initial commit of ebook 1394HEADmain

1 files changed, 1681 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/1394.txt b/1394.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16dadcf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1394.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1681 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Holly-Tree, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Holly-Tree
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2005  [eBook #1394]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLLY-TREE***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall edition of "Christmas Stories"
+by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HOLLY-TREE--THREE BRANCHES
+
+
+FIRST BRANCH--MYSELF
+
+
+I have kept one secret in the course of my life.  I am a bashful man.
+Nobody would suppose it, nobody ever does suppose it, nobody ever did
+suppose it, but I am naturally a bashful man.  This is the secret which I
+have never breathed until now.
+
+I might greatly move the reader by some account of the innumerable places
+I have not been to, the innumerable people I have not called upon or
+received, the innumerable social evasions I have been guilty of, solely
+because I am by original constitution and character a bashful man.  But I
+will leave the reader unmoved, and proceed with the object before me.
+
+That object is to give a plain account of my travels and discoveries in
+the Holly-Tree Inn; in which place of good entertainment for man and
+beast I was once snowed up.
+
+It happened in the memorable year when I parted for ever from Angela
+Leath, whom I was shortly to have married, on making the discovery that
+she preferred my bosom friend.  From our school-days I had freely
+admitted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far superior to myself; and, though
+I was grievously wounded at heart, I felt the preference to be natural,
+and tried to forgive them both.  It was under these circumstances that I
+resolved to go to America--on my way to the Devil.
+
+Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin, but resolving
+to write each of them an affecting letter conveying my blessing and
+forgiveness, which the steam-tender for shore should carry to the post
+when I myself should be bound for the New World, far beyond recall,--I
+say, locking up my grief in my own breast, and consoling myself as I
+could with the prospect of being generous, I quietly left all I held
+dear, and started on the desolate journey I have mentioned.
+
+The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left my chambers for
+ever, at five o'clock in the morning.  I had shaved by candle-light, of
+course, and was miserably cold, and experienced that general
+all-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged which I have usually
+found inseparable from untimely rising under such circumstances.
+
+How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet Street when I came out of
+the Temple!  The street-lamps flickering in the gusty north-east wind, as
+if the very gas were contorted with cold; the white-topped houses; the
+bleak, star-lighted sky; the market people and other early stragglers,
+trotting to circulate their almost frozen blood; the hospitable light and
+warmth of the few coffee-shops and public-houses that were open for such
+customers; the hard, dry, frosty rime with which the air was charged (the
+wind had already beaten it into every crevice), and which lashed my face
+like a steel whip.
+
+It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end of the year.  The
+Post-office packet for the United States was to depart from Liverpool,
+weather permitting, on the first of the ensuing month, and I had the
+intervening time on my hands.  I had taken this into consideration, and
+had resolved to make a visit to a certain spot (which I need not name) on
+the farther borders of Yorkshire.  It was endeared to me by my having
+first seen Angela at a farmhouse in that place, and my melancholy was
+gratified by the idea of taking a wintry leave of it before my
+expatriation.  I ought to explain, that, to avoid being sought out before
+my resolution should have been rendered irrevocable by being carried into
+full effect, I had written to Angela overnight, in my usual manner,
+lamenting that urgent business, of which she should know all particulars
+by-and-by--took me unexpectedly away from her for a week or ten days.
+
+There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its place there were
+stage-coaches; which I occasionally find myself, in common with some
+other people, affecting to lament now, but which everybody dreaded as a
+very serious penance then.  I had secured the box-seat on the fastest of
+these, and my business in Fleet Street was to get into a cab with my
+portmanteau, so to make the best of my way to the Peacock at Islington,
+where I was to join this coach.  But when one of our Temple watchmen, who
+carried my portmanteau into Fleet Street for me, told me about the huge
+blocks of ice that had for some days past been floating in the river,
+having closed up in the night, and made a walk from the Temple Gardens
+over to the Surrey shore, I began to ask myself the question, whether the
+box-seat would not be likely to put a sudden and a frosty end to my
+unhappiness.  I was heart-broken, it is true, and yet I was not quite so
+far gone as to wish to be frozen to death.
+
+When I got up to the Peacock,--where I found everybody drinking hot purl,
+in self-preservation,--I asked if there were an inside seat to spare.  I
+then discovered that, inside or out, I was the only passenger.  This gave
+me a still livelier idea of the great inclemency of the weather, since
+that coach always loaded particularly well.  However, I took a little
+purl (which I found uncommonly good), and got into the coach.  When I was
+seated, they built me up with straw to the waist, and, conscious of
+making a rather ridiculous appearance, I began my journey.
+
+It was still dark when we left the Peacock.  For a little while, pale,
+uncertain ghosts of houses and trees appeared and vanished, and then it
+was hard, black, frozen day.  People were lighting their fires; smoke was
+mounting straight up high into the rarified air; and we were rattling for
+Highgate Archway over the hardest ground I have ever heard the ring of
+iron shoes on.  As we got into the country, everything seemed to have
+grown old and gray.  The roads, the trees, thatched roofs of cottages and
+homesteads, the ricks in farmers' yards.  Out-door work was abandoned,
+horse-troughs at roadside inns were frozen hard, no stragglers lounged
+about, doors were close shut, little turnpike houses had blazing fires
+inside, and children (even turnpike people have children, and seem to
+like them) rubbed the frost from the little panes of glass with their
+chubby arms, that their bright eyes might catch a glimpse of the solitary
+coach going by.  I don't know when the snow begin to set in; but I know
+that we were changing horses somewhere when I heard the guard remark,
+"That the old lady up in the sky was picking her geese pretty hard to-
+day."  Then, indeed, I found the white down falling fast and thick.
+
+The lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out, as a lonely traveller does.  I
+was warm and valiant after eating and drinking,--particularly after
+dinner; cold and depressed at all other times.  I was always bewildered
+as to time and place, and always more or less out of my senses.  The
+coach and horses seemed to execute in chorus Auld Lang Syne, without a
+moment's intermission.  They kept the time and tune with the greatest
+regularity, and rose into the swell at the beginning of the Refrain, with
+a precision that worried me to death.  While we changed horses, the guard
+and coachman went stumping up and down the road, printing off their shoes
+in the snow, and poured so much liquid consolation into themselves
+without being any the worse for it, that I began to confound them, as it
+darkened again, with two great white casks standing on end.  Our horses
+tumbled down in solitary places, and we got them up,--which was the
+pleasantest variety _I_ had, for it warmed me.  And it snowed and snowed,
+and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.  All night long we went
+on in this manner.  Thus we came round the clock, upon the Great North
+Road, to the performance of Auld Lang Syne by day again.  And it snowed
+and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.
+
+I forget now where we were at noon on the second day, and where we ought
+to have been; but I know that we were scores of miles behindhand, and
+that our case was growing worse every hour.  The drift was becoming
+prodigiously deep; landmarks were getting snowed out; the road and the
+fields were all one; instead of having fences and hedge-rows to guide us,
+we went crunching on over an unbroken surface of ghastly white that might
+sink beneath us at any moment and drop us down a whole hillside.  Still
+the coachman and guard--who kept together on the box, always in council,
+and looking well about them--made out the track with astonishing
+sagacity.
+
+When we came in sight of a town, it looked, to my fancy, like a large
+drawing on a slate, with abundance of slate-pencil expended on the
+churches and houses where the snow lay thickest.  When we came within a
+town, and found the church clocks all stopped, the dial-faces choked with
+snow, and the inn-signs blotted out, it seemed as if the whole place were
+overgrown with white moss.  As to the coach, it was a mere snowball;
+similarly, the men and boys who ran along beside us to the town's end,
+turning our clogged wheels and encouraging our horses, were men and boys
+of snow; and the bleak wild solitude to which they at last dismissed us
+was a snowy Sahara.  One would have thought this enough: notwithstanding
+which, I pledge my word that it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed,
+and never left off snowing.
+
+We performed Auld Lang Syne the whole day; seeing nothing, out of towns
+and villages, but the track of stoats, hares, and foxes, and sometimes of
+birds.  At nine o'clock at night, on a Yorkshire moor, a cheerful burst
+from our horn, and a welcome sound of talking, with a glimmering and
+moving about of lanterns, roused me from my drowsy state.  I found that
+we were going to change.
+
+They helped me out, and I said to a waiter, whose bare head became as
+white as King Lear's in a single minute, "What Inn is this?"
