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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Somebody's Luggage, 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: Somebody's Luggage
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: April 3, 2005  [eBook #1414]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas Stories" edition by
+David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE
+
+
+CHAPTER I--HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR
+
+
+The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of a
+family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brothers who are
+all Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress, would wish to
+offer a few words respecting his calling; first having the pleasure of
+hereby in a friendly manner offering the Dedication of the same unto
+_Joseph_, much respected Head Waiter at the Slamjam Coffee-house, London,
+E.C., than which a individual more eminently deserving of the name of
+man, or a more amenable honour to his own head and heart, whether
+considered in the light of a Waiter or regarded as a human being, do not
+exist.
+
+In case confusion should arise in the public mind (which it is open to
+confusion on many subjects) respecting what is meant or implied by the
+term Waiter, the present humble lines would wish to offer an explanation.
+It may not be generally known that the person as goes out to wait is
+_not_ a Waiter.  It may not be generally known that the hand as is called
+in extra, at the Freemasons' Tavern, or the London, or the Albion, or
+otherwise, is _not_ a Waiter.  Such hands may be took on for Public
+Dinners by the bushel (and you may know them by their breathing with
+difficulty when in attendance, and taking away the bottle ere yet it is
+half out); but such are _not_ Waiters.  For you cannot lay down the
+tailoring, or the shoemaking, or the brokering, or the green-grocering,
+or the pictorial-periodicalling, or the second-hand wardrobe, or the
+small fancy businesses,--you cannot lay down those lines of life at your
+will and pleasure by the half-day or evening, and take up Waitering.  You
+may suppose you can, but you cannot; or you may go so far as to say you
+do, but you do not.  Nor yet can you lay down the gentleman's-service
+when stimulated by prolonged incompatibility on the part of Cooks (and
+here it may be remarked that Cooking and Incompatibility will be mostly
+found united), and take up Waitering.  It has been ascertained that what
+a gentleman will sit meek under, at home, he will not bear out of doors,
+at the Slamjam or any similar establishment.  Then, what is the inference
+to be drawn respecting true Waitering?  You must be bred to it.  You must
+be born to it.
+
+Would you know how born to it, Fair Reader,--if of the adorable female
+sex?  Then learn from the biographical experience of one that is a Waiter
+in the sixty-first year of his age.
+
+You were conveyed,--ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise developed
+than to harbour vacancy in your inside,--you were conveyed, by
+surreptitious means, into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson, Civic
+and General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful
+sustenance which is the pride and boast of the British female
+constitution.  Your mother was married to your father (himself a distant
+Waiter) in the profoundest secrecy; for a Waitress known to be married
+would ruin the best of businesses,--it is the same as on the stage.  Hence
+your being smuggled into the pantry, and that--to add to the
+infliction--by an unwilling grandmother.  Under the combined influence of
+the smells of roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you
+partook of your earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting
+prepared to catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your
+grandmother's shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings; your
+innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates,
+dish-covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for veals
+and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes.  Under these
+untoward circumstances you were early weaned.  Your unwilling
+grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated less,
+then contracted habits of shaking you till your system curdled, and your
+food would not assimilate at all.  At length she was no longer spared,
+and could have been thankfully spared much sooner.  When your brothers
+began to appear in succession, your mother retired, left off her smart
+dressing (she had previously been a smart dresser), and her dark ringlets
+(which had previously been flowing), and haunted your father late of
+nights, lying in wait for him, through all weathers, up the shabby court
+which led to the back door of the Royal Old Dust-Bin (said to have been
+so named by George the Fourth), where your father was Head.  But the Dust-
+Bin was going down then, and your father took but little,--excepting from
+a liquid point of view.  Your mother's object in those visits was of a
+house-keeping character, and you was set on to whistle your father out.
