son. " / 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 
 ho.nds with his father, and patting him on the 
 back, and rubbing 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 patting 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 think 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, 
 though ? " 
 
 Mr. William might never have left off repeat- 
 ing this inquiry and shaking hands with him 
 again, and patting him again, and rubbing him 
 down again, if the old man had not espied the 
 Chemist, whom until now he had not seen. 
 
 " 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 morn- 
 ing, of the time when you was a student your- 
 self, and worked so hard that you was backwards 
 and forwards in our library even at Christ- 
 mas-time. Ha, ha ! I'm old enough to remem- 
 ber 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 Christ- 
 mas 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 iJay in what used to be, 
 before our ten poor gentlemen commuted, 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 Avould put up very ear- 
 nestly, if they were called away young, with 
 reference to those who were dearest to them. 
 ' My brother,' says the young lady — ' My hus- 
 band,' says my poor wife — ' Lord, keep his 
 memory of me green, and do not let me be for- 
 gotten ! ' " 
 
 Tears more painful and more bitter than he 
 had ever shed in all his life coursed down Red- 
 law'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 I " 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 gone." 
 
 " Merciful power!" cried the old man. 
 
 " I have lost my memory of sorrow, wrong, 
 and trouble," said the Chemist ; " and with that 
 I have lost all man would remember !" 
 
 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 recollections are. 
 
 The boy came running in, and ran to Milly. 
 
 " Here's the man," he said, " in the other 
 room. I don't want /^/w." 
 
 "What man does he mean?" asked Mr. 
 William. 
 
 " Hush ! " said Milly. 
 
196 
 
 THE HAUNTED MAN, 
 
 01)edient to a sign from her, he and his old 
 father softly withdrew. As they went out un- 
 noticed, Redlaw beckoned to the boy to come 
 to him. 
 
 " I like the woman best," he answered, hold- 
 ing to her skirts. 
 
 " You are right," said Redlaw with a faint 
 smile. " But you needn't fear to come to me. 
 I am gewtler 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 
 
 "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 PATTING HIM AGAIN, 
 AND RUBBING HIM GENTLY DOWN AGAIN. 
 
 approach, and even to sit down at his feet. As 
 Redlaw laid his hand upon the shoulder of the 
 child, looking on him with compassion 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 a^^swered, fixing his eyes upon her. 
 
 " Your voice and music are the same to me." 
 
THE STUDENT'S FATHER. 
 
 197 
 
 " May I ask you something?" 
 
 " What you will." 
 
 " 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 hesi- 
 tation. 
 
 " 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 after- 
 wards. 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 father of 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 ?" 
 
 " No, not the man. Did he ever wrong me ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " 
 
 " Ah ! Then it's hopeless — hopeless." 
 
 He shook his head, and softly beat upon the 
 hand he held, as though mutely asking her com- 
 miseration. 
 
 "I did not go to Mr. Edmund last night," 
 said Milly. " You will listen to me just the 
 same as if you did remember 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 infancy, I learn from him — and has aban- 
 doned 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-abasement and degradation before him, and 
 would have looked longer, in an ineffectual 
 struggle for enlightenment, but that Milly re- 
 sumed her late position by his side, and at- 
 tracted his attentive gaze to her own face. 
 
 " See how low he is sunk, how lost he is ! " 
 she whispered, stretching out her arm towards 
 him, without 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. May I tell you why it 
 seems to me a good thing for us to remember 
 wrong that has been done us?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " That we may forgive it." 
 
 " Pardon me, great Heaven ! " said Redlaw, 
 lifting up his eyes, " for having thrown away 
 thine own high attribute ! " 
 
 " 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 re- 
 call at once a wrong and its forgiveness ? " 
 
 He looked at the figure by the door, and fast- 
 ened his attentive eyes on her again. A ray of 
 clearer light appeared 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 repa- 
 ration 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 
 
igS 
 
 THE HA UNTED MAN. 
 
 tell him that I would forgive him, if I were so 
 happy as to know for what." 
 
 As she rose, and turned her beaming face to- 
 wards the fallen man, implying that her media- 
 tion had been successful, he advanced a step, 
 and, without raising his eyes, addressed himself 
 to RedUiw. 
 
 "You are so generous," he said — "you ever 
 were — that you will try to banish your rising 
 sense of retribution in the spectacle that is 
 before you. I do not try to banish it from my- 
 self, 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 pro- 
 fessions ; I 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 
 say." 
 
 Redlaw, keeping her close at his side, turned 
 his face towards the speaker, and there was sor- 
 row in it. Something hke 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 liad rontinued 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 recollec- 
 tion of what has been between us is so strongly 
 stirred, and is presented 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 mis- 
 used your ait!, I shall never look upon him 
 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 toucheil it — little more — with 
 both his own — and, bending down his head, 
 went slowly out. 
 
 In the few moments that elapsed while Milly 
 silently took him to the gate, the Chemist 
 dropped into his chair, 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 per- 
 mitting him to be disturbed ; 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 ! " 
 
 " 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 some- 
 times wish you had one to love and cherish. 
 Q\7.: 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 i\h-. William softly. " I know that." 
 
 " AVhen 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 con- 
 
CHRISTIAN CHEMISTRY. 
 
 199 
 
 tinued, " 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 suffer- 
 ing 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 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 understanding 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 {qv^ 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 i)ie Mother ! " 
 
 Redlaw fell upon his knees with a loud cry. 
 
 " O Thou," he said, " who, through the teach- 
 ing of pure love, hast 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 reme- 
 diable 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. 
 
 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 commuted, 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. Therefore 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 Tetterbys, 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-toolh; 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 knowing 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. But 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 beliind 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, saw. 
 
 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 gloomy thoughts, 
 and Milly the embodiment of his better wisdom. 
 / say nothing. 
 
 — Except this. That as they were assembled 
 in the old Hall, by no other light than that of a 
 great fire (liaving dined early), the shadows once 
 more stole out of their hiding-places, and 
 
200 
 
 THE HA UNTED MAN. 
 
 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. Deep- 
 
 ened in its gravity by the fire-light, 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 plain below, as if a voice had 
 
 uttered them, were the words : 
 
 ( 
 
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