+
+"The Holly-Tree, sir," said he.
+
+"Upon my word, I believe," said I, apologetically, to the guard and
+coachman, "that I must stop here."
+
+Now the landlord, and the landlady, and the ostler, and the post-boy, and
+all the stable authorities, had already asked the coachman, to the wide-
+eyed interest of all the rest of the establishment, if he meant to go on.
+The coachman had already replied, "Yes, he'd take her through
+it,"--meaning by Her the coach,--"if so be as George would stand by him."
+George was the guard, and he had already sworn that he would stand by
+him.  So the helpers were already getting the horses out.
+
+My declaring myself beaten, after this parley, was not an announcement
+without preparation.  Indeed, but for the way to the announcement being
+smoothed by the parley, I more than doubt whether, as an innately bashful
+man, I should have had the confidence to make it.  As it was, it received
+the approval even of the guard and coachman.  Therefore, with many
+confirmations of my inclining, and many remarks from one bystander to
+another, that the gentleman could go for'ard by the mail to-morrow,
+whereas to-night he would only be froze, and where was the good of a
+gentleman being froze--ah, let alone buried alive (which latter clause
+was added by a humorous helper as a joke at my expense, and was extremely
+well received), I saw my portmanteau got out stiff, like a frozen body;
+did the handsome thing by the guard and coachman; wished them good-night
+and a prosperous journey; and, a little ashamed of myself, after all, for
+leaving them to fight it out alone, followed the landlord, landlady, and
+waiter of the Holly-Tree up-stairs.
+
+I thought I had never seen such a large room as that into which they
+showed me.  It had five windows, with dark red curtains that would have
+absorbed the light of a general illumination; and there were
+complications of drapery at the top of the curtains, that went wandering
+about the wall in a most extraordinary manner.  I asked for a smaller
+room, and they told me there was no smaller room.
+
+They could screen me in, however, the landlord said.  They brought a
+great old japanned screen, with natives (Japanese, I suppose) engaged in
+a variety of idiotic pursuits all over it; and left me roasting whole
+before an immense fire.
+
+My bedroom was some quarter of a mile off, up a great staircase at the
+end of a long gallery; and nobody knows what a misery this is to a
+bashful man who would rather not meet people on the stairs.  It was the
+grimmest room I have ever had the nightmare in; and all the furniture,
+from the four posts of the bed to the two old silver candle-sticks, was
+tall, high-shouldered, and spindle-waisted.  Below, in my sitting-room,
+if I looked round my screen, the wind rushed at me like a mad bull; if I
+stuck to my arm-chair, the fire scorched me to the colour of a new brick.
+The chimney-piece was very high, and there was a bad glass--what I may
+call a wavy glass--above it, which, when I stood up, just showed me my
+anterior phrenological developments,--and these never look well, in any
+subject, cut short off at the eyebrow.  If I stood with my back to the
+fire, a gloomy vault of darkness above and beyond the screen insisted on
+being looked at; and, in its dim remoteness, the drapery of the ten
+curtains of the five windows went twisting and creeping about, like a
+nest of gigantic worms.
+
+I suppose that what I observe in myself must be observed by some other
+men of similar character in _themselves_; therefore I am emboldened to
+mention, that, when I travel, I never arrive at a place but I immediately
+want to go away from it.  Before I had finished my supper of broiled fowl
+and mulled port, I had impressed upon the waiter in detail my
+arrangements for departure in the morning.  Breakfast and bill at eight.
+Fly at nine.  Two horses, or, if needful, even four.
+
+Tired though I was, the night appeared about a week long.  In cases of
+nightmare, I thought of Angela, and felt more depressed than ever by the
+reflection that I was on the shortest road to Gretna Green.  What had _I_
+to do with Gretna Green?  I was not going _that_ way to the Devil, but by
+the American route, I remarked in my bitterness.
+
+In the morning I found that it was snowing still, that it had snowed all
+night, and that I was snowed up.  Nothing could get out of that spot on
+the moor, or could come at it, until the road had been cut out by
+labourers from the market-town.  When they might cut their way to the
+Holly-Tree nobody could tell me.
+
+It was now Christmas-eve.  I should have had a dismal Christmas-time of
+it anywhere, and consequently that did not so much matter; still, being
+snowed up was like dying of frost, a thing I had not bargained for.  I
+felt very lonely.  Yet I could no more have proposed to the landlord and
+landlady to admit me to their society (though I should have liked it--very
+much) than I could have asked them to present me with a piece of plate.
+Here my great secret, the real bashfulness of my character, is to be
+observed.  Like most bashful men, I judge of other people as if they were
+bashful too.  Besides being far too shamefaced to make the proposal
+myself, I really had a delicate misgiving that it would be in the last
+degree disconcerting to them.
+
+Trying to settle down, therefore, in my solitude, I first of all asked
+what books there were in the house.  The waiter brought me a _Book of
+Roads_, two or three old Newspapers, a little Song-Book, terminating in a
+collection of Toasts and Sentiments, a little Jest-Book, an odd volume of
+_Peregrine Pickle_, and the _Sentimental Journey_.  I knew every word of
+the two last already, but I read them through again, then tried to hum
+all the songs (Auld Lang Syne was among them); went entirely through the
+jokes,--in which I found a fund of melancholy adapted to my state of
+mind; proposed all the toasts, enunciated all the sentiments, and
+mastered the papers.  The latter had nothing in them but stock
+advertisements, a meeting about a county rate, and a highway robbery.  As
+I am a greedy reader, I could not make this supply hold out until night;
+it was exhausted by tea-time.  Being then entirely cast upon my own
+resources, I got through an hour in considering what to do next.
+Ultimately, it came into my head (from which I was anxious by any means
+to exclude Angela and Edwin), that I would endeavour to recall my
+experience of Inns, and would try how long it lasted me.  I stirred the
+fire, moved my chair a little to one side of the screen,--not daring to
+go far, for I knew the wind was waiting to make a rush at me, I could
+hear it growling,--and began.
+
+My first impressions of an Inn dated from the Nursery; consequently I
+went back to the Nursery for a starting-point, and found myself at the
+knee of a sallow woman with a fishy eye, an aquiline nose, and a green
+gown, whose specially was a dismal narrative of a landlord by the
+roadside, whose visitors unaccountably disappeared for many years, until
+it was discovered that the pursuit of his life had been to convert them
+into pies.  For the better devotion of himself to this branch of
+industry, he had constructed a secret door behind the head of the bed;
+and when the visitor (oppressed with pie) had fallen asleep, this wicked
+landlord would look softly in with a lamp in one hand and a knife in the
+other, would cut his throat, and would make him into pies; for which
+purpose he had coppers, underneath a trap-door, always boiling; and
+rolled out his pastry in the dead of the night.  Yet even he was not
+insensible to the stings of conscience, for he never went to sleep
+without being heard to mutter, "Too much pepper!" which was eventually
+the cause of his being brought to justice.  I had no sooner disposed of
+this criminal than there started up another of the same period, whose
+profession was originally house-breaking; in the pursuit of which art he
+had had his right ear chopped off one night, as he was burglariously
+getting in at a window, by a brave and lovely servant-maid (whom the
+aquiline-nosed woman, though not at all answering the description, always
+mysteriously implied to be herself).  After several years, this brave and
+lovely servant-maid was married to the landlord of a country Inn; which
+landlord had this remarkable characteristic, that he always wore a silk
+nightcap, and never would on any consideration take it off.  At last, one
+night, when he was fast asleep, the brave and lovely woman lifted up his
+silk nightcap on the right side, and found that he had no ear there; upon
+which she sagaciously perceived that he was the clipped housebreaker, who
+had married her with the intention of putting her to death.  She
+immediately heated the poker and terminated his career, for which she was
+taken to King George upon his throne, and received the compliments of
+royalty on her great discretion and valour.  This same narrator, who had
+a Ghoulish pleasure, I have long been persuaded, in terrifying me to the
+utmost confines of my reason, had another authentic anecdote within her
+own experience, founded, I now believe, upon _Raymond and Agnes, or the
+Bleeding Nun_.  She said it happened to her brother-in-law, who was
+immensely rich,--which my father was not; and immensely tall,--which my
+father was not.  It was always a point with this Ghoul to present my
+clearest relations and friends to my youthful mind under circumstances of
+disparaging contrast.  The brother-in-law was riding once through a
+forest on a magnificent horse (we had no magnificent horse at our house),
+attended by a favourite and valuable Newfoundland dog (we had no dog),
+when he found himself benighted, and came to an Inn.  A dark woman opened
+the door, and he asked her if he could have a bed there.  She answered
+yes, and put his horse in the stable, and took him into a room where
+there were two dark men.  While he was at supper, a parrot in the room
+began to talk, saying, "Blood, blood!  Wipe up the blood!"  Upon which
+one of the dark men wrung the parrot's neck, and said he was fond of
+roasted parrots, and he meant to have this one for breakfast in the
+morning.  After eating and drinking heartily, the immensely rich, tall
+brother-in-law went up to bed; but he was rather vexed, because they had
+shut his dog in the stable, saying that they never allowed dogs in the
+house.  He sat very quiet for more than an hour, thinking and thinking,
+when, just as his candle was burning out, he heard a scratch at the door.