+Sometimes he came out, but generally not.  Come or not come, however, all
+that part of his existence which was unconnected with open Waitering was
+kept a close secret, and was acknowledged by your mother to be a close
+secret, and you and your mother flitted about the court, close secrets
+both of you, and would scarcely have confessed under torture that you
+know your father, or that your father had any name than Dick (which
+wasn't his name, though he was never known by any other), or that he had
+kith or kin or chick or child.  Perhaps the attraction of this mystery,
+combined with your father's having a damp compartment, to himself, behind
+a leaky cistern, at the Dust-Bin,--a sort of a cellar compartment, with a
+sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, and a bottle-rack, and three
+windows that didn't match each other or anything else, and no
+daylight,--caused your young mind to feel convinced that you must grow up
+to be a Waiter too; but you did feel convinced of it, and so did all your
+brothers, down to your sister.  Every one of you felt convinced that you
+was born to the Waitering.  At this stage of your career, what was your
+feelings one day when your father came home to your mother in open broad
+daylight,--of itself an act of Madness on the part of a Waiter,--and took
+to his bed (leastwise, your mother and family's bed), with the statement
+that his eyes were devilled kidneys.  Physicians being in vain, your
+father expired, after repeating at intervals for a day and a night, when
+gleams of reason and old business fitfully illuminated his being, "Two
+and two is five.  And three is sixpence."  Interred in the parochial
+department of the neighbouring churchyard, and accompanied to the grave
+by as many Waiters of long standing as could spare the morning time from
+their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved form was attired in a
+white neckankecher, and you was took on from motives of benevolence at
+The George and Gridiron, theatrical and supper.  Here, supporting nature
+on what you found in the plates (which was as it happened, and but too
+often thoughtlessly, immersed in mustard), and on what you found in the
+glasses (which rarely went beyond driblets and lemon), by night you
+dropped asleep standing, till you was cuffed awake, and by day was set to
+polishing every individual article in the coffee-room.  Your couch being
+sawdust; your counterpane being ashes of cigars.  Here, frequently hiding
+a heavy heart under the smart tie of your white neckankecher (or
+correctly speaking lower down and more to the left), you picked up the
+rudiments of knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops, and by
+calling plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with chalk on the
+back of the corner-box partition, until such time as you used the
+inkstand when it was out of hand, attained to manhood, and to be the
+Waiter that you find yourself.
+
+I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the
+calling so long the calling of myself and family, and the public interest
+in which is but too often very limited.  We are not generally understood.
+No, we are not.  Allowance enough is not made for us.  For, say that we
+ever show a little drooping listlessness of spirits, or what might be
+termed indifference or apathy.  Put it to yourself what would your own
+state of mind be, if you was one of an enormous family every member of
+which except you was always greedy, and in a hurry.  Put it to yourself
+that you was regularly replete with animal food at the slack hours of one
+in the day and again at nine p.m., and that the repleter you was, the
+more voracious all your fellow-creatures came in.  Put it to yourself
+that it was your business, when your digestion was well on, to take a
+personal interest and sympathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and fresh
+(say, for the sake of argument, only a hundred), whose imaginations was
+given up to grease and fat and gravy and melted butter, and abandoned to
+questioning you about cuts of this, and dishes of that,--each of 'em
+going on as if him and you and the bill of fare was alone in the world.
+Then look what you are expected to know.  You are never out, but they
+seem to think you regularly attend everywhere.  "What's this,
+Christopher, that I hear about the smashed Excursion Train?  How are they
+doing at the Italian Opera, Christopher?"  "Christopher, what are the
+real particulars of this business at the Yorkshire Bank?"  Similarly a
+ministry gives me more trouble than it gives the Queen.  As to Lord
+Palmerston, the constant and wearing connection into which I have been
+brought with his lordship during the last few years is deserving of a
+pension.  Then look at the Hypocrites we are made, and the lies (white, I
+hope) that are forced upon us!  Why must a sedentary-pursuited Waiter be
+considered to be a judge of horseflesh, and to have a most tremendous
+interest in horse-training and racing?  Yet it would be half our little
+incomes out of our pockets if we didn't take on to have those sporting
+tastes.  It is the same (inconceivable why!) with Farming.  Shooting,
+equally so.  I am sure that so regular as the months of August,
+September, and October come round, I am ashamed of myself in my own
+private bosom for the way in which I make believe to care whether or not
+the grouse is strong on the wing (much their wings, or drumsticks either,
+signifies to me, uncooked!), and whether the partridges is plentiful
+among the turnips, and whether the pheasants is shy or bold, or anything
+else you please to mention.  Yet you may see me, or any other Waiter of
+my standing, holding on by the back of the box, and leaning over a
+gentleman with