+He opened the door, and there was the Newfoundland dog!  The dog came
+softly in, smelt about him, went straight to some straw in the corner
+which the dark men had said covered apples, tore the straw away, and
+disclosed two sheets steeped in blood.  Just at that moment the candle
+went out, and the brother-in-law, looking through a chink in the door,
+saw the two dark men stealing up-stairs; one armed with a dagger that
+long (about five feet); the other carrying a chopper, a sack, and a
+spade.  Having no remembrance of the close of this adventure, I suppose
+my faculties to have been always so frozen with terror at this stage of
+it, that the power of listening stagnated within me for some quarter of
+an hour.
+
+These barbarous stories carried me, sitting there on the Holly-Tree
+hearth, to the Roadside Inn, renowned in my time in a sixpenny book with
+a folding plate, representing in a central compartment of oval form the
+portrait of Jonathan Bradford, and in four corner compartments four
+incidents of the tragedy with which the name is associated,--coloured
+with a hand at once so free and economical, that the bloom of Jonathan's
+complexion passed without any pause into the breeches of the ostler, and,
+smearing itself off into the next division, became rum in a bottle.  Then
+I remembered how the landlord was found at the murdered traveller's
+bedside, with his own knife at his feet, and blood upon his hand; how he
+was hanged for the murder, notwithstanding his protestation that he had
+indeed come there to kill the traveller for his saddle-bags, but had been
+stricken motionless on finding him already slain; and how the ostler,
+years afterwards, owned the deed.  By this time I had made myself quite
+uncomfortable.  I stirred the fire, and stood with my back to it as long
+as I could bear the heat, looking up at the darkness beyond the screen,
+and at the wormy curtains creeping in and creeping out, like the worms in
+the ballad of Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene.
+
+There was an Inn in the cathedral town where I went to school, which had
+pleasanter recollections about it than any of these.  I took it next.  It
+was the Inn where friends used to put up, and where we used to go to see
+parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be tipped.  It had an
+ecclesiastical sign,--the Mitre,--and a bar that seemed to be the next
+best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug.  I loved the landlord's
+youngest daughter to distraction,--but let that pass.  It was in this Inn
+that I was cried over by my rosy little sister, because I had acquired a
+black eye in a fight.  And though she had been, that Holly-Tree night,
+for many a long year where all tears are dried, the Mitre softened me
+yet.
+
+"To be continued to-morrow," said I, when I took my candle to go to bed.
+But my bed took it upon itself to continue the train of thought that
+night.  It carried me away, like the enchanted carpet, to a distant place
+(though still in England), and there, alighting from a stage-coach at
+another Inn in the snow, as I had actually done some years before, I
+repeated in my sleep a curious experience I had really had there.  More
+than a year before I made the journey in the course of which I put up at
+that Inn, I had lost a very near and dear friend by death.  Every night
+since, at home or away from home, I had dreamed of that friend; sometimes
+as still living; sometimes as returning from the world of shadows to
+comfort me; always as being beautiful, placid, and happy, never in
+association with any approach to fear or distress.  It was at a lonely
+Inn in a wide moorland place, that I halted to pass the night.  When I
+had looked from my bedroom window over the waste of snow on which the
+moon was shining, I sat down by my fire to write a letter.  I had always,
+until that hour, kept it within my own breast that I dreamed every night
+of the dear lost one.  But in the letter that I wrote I recorded the
+circumstance, and added that I felt much interested in proving whether
+the subject of my dream would still be faithful to me, travel-tired, and
+in that remote place.  No.  I lost the beloved figure of my vision in
+parting with the secret.  My sleep has never looked upon it since, in
+sixteen years, but once.  I was in Italy, and awoke (or seemed to awake),
+the well-remembered voice distinctly in my ears, conversing with it.  I
+entreated it, as it rose above my bed and soared up to the vaulted roof
+of the old room, to answer me a question I had asked touching the Future
+Life.  My hands were still outstretched towards it as it vanished, when I
+heard a bell ringing by the garden wall, and a voice in the deep
+stillness of the night calling on all good Christians to pray for the
+souls of the dead; it being All Souls' Eve.
+
+To return to the Holly-Tree.  When I awoke next day, it was freezing
+hard, and the lowering sky threatened more snow.  My breakfast cleared
+away, I drew my chair into its former place, and, with the fire getting
+so much the better of the landscape that I sat in twilight, resumed my
+Inn remembrances.
+
+That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I put up once, in the days of
+the hard Wiltshire ale, and before all beer was bitterness.  It was on
+the skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind that rattled my
+lattice window came moaning at me from Stonehenge.  There was a hanger-on
+at that establishment (a supernaturally preserved Druid I believe him to
+have been, and to be still), with long white hair, and a flinty blue eye
+always looking afar off; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who
+seemed to be ever watching for the reappearance, on the verge of the
+horizon, of some ghostly flock of sheep that had been mutton for many
+ages.  He was a man with a weird belief in him that no one could count
+the stones of Stonehenge twice, and make the same number of them;
+likewise, that any one who counted them three times nine times, and then
+stood in the centre and said, "I dare!" would behold a tremendous
+apparition, and be stricken dead.  He pretended to have seen a bustard (I
+suspect him to have been familiar with the dodo), in manner following: He
+was out upon the plain at the close of a late autumn day, when he dimly
+discerned, going on before him at a curious fitfully bounding pace, what
+he at first supposed to be a gig-umbrella that had been blown from some
+conveyance, but what he presently believed to be a lean dwarf man upon a
+little pony.  Having followed this object for some distance without
+gaining on it, and having called to it many times without receiving any
+answer, he pursued it for miles and miles, when, at length coming up with
+it, he discovered it to be the last bustard in Great Britain, degenerated
+into a wingless state, and running along the ground.  Resolved to capture
+him or perish in the attempt, he closed with the bustard; but the
+bustard, who had formed a counter-resolution that he should do neither,
+threw him, stunned him, and was last seen making off due west.  This
+weird main, at that stage of metempsychosis, may have been a sleep-walker
+or an enthusiast or a robber; but I awoke one night to find him in the
+dark at my bedside, repeating the Athanasian Creed in a terrific voice.  I
+paid my bill next day, and retired from the county with all possible
+precipitation.
+
+That was not a commonplace story which worked itself out at a little Inn
+in Switzerland, while I was staying there.  It was a very homely place,
+in a village of one narrow zigzag street, among mountains, and you went
+in at the main door through the cow-house, and among the mules and the
+dogs and the fowls, before ascending a great bare staircase to the rooms;
+which were all of unpainted wood, without plastering or papering,--like
+rough packing-cases.  Outside there was nothing but the straggling
+street, a little toy church with a copper-coloured steeple, a pine
+forest, a torrent, mists, and mountain-sides.  A young man belonging to
+this Inn had disappeared eight weeks before (it was winter-time), and was
+supposed to have had some undiscovered love affair, and to have gone for
+a soldier.  He had got up in the night, and dropped into the village
+street from the loft in which he slept with another man; and he had done
+it so quietly, that his companion and fellow-labourer had heard no
+movement when he was awakened in the morning, and they said, "Louis,
+where is Henri?"  They looked for him high and low, in vain, and gave him
+up.  Now, outside this Inn, there stood, as there stood outside every
+dwelling in the village, a stack of firewood; but the stack belonging to
+the Inn was higher than any of the rest, because the Inn was the richest
+house, and burnt the most fuel.  It began to be noticed, while they were
+looking high and low, that a Bantam cock, part of the live stock of the
+Inn, put himself wonderfully out of his way to get to the top of this
+wood-stack; and that he would stay there for hours and hours, crowing,
+until he appeared in danger of splitting himself.  Five weeks went
+on,--six weeks,--and still this terrible Bantam, neglecting his domestic
+affairs, was always on the top of the wood-stack, crowing the very eyes
+out of his head.  By this time it was perceived that Louis had become
+inspired with a violent animosity towards the terrible Bantam, and one
+morning he was seen by a woman, who sat nursing her goitre at a little
+window in a gleam of sun, to catch up a rough billet of wood, with a
+great oath, hurl it at the terrible Bantam crowing on the wood-stack, and
+bring him down dead.  Hereupon the woman, with a sudden light in her
+mind, stole round to the back of the wood-stack, and, being a good
+climber, as all those women are, climbed up, and soon was seen upon the
+summit, screaming, looking down the hollow within, and crying, "Seize
+Louis, the murderer!  Ring the church bell!  Here is the body!"  I saw
+the murderer that day, and I saw him as I sat by my fire at the Holly-
+Tree Inn, and I see him now, lying shackled with cords on the stable
+litter, among the mild eyes and the smoking breath of the cows, waiting
+to be taken away by the police, and stared at by the fearful village.  A
+heavy animal,--the dullest animal in the stables,--with a stupid head,
+and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of insensibility, who had been,
+within the knowledge of the murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small
+moneys belonging to his master, and who had taken this hopeful mode of
+putting a possible accuser out of his way.  All of which he confessed
+next day, like a sulky wretch who couldn't be troubled any more, now that
+they had got hold of him, and meant to make an end of him.  I saw him
+once again, on the day of my departure from the Inn.  In that Canton the
+headsman still does his office with a sword; and I came upon this
+murderer sitting bound, to a chair, with his eyes bandaged, on a scaffold
+in a little market-place.  In that instant, a great sword (loaded with
+quicksilver in the thick part of the blade) swept round him like a gust
+of wind or fire, and there was no such creature in the world.  My wonder
+was, not that he was so suddenly dispatched, but that any head was left
+unreaped, within a radius of fifty yards of that tremendous sickle.
+
+That was a good Inn, too, with the kind, cheerful landlady and the honest
+landlord, where I lived in the shadow of Mont Blanc, and where one of the
+apartments has a zoological papering on the walls, not so accurately
+joined but that the elephant occasionally rejoices in a tiger's hind legs
+and tail, while the lion puts on a trunk and tusks, and the bear,
+moulting as it were, appears as to portions of himself like a leopard.  I
+made several American friends at that Inn, who all called Mont Blanc
+Mount Blank,--except one good-humoured gentleman, of a very sociable
+nature, who became on such intimate terms with it that he spoke of it
+familiarly as "Blank;" observing, at breakfast, "Blank looks pretty tall
+this morning;" or considerably doubting in the courtyard in the evening,
+whether there warn't some go-ahead naters in our country, sir, that would
+make out the top of Blank in a couple of hours from first start--now!
+
+Once I passed a fortnight at an Inn in the North of England, where I was
+haunted by the ghost of a tremendous pie.  It was a Yorkshire pie, like a
+fort,--an abandoned fort with nothing in it; but the waiter had a fixed
+idea that it was a point of ceremony at every meal to put the pie on the
+table.  After some days I tried to hint, in several delicate ways, that I
+considered the pie done with; as, for example, by emptying fag-ends of
+glasses of wine into it; putting cheese-plates and spoons into it, as
+into a basket; putting wine-bottles into it, as into a cooler; but always
+in vain, the pie being invariably cleaned out again and brought up as
+before.  At last, beginning to be doubtful whether I was not the victim
+of a spectral illusion, and whether my health and spirits might not sink
+under the horrors of an imaginary pie, I cut a triangle out of it, fully
+as large as the musical instrument of that name in a powerful orchestra.
+Human provision could not have foreseen the result--but the waiter mended
+the pie.  With some effectual species of cement, he adroitly fitted the
+triangle in again, and I paid my reckoning and fled.
+
+The Holly-Tree was getting rather dismal.  I made an overland expedition
+beyond the screen, and penetrated as far as the fourth window.  Here I
+was driven back by stress of weather.  Arrived at my winter-quarters once
+more, I made up the fire, and took another Inn.
+
+It was in the remotest part of Cornwall.  A great annual Miners' Feast
+was being holden at the Inn, when I and my travelling companions
+presented ourselves at night among the wild crowd that were dancing
+before it by torchlight.  We had had a break-down in the dark, on a stony
+morass some miles away; and I had the honour of leading one of the
+unharnessed post-horses.  If any lady or gentleman, on perusal of the
+present lines, will take any very tall post-horse with his traces hanging
+about his legs, and will conduct him by the bearing-rein into the heart
+of a country dance of a hundred and fifty couples, that lady or gentleman
+will then, and only then, form an adequate idea of the extent to which
+that post-horse will tread on his conductor's toes.  Over and above
+which, the post-horse, finding three hundred people whirling about him,
+will probably rear, and also lash out with his hind legs, in a manner
+incompatible with dignity or self-respect on his conductor's part.  With
+such little drawbacks on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared at this
+Cornish Inn, to the unutterable wonder of the Cornish Miners.  It was
+full, and twenty times full, and nobody could be received but the post-
+horse,--though to get rid of that noble animal was something.  While my
+fellow-travellers and I were discussing how to pass the night and so much
+of the next day as must intervene before the jovial blacksmith and the
+jovial wheelwright would be in a condition to go out on the morass and
+mend the coach, an honest man stepped forth from the crowd and proposed
+his unlet floor of two rooms, with supper of eggs and bacon, ale and
+punch.  We joyfully accompanied him home to the strangest of clean
+houses, where we were well entertained to the satisfaction of all
+parties.  But the novel feature of the entertainment was, that our host
+was a chair-maker, and that the chairs assigned to us were mere frames,
+altogether without bottoms of any sort; so that we passed the evening on
+perches.  Nor was this the absurdest consequence; for when we unbent at
+supper, and any one of us gave way to laughter, he forgot the peculiarity
+of his position, and instantly disappeared.  I myself, doubled up into an
+attitude from which self-extrication was impossible, was taken out of my
+frame, like a clown in a comic pantomime who has tumbled into a tub, five
+times by the taper's light during the eggs and bacon.
+
+The Holly-Tree was fast reviving within me a sense of loneliness.  I
+began to feel conscious that my subject would never carry on until I was
+dug out.  I might be a week here,--weeks!
+
+There was a story with a singular idea in it, connected with an Inn I
+once passed a night at in a picturesque old town on the Welsh border.  In
+a large double-bedded room of this Inn there had been a suicide committed
+by poison, in one bed, while a tired traveller slept unconscious in the
+other.  After that time, the suicide bed was never used, but the other
+constantly was; the disused bedstead remaining in the room empty, though
+as to all other respects in its old state.  The story ran, that whosoever
+slept in this room, though never so entire a stranger, from never so far
+off, was invariably observed to come down in the morning with an
+impression that he smelt Laudanum, and that his mind always turned upon
+the subject of suicide; to which, whatever kind of man he might be, he
+was certain to make some reference if he conversed with any one.  This
+went on for years, until it at length induced the landlord to take the
+disused bedstead down, and bodily burn it,--bed, hangings, and all.  The
+strange influence (this was the story) now changed to a fainter one, but
+never changed afterwards.  The occupant of that room, with occasional but
+very rare exceptions, would come down in the morning, trying to recall a
+forgotten dream he had had in the night.  The landlord, on his mentioning
+his perplexity, would suggest various commonplace subjects, not one of
+which, as he very well knew, was the true subject.  But the moment the
+landlord suggested "Poison," the traveller started, and cried, "Yes!"  He
+never failed to accept that suggestion, and he never recalled any more of
+the dream.
+
+This reminiscence brought the Welsh Inns in general before me; with the
+women in their round hats, and the harpers with their white beards
+(venerable, but humbugs, I am afraid), playing outside the door while I
+took my dinner.  The transition was natural to the Highland Inns, with
+the oatmeal bannocks, the honey, the venison steaks, the trout from the
+loch, the whisky, and perhaps (having the materials so temptingly at
+hand) the Athol brose.  Once was I coming south from the Scottish
+Highlands in hot haste, hoping to change quickly at the station at the
+bottom of a certain wild historical glen, when these eyes did with
+mortification see the landlord come out with a telescope and sweep the
+whole prospect for the horses; which horses were away picking up their
+own living, and did not heave in sight under four hours.  Having thought
+of the loch-trout, I was taken by quick association to the Anglers' Inns
+of England (I have assisted at innumerable feats of angling by lying in
+the bottom of the boat, whole summer days, doing nothing with the
+greatest perseverance; which I have generally found to be as effectual
+towards the taking of fish as the finest tackle and the utmost science),
+and to the pleasant white, clean, flower-pot-decorated bedrooms of those
+inns, overlooking the river, and the ferry, and the green ait, and the
+church-spire, and the country bridge; and to the pearless Emma with the
+bright eyes and the pretty smile, who waited, bless her! with a natural
+grace that would have converted Blue-Beard.  Casting my eyes upon my
+Holly-Tree fire, I next discerned among the glowing coals the pictures of
+a score or more of those wonderful English posting-inns which we are all
+so sorry to have lost, which were so large and so comfortable, and which
+were such monuments of British submission to rapacity and extortion.  He
+who would see these houses pining away, let him walk from Basingstoke, or
+even Windsor, to London, by way of Hounslow, and moralise on their
+perishing remains; the stables crumbling to dust; unsettled labourers and
+wanderers bivouacking in the outhouses; grass growing in the yards; the
+rooms, where erst so many hundred beds of down were made up, let off to
+Irish lodgers at eighteenpence a week; a little ill-looking beer-shop
+shrinking in the tap of former days, burning coach-house gates for
+firewood, having one of its two windows bunged up, as if it had received
+punishment in a fight with the Railroad; a low, bandy-legged,
+brick-making bulldog standing in the doorway.  What could I next see in
+my fire so naturally as the new railway-house of these times near the
+dismal country station; with nothing particular on draught but cold air
+and damp, nothing worth mentioning in the larder but new mortar, and no
+business doing beyond a conceited affectation of luggage in the hall?
+Then I came to the Inns of Paris, with the pretty apartment of four
+pieces up one hundred and seventy-five waxed stairs, the privilege of
+ringing the bell all day long without influencing anybody's mind or body
+but your own, and the not-too-much-for-dinner, considering the price.
+Next to the provincial Inns of France, with the great church-tower rising
+above the courtyard, the horse-bells jingling merrily up and down the
+street beyond, and the clocks of all descriptions in all the rooms, which
+are never right, unless taken at the precise minute when, by getting
+exactly twelve hours too fast or too slow, they unintentionally become
+so.  Away I went, next, to the lesser roadside Inns of Italy; where all
+the dirty clothes in the house (not in wear) are always lying in your
+anteroom; where the mosquitoes make a raisin pudding of your face in
+summer, and the cold bites it blue in winter; where you get what you can,
+and forget what you can't: where I should again like to be boiling my tea
+in a pocket-handkerchief dumpling, for want of a teapot.  So to the old
+palace Inns and old monastery Inns, in towns and cities of the same
+bright country; with their massive quadrangular staircases, whence you
+may look from among clustering pillars high into the blue vault of
+heaven; with their stately banqueting-rooms, and vast refectories; with
+their labyrinths of ghostly bedchambers, and their glimpses into gorgeous
+streets that have no appearance of reality or possibility.  So to the
+close little Inns of the Malaria districts, with their pale attendants,
+and their peculiar smell of never letting in the air.  So to the immense
+fantastic Inns of Venice, with the cry of the gondolier below, as he
+skims the corner; the grip of the watery odours on one particular little
+bit of the bridge of your nose (which is never released while you stay
+there); and the great bell of St. Mark's Cathedral tolling midnight.  Next
+I put up for a minute at the restless Inns upon the Rhine, where your
+going to bed, no matter at what hour, appears to be the tocsin for
+everybody else's getting up; and where, in the table-d'hote room at the
+end of the long table (with several Towers of Babel on it at the other
+end, all made of white plates), one knot of stoutish men, entirely
+dressed in jewels and dirt, and having nothing else upon them, _will_
+remain all night, clinking glasses, and singing about the river that
+flows, and the grape that grows, and Rhine wine that beguiles, and Rhine
+woman that smiles and hi drink drink my friend and ho drink drink my
+brother, and all the rest of it.  I departed thence, as a matter of
+course, to other German Inns, where all the eatables are soddened down to
+the same flavour, and where the mind is disturbed by the apparition of
+hot puddings, and boiled cherries, sweet and slab, at awfully unexpected
+periods of the repast.  After a draught of sparkling beer from a foaming
+glass jug, and a glance of recognition through the windows of the student
+beer-houses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the Inns of
+America, with their four hundred beds apiece, and their eight or nine
+hundred ladies and gentlemen at dinner every day.  Again I stood in the
+bar-rooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail.
+Again I listened to my friend the General,--whom I had known for five
+minutes, in the course of which period he had made me intimate for life
+with two Majors, who again had made me intimate for life with three
+Colonels, who again had made me brother to twenty-two civilians,--again,
+I say, I listened to my friend the General, leisurely expounding the
+resources of the establishment, as to gentlemen's morning-room, sir;
+ladies' morning-room, sir; gentlemen's evening-room, sir; ladies' evening-
+room, sir; ladies' and gentlemen's evening reuniting-room, sir; music-
+room, sir; reading-room, sir; over four hundred sleeping-rooms, sir; and
+the entire planned and finited within twelve calendar months from the
+first clearing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, at a cost of five
+hundred thousand dollars, sir.  Again I found, as to my individual way of
+thinking, that the greater, the more gorgeous, and the more dollarous the
+establishment was, the less desirable it was.  Nevertheless, again I
+drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in all good-will, to my
+friend the General, and my friends the Majors, Colonels, and civilians
+all; full well knowing that, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have
+descried in theirs, they belong to a kind, generous, large-hearted, and
+great people.
+
+I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my solitude out of my
+mind; but here I broke down for good, and gave up the subject.  What was
+I to do?  What was to become of me?  Into what extremity was I
+submissively to sink?  Supposing that, like Baron Trenck, I looked out
+for a mouse or spider, and found one, and beguiled my imprisonment by
+training it?  Even that might be dangerous with a view to the future.  I
+might be so far gone when the road did come to be cut through the snow,
+that, on my way forth, I might burst into tears, and beseech, like the
+prisoner who was released in his old age from the Bastille, to be taken
+back again to the five windows, the ten curtains, and the sinuous
+drapery.
+
+A desperate idea came into my head.  Under any other circumstances I
+should have rejected it; but, in the strait at which I was, I held it
+fast.  Could I so far overcome the inherent bashfulness which withheld me
+from the landlord's table and the company I might find there, as to call
+up the Boots, and ask him to take a chair,--and something in a liquid
+form,--and talk to me?  I could, I would, I did.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND BRANCH--THE BOOTS
+
+
+Where had he been in his time? he repeated, when I asked him the
+question.  Lord, he had been everywhere!  And what had he been?  Bless
+you, he had been everything you could mention a'most!
+
+Seen a good deal?  Why, of course he had.  I should say so, he could
+assure me, if I only knew about a twentieth part of what had come in his
+way.  Why, it would be easier for him, he expected, to tell what he
+hadn't seen than what he had.  Ah!  A deal, it would.
+
+What was the curiousest thing he had seen?  Well!  He didn't know.  He
+couldn't momently name what was the curiousest thing he had seen--unless
+it was a Unicorn, and he see _him_ once at a Fair.  But supposing a young
+gentleman not eight year old was to run away with a fine young woman of
+seven, might I think _that_ a queer start?  Certainly.  Then that was a
+start as he himself had had his blessed eyes on, and he had cleaned the
+shoes they run away in--and they was so little that he couldn't get his
+hand into 'em.
+
+Master Harry Walmers' father, you see, he lived at the Elmses, down away
+by Shooter's Hill there, six or seven miles from Lunnon.  He was a
+gentleman of spirit, and good-looking, and held his head up when he
+walked, and had what you may call Fire about him.  He wrote poetry, and
+he rode, and he ran, and he cricketed, and he danced, and he acted, and
+he done it all equally beautiful.  He was uncommon proud of Master Harry
+as was his only child; but he didn't spoil him neither.  He was a
+gentleman that had a will of his own and a eye of his own, and that would
+be minded.  Consequently, though he made quite a companion of the fine
+bright boy, and was delighted to see him so fond of reading his fairy
+books, and was never tired of hearing him say my name is Norval, or
+hearing him sing his songs about Young May Moons is beaming love, and
+When he as adores thee has left but the name, and that; still he kept the
+command over the child, and the child _was_ a child, and it's to be
+wished more of 'em was!
+
+How did Boots happen to know all this?  Why, through being
+under-gardener.  Of course he couldn't be under-gardener, and be always
+about, in the summer-time, near the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and
+sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and that, without getting
+acquainted with the ways of the family.  Even supposing Master Harry
+hadn't come to him one morning early, and said, "Cobbs, how should you
+spell Norah, if you was asked?" and then began cutting it in print all
+over the fence.
+
+He couldn't say he had taken particular notice of children before that;
+but really it was pretty to see them two mites a going about the place
+together, deep in love.  And the courage of the boy!  Bless your soul,
+he'd have throwed off his little hat, and tucked up his little sleeves,
+and gone in at a Lion, he would, if they had happened to meet one, and
+she had been frightened of him.  One day he stops, along with her, where
+Boots was hoeing weeds in the gravel, and says, speaking up, "Cobbs," he
+says, "I like _you_."  "Do you, sir?  I'm proud to hear it."  "Yes, I do,
+Cobbs.  Why do I like you, do you think, Cobbs?"  "Don't know, Master
+Harry, I am sure."  "Because Norah likes you, Cobbs."  "Indeed, sir?
+That's very gratifying."  "Gratifying, Cobbs?  It's better than millions
+of the brightest diamonds to be liked by Norah."  "Certainly, sir."
+"You're going away, ain't you, Cobbs?"  "Yes, sir."  "Would you like
+another situation, Cobbs?"  "Well, sir, I shouldn't object, if it was a
+good Inn."  "Then, Cobbs," says he, "you shall be our Head Gardener when
+we are married."  And he tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under
+his arm, and walks away.
+
+Boots could assure me that it was better than a picter, and equal to a
+play, to see them babies, with their long, bright, curling hair, their
+sparkling eyes, and their beautiful light tread, a rambling about the
+garden, deep in love.  Boots was of opinion that the birds believed they
+was birds, and kept up with 'em, singing to please 'em.  Sometimes they
+would creep under the Tulip-tree, and would sit there with their arms
+round one another's necks, and their soft cheeks touching, a reading
+about the Prince and the Dragon, and the good and bad enchanters, and the
+king's fair daughter.  Sometimes he would hear them planning about having
+a house in a forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living entirely on milk
+and honey.  Once he came upon them by the pond, and heard Master Harry
+say, "Adorable Norah, kiss me, and say you love me to distraction, or
+I'll jump in head-foremost."  And Boots made no question he would have
+done it if she hadn't complied.  On the whole, Boots said it had a
+tendency to make him feel as if he was in love himself--only he didn't
+exactly know who with.
+
+"Cobbs," said Master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs was watering the
+flowers, "I am going on a visit, this present Midsummer, to my
+grandmamma's at York."
+
+"Are you indeed, sir?  I hope you'll have a pleasant time.  I am going
+into Yorkshire, myself, when I leave here."
+
+"Are you going to your grandmamma's, Cobbs?"
+
+"No, sir.  I haven't got such a thing."
+
+"Not as a grandmamma, Cobbs?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a little while, and
+then said, "I shall be very glad indeed to go, Cobbs,--Norah's going."
+
+"You'll be all right then, sir," says Cobbs, "with your beautiful
+sweetheart by your side."
+
+"Cobbs," returned the boy, flushing, "I never let anybody joke about it,
+when I can prevent them."
+
+"It wasn't a joke, sir," says Cobbs, with humility,--"wasn't so meant."
+
+"I am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you, you know, and you're going
+to live with us.--Cobbs!"
+
+"Sir."
+
+"What do you think my grandmamma gives me when I go down there?"
+
+"I couldn't so much as make a guess, sir."
+
+"A Bank of England five-pound note, Cobbs."
+
+"Whew!" says Cobbs, "that's a spanking sum of money, Master Harry."
+
+"A person could do a good deal with such a sum of money as that,--couldn't
+a person, Cobbs?"
+
+"I believe you, sir!"
+
+"Cobbs," said the boy, "I'll tell you a secret.  At Norah's house, they
+have been joking her about me, and pretending to laugh at our being
+engaged,--pretending to make game of it, Cobbs!"
+
+"Such, sir," says Cobbs, "is the depravity of human natur."
+
+The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood for a few minutes with
+his glowing face towards the sunset, and then departed with, "Good-night,
+Cobbs.  I'm going in."
+
+If I was to ask Boots how it happened that he was a-going to leave that
+place just at that present time, well, he couldn't rightly answer me.  He
+did suppose he might have stayed there till now if he had been anyways
+inclined.  But, you see, he was younger then, and he wanted change.
+That's what he wanted,--change.  Mr. Walmers, he said to him when he gave
+him notice of his intentions to leave, "Cobbs," he says, "have you
+anythink to complain of?  I make the inquiry because if I find that any
+of my people really has anythink to complain of, I wish to make it right
+if I can."  "No, sir," says Cobbs; "thanking you, sir, I find myself as
+well sitiwated here as I could hope to be anywheres.  The truth is, sir,
+that I'm a-going to seek my fortun'."  "O, indeed, Cobbs!" he says; "I
+hope you may find it."  And Boots could assure me--which he did, touching
+his hair with his bootjack, as a salute in the way of his present
+calling--that he hadn't found it yet.
+
+Well, sir!  Boots left the Elmses when his time was up, and Master Harry,
+he went down to the old lady's at York, which old lady would have given
+that child the teeth out of her head (if she had had any), she was so
+wrapped up in him.  What does that Infant do,--for Infant you may call
+him and be within the mark,--but cut away from that old lady's with his
+Norah, on a expedition to go to Gretna Green and be married!
+
+Sir, Boots was at this identical Holly-Tree Inn (having left it several
+times since to better himself, but always come back through one thing or
+another), when, one summer afternoon, the coach drives up, and out of the
+coach gets them two children.  The Guard says to our Governor, "I don't
+quite make out these little passengers, but the young gentleman's words
+was, that they was to be brought here."  The young gentleman gets out;
+hands his lady out; gives the Guard something for himself; says to our
+Governor, "We're to stop here to-night, please.  Sitting-room and two
+bedrooms will be required.  Chops and cherry-pudding for two!" and tucks
+her, in her sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks into the house much
+bolder than Brass.
+
+Boots leaves me to judge what the amazement of that establishment was,
+when these two tiny creatures all alone by themselves was marched into
+the Angel,--much more so, when he, who had seen them without their seeing
+him, give the Governor his views of the expedition they was upon.
+"Cobbs," says the Governor, "if this is so, I must set off myself to
+York, and quiet their friends' minds.  In which case you must keep your
+eye upon 'em, and humour 'em, till I come back.  But before I take these
+measures, Cobbs, I should wish you to find from themselves whether your
+opinion is correct."  "Sir, to you," says Cobbs, "that shall be done
+directly."
+
+So Boots goes up-stairs to the Angel, and there he finds Master Harry on
+a e-normous sofa,--immense at any time, but looking like the Great Bed of
+Ware, compared with him,--a drying the eyes of Miss Norah with his pocket-
+hankecher.  Their little legs was entirely off the ground, of course, and
+it really is not possible for Boots to express to me how small them
+children looked.
+
+"It's Cobbs!  It's Cobbs!" cries Master Harry, and comes running to him,
+and catching hold of his hand.  Miss Norah comes running to him on
+t'other side and catching hold of his t'other hand, and they both jump
+for joy.
+
+"I see you a getting out, sir," says Cobbs.  "I thought it was you.  I
+thought I couldn't be mistaken in your height and figure.  What's the
+object of your journey, sir?--Matrimonial?"
+
+"We are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green," returned the boy.
+"We have run away on purpose.  Norah has been in rather low spirits,
+Cobbs; but she'll be happy, now we have found you to be our friend."
+
+"Thank you, sir, and thank you, miss," says Cobbs, "for your good
+opinion.  _Did_ you bring any luggage with you, sir?"
+
+If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and honour upon it, the
+lady had got a parasol, a smelling-bottle, a round and a half of cold
+buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a hair-brush,--seemingly a
+doll's.  The gentleman had got about half a dozen yards of string, a
+knife, three or four sheets of writing-paper folded up surprising small,
+a orange, and a Chaney mug with his name upon it.
+
+"What may be the exact natur of your plans, sir?" says Cobbs.
+
+"To go on," replied the boy,--which the courage of that boy was something
+wonderful!--"in the morning, and be married to-morrow."
+
+"Just so, sir," says Cobbs.  "Would it meet your views, sir, if I was to
+accompany you?"
+
+When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, and cried out, "Oh,
+yes, yes, Cobbs!  Yes!"
+
+"Well, sir," says Cobbs.  "If you will excuse my having the freedom to
+give an opinion, what I should recommend would be this.  I'm acquainted
+with a pony, sir, which, put in a pheayton that I could borrow, would
+take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, (myself driving, if you
+approved,) to the end of your journey in a very short space of time.  I
+am not altogether sure, sir, that this pony will be at liberty to-morrow,
+but even if you had to wait over to-morrow for him, it might be worth
+your while.  As to the small account here, sir, in case you was to find
+yourself running at all short, that don't signify; because I'm a part
+proprietor of this inn, and it could stand over."
+
+Boots assures me that when they clapped their hands, and jumped for joy
+again, and called him "Good Cobbs!" and "Dear Cobbs!" and bent across him
+to kiss one another in the delight of their confiding hearts, he felt
+himself the meanest rascal for deceiving 'em that ever was born.
+
+"Is there anything you want just at present, sir?" says Cobbs, mortally
+ashamed of himself.
+
+"We should like some cakes after dinner," answered Master Harry, folding
+his arms, putting out one leg, and looking straight at him, "and two
+apples,--and jam.  With dinner we should like to have toast-and-water.
+But Norah has always been accustomed to half a glass of currant wine at
+dessert.  And so have I."
+
+"It shall be ordered at the bar, sir," says Cobbs; and away he went.
+
+Boots has the feeling as fresh upon him at this minute of speaking as he
+had then, that he would far rather have had it out in half-a-dozen rounds
+with the Governor than have combined with him; and that he wished with
+all his heart there was any impossible place where those two babies could
+make an impossible marriage, and live impossibly happy ever afterwards.
+However, as it couldn't be, he went into the Governor's plans, and the
+Governor set off for York in half an hour.
+
+The way in which the women of that house--without exception--every one of
+'em--married _and_ single--took to that boy when they heard the story,
+Boots considers surprising.  It was as much as he could do to keep 'em
+from dashing into the room and kissing him.  They climbed up all sorts of
+places, at the risk of their lives, to look at him through a pane of
+glass.  They was seven deep at the keyhole.  They was out of their minds
+about him and his bold spirit.
+
+In the evening, Boots went into the room to see how the runaway couple
+was getting on.  The gentleman was on the window-seat, supporting the
+lady in his arms.  She had tears upon her face, and was lying, very tired
+and half asleep, with her head upon his shoulder.
+
+"Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, fatigued, sir?" says Cobbs.
+
+"Yes, she is tired, Cobbs; but she is not used to be away from home, and
+she has been in low spirits again.  Cobbs, do you think you could bring a
+biffin, please?"
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir," says Cobbs.  "What was it you--?"
+
+"I think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs.  She is very fond of
+them."
+
+Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, and when he brought
+it in, the gentleman handed it to the lady, and fed her with a spoon, and
+took a little himself; the lady being heavy with sleep, and rather cross.
+"What should you think, sir," says Cobbs, "of a chamber candlestick?"  The
+gentleman approved; the chambermaid went first, up the great staircase;
+the lady, in her sky-blue mantle, followed, gallantly escorted by the
+gentleman; the gentleman embraced her at her door, and retired to his own
+apartment, where Boots softly locked him up.
+
+Boots couldn't but feel with increased acuteness what a base deceiver he
+was, when they consulted him at breakfast (they had ordered sweet milk-
+and-water, and toast and currant jelly, overnight) about the pony.  It
+really was as much as he could do, he don't mind confessing to me, to
+look them two young things in the face, and think what a wicked old
+father of lies he had grown up to be.  Howsomever, he went on a lying
+like a Trojan about the pony.  He told 'em that it did so unfortunately
+happen that the pony was half clipped, you see, and that he couldn't be
+taken out in that state, for fear it should strike to his inside.  But
+that he'd be finished clipping in the course of the day, and that
+to-morrow morning at eight o'clock the pheayton would be ready.  Boots's
+view of the whole case, looking back on it in my room, is, that Mrs.
+Harry Walmers, Junior, was beginning to give in.  She hadn't had her hair
+curled when she went to bed, and she didn't seem quite up to brushing it
+herself, and its getting in her eyes put her out.  But nothing put out
+Master Harry.  He sat behind his breakfast-cup, a tearing away at the
+jelly, as if he had been his own father.
+
+After breakfast, Boots is inclined to consider that they drawed
+soldiers,--at least, he knows that many such was found in the fire-place,
+all on horseback.  In the course of the morning, Master Harry rang the
+bell,--it was surprising how that there boy did carry on,--and said, in a
+sprightly way, "Cobbs, is there any good walks in this neighbourhood?"
+
+"Yes, sir," says Cobbs.  "There's Love Lane."
+
+"Get out with you, Cobbs!"--that was that there boy's expression,--"you're
+joking."
+
+"Begging your pardon, sir," says Cobbs, "there really is Love Lane.  And
+a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall I be to show it to yourself and
+Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior."
+
+"Norah, dear," said Master Harry, "this is curious.  We really ought to
+see Love Lane.  Put on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, and we will go
+there with Cobbs."
+
+Boots leaves me to judge what a Beast he felt himself to be, when that
+young pair told him, as they all three jogged along together, that they
+had made up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a year as head-
+gardener, on accounts of his being so true a friend to 'em.  Boots could
+have wished at the moment that the earth would have opened and swallowed
+him up, he felt so mean, with their beaming eyes a looking at him, and
+believing him.  Well, sir, he turned the conversation as well as he
+could, and he took 'em down Love Lane to the water-meadows, and there
+Master Harry would have drowned himself in half a moment more, a getting
+out a water-lily for her,--but nothing daunted that boy.  Well, sir, they
+was tired out.  All being so new and strange to 'em, they was tired as
+tired could be.  And they laid down on a bank of daisies, like the
+children in the wood, leastways meadows, and fell asleep.
+
+Boots don't know--perhaps I do,--but never mind, it don't signify either
+way--why it made a man fit to make a fool of himself to see them two
+pretty babies a lying there in the clear still sunny day, not dreaming
+half so hard when they was asleep as they done when they was awake.  But,
+Lord! when you come to think of yourself, you know, and what a game you
+have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a poor
+sort of a chap you are, and how it's always either Yesterday with you, or
+else To-morrow, and never To-day, that's where it is!
+
+Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty
+clear to Boots, namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmerses, Junior's, temper was
+on the move.  When Master Harry took her round the waist, she said he
+"teased her so;" and when he says, "Norah, my young May Moon, your Harry
+tease you?" she tells him, "Yes; and I want to go home!"
+
+A biled fowl, and baked bread-and-butter pudding, brought Mrs. Walmers up
+a little; but Boots could have wished, he must privately own to me, to
+have seen her more sensible of the woice of love, and less abandoning of
+herself to currants.  However, Master Harry, he kept up, and his noble
+heart was as fond as ever.  Mrs. Walmers turned very sleepy about dusk,
+and began to cry.  Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off to bed as per
+yesterday; and Master Harry ditto repeated.
+
+About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Governor in a chaise,
+along with Mr. Walmers and a elderly lady.  Mr. Walmers looks amused and
+very serious, both at once, and says to our missis, "We are much indebted
+to you, ma'am, for your kind care of our little children, which we can
+never sufficiently acknowledge.  Pray, ma'am, where is my boy?"  Our
+missis says, "Cobbs has the dear child in charge, sir.  Cobbs, show
+Forty!"  Then he says to Cobbs, "Ah, Cobbs, I am glad to see _you_!  I
+understood you was here!"  And Cobbs says, "Yes, sir.  Your most
+obedient, sir."
+
+I may be surprised to hear Boots say it, perhaps; but Boots assures me
+that his heart beat like a hammer, going up-stairs.  "I beg your pardon,
+sir," says he, while unlocking the door; "I hope you are not angry with
+Master Harry.  For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir, and will do you
+credit and honour."  And Boots signifies to me, that, if the fine boy's
+father had contradicted him in the daring state of mind in which he then
+was, he thinks he should have "fetched him a crack," and taken the
+consequences.
+
+But Mr. Walmers only says, "No, Cobbs.  No, my good fellow.  Thank you!"
+And, the door being opened, goes in.
+
+Boots goes in too, holding the light, and he sees Mr. Walmers go up to
+the bedside, bend gently down, and kiss the little sleeping face.  Then
+he stands looking at it for a minute, looking wonderfully like it (they
+do say he ran away with Mrs. Walmers); and then he gently shakes the
+little shoulder.
+
+"Harry, my dear boy!  Harry!"
+
+Master Harry starts up and looks at him.  Looks at Cobbs too.  Such is
+the honour of that mite, that he looks at Cobbs, to see whether he has
+brought him into trouble.
+
+"I am not angry, my child.  I only want you to dress yourself and come
+home."
+
+"Yes, pa."
+
+Master Harry dresses himself quickly.  His breast begins to swell when he
+has nearly finished, and it swells more and more as he stands, at last, a
+looking at his father: his father standing a looking at him, the quiet
+image of him.
+
+"Please may I"--the spirit of that little creatur, and the way he kept
+his rising tears down!--"please, dear pa--may I--kiss Norah before I go?"
+
+"You may, my child."
+
+So he takes Master Harry in his hand, and Boots leads the way with the
+candle, and they come to that other bedroom, where the elderly lady is
+seated by the bed, and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, is fast
+asleep.  There the father lifts the child up to the pillow, and he lays
+his little face down for an instant by the little warm face of poor
+unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, and gently draws it to
+him,--a sight so touching to the chambermaids who are peeping through the
+door, that one of them calls out, "It's a shame to part 'em!"  But this
+chambermaid was always, as Boots informs me, a soft-hearted one.  Not
+that there was any harm in that girl.  Far from it.
+
+Finally, Boots says, that's all about it.  Mr. Walmers drove away in the
+chaise, having hold of Master Harry's hand.  The elderly lady and Mrs.
+Harry Walmers, Junior, that was never to be (she married a Captain long
+afterwards, and died in India), went off next day.  In conclusion, Boots
+put it to me whether I hold with him in two opinions: firstly, that there
+are not many couples on their way to be married who are half as innocent
+of guile as those two children; secondly, that it would be a jolly good
+thing for a great many couples on their way to be married, if they could
+only be stopped in time, and brought back separately.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD BRANCH--THE BILL
+
+
+I had been snowed up a whole week.  The time had hung so lightly on my
+hands, that I should have been in great doubt of the fact but for a piece
+of documentary evidence that lay upon my table.
+
+The road had been dug out of the snow on the previous day, and the
+document in question was my bill.  It testified emphatically to my having
+eaten and drunk, and warmed myself, and slept among the sheltering
+branches of the Holly-Tree, seven days and nights.
+
+I had yesterday allowed the road twenty-four hours to improve itself,
+finding that I required that additional margin of time for the completion
+of my task.  I had ordered my Bill to be upon the table, and a chaise to
+be at the door, "at eight o'clock to-morrow evening."  It was eight
+o'clock to-morrow evening when I buckled up my travelling writing-desk in
+its leather case, paid my Bill, and got on my warm coats and wrappers.  Of
+course, no time now remained for my travelling on to add a frozen tear to
+the icicles which were doubtless hanging plentifully about the farmhouse
+where I had first seen Angela.  What I had to do was to get across to
+Liverpool by the shortest open road, there to meet my heavy baggage and
+embark.  It was quite enough to do, and I had not an hour too much time
+to do it in.
+
+I had taken leave of all my Holly-Tree friends--almost, for the time
+being, of my bashfulness too--and was standing for half a minute at the
+Inn door watching the ostler as he took another turn at the cord which
+tied my portmanteau on the chaise, when I saw lamps coming down towards
+the Holly-Tree.  The road was so padded with snow that no wheels were
+audible; but all of us who were standing at the Inn door saw lamps coming
+on, and at a lively rate too, between the walls of snow that had been
+heaped up on either side of the track.  The chambermaid instantly divined
+how the case stood, and called to the ostler, "Tom, this is a Gretna
+job!"  The ostler, knowing that her sex instinctively scented a marriage,
+or anything in that direction, rushed up the yard bawling, "Next four
+out!" and in a moment the whole establishment was thrown into commotion.
+
+I had a melancholy interest in seeing the happy man who loved and was
+beloved; and therefore, instead of driving off at once, I remained at the
+Inn door when the fugitives drove up.  A bright-eyed fellow, muffled in a
+mantle, jumped out so briskly that he almost overthrew me.  He turned to
+apologise, and, by heaven, it was Edwin!
+
+"Charley!" said he, recoiling.  "Gracious powers, what do you do here?"
+
+"Edwin," said I, recoiling, "gracious powers, what do _you_ do here?"  I
+struck my forehead as I said it, and an insupportable blaze of light
+seemed to shoot before my eyes.
+
+He hurried me into the little parlour (always kept with a slow fire in it
+and no poker), where posting company waited while their horses were
+putting to, and, shutting the door, said:
+
+"Charley, forgive me!"
+
+"Edwin!" I returned.  "Was this well?  When I loved her so dearly!  When
+I had garnered up my heart so long!"  I could say no more.
+
+He was shocked when he saw how moved I was, and made the cruel
+observation, that he had not thought I should have taken it so much to
+heart.
+
+I looked at him.  I reproached him no more.  But I looked at him.  "My
+dear, dear Charley," said he, "don't think ill of me, I beseech you!  I
+know you have a right to my utmost confidence, and, believe me, you have
+ever had it until now.  I abhor secrecy.  Its meanness is intolerable to
+me.  But I and my dear girl have observed it for your sake."
+
+He and his dear girl!  It steeled me.
+
+"You have observed it for my sake, sir?" said I, wondering how his frank
+face could face it out so.
+
+"Yes!--and Angela's," said he.
+
+I found the room reeling round in an uncertain way, like a labouring,
+humming-top.  "Explain yourself," said I, holding on by one hand to an
+arm-chair.
+
+"Dear old darling Charley!" returned Edwin, in his cordial manner,
+"consider!  When you were going on so happily with Angela, why should I
+compromise you with the old gentleman by making you a party to our
+engagement, and (after he had declined my proposals) to our secret
+intention?  Surely it was better that you should be able honourably to
+say, 'He never took counsel with me, never told me, never breathed a word
+of it.'  If Angela suspected it, and showed me all the favour and support
+she could--God bless her for a precious creature and a priceless wife!--I
+couldn't help that.  Neither I nor Emmeline ever told her, any more than
+we told you.  And for the same good reason, Charley; trust me, for the
+same good reason, and no other upon earth!"
+
+Emmeline was Angela's cousin.  Lived with her.  Had been brought up with
+her.  Was her father's ward.  Had property.
+
+"Emmeline is in the chaise, my dear Edwin!" said I, embracing him with
+the greatest affection.
+
+"My good fellow!" said he, "do you suppose I should be going to Gretna
+Green without her?"
+
+I ran out with Edwin, I opened the chaise door, I took Emmeline in my
+arms, I folded her to my heart.  She was wrapped in soft white fur, like
+the snowy landscape: but was warm, and young, and lovely.  I put their
+leaders to with my own hands, I gave the boys a five-pound note apiece, I
+cheered them as they drove away, I drove the other way myself as hard as
+I could pelt.
+
+I never went to Liverpool, I never went to America, I went straight back
+to London, and I married Angela.  I have never until this time, even to
+her, disclosed the secret of my character, and the mistrust and the
+mistaken journey into which it led me.  When she, and they, and our eight
+children and their seven--I mean Edwin and Emmeline's, whose oldest girl
+is old enough now to wear white for herself, and to look very like her
+mother in it--come to read these pages, as of course they will, I shall
+hardly fail to be found out at last.  Never mind!  I can bear it.  I
+began at the Holly-Tree, by idle accident, to associate the Christmas
+time of year with human interest, and with some inquiry into, and some
+care for, the lives of those by whom I find myself surrounded.  I hope
+that I am none the worse for it, and that no one near me or afar off is
+the worse for it.  And I say, May the green Holly-Tree flourish, striking
+its roots deep into our English ground, and having its germinating
+qualities carried by the birds of Heaven all over the world!
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLLY-TREE***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 1394.txt or 1394.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/9/1394
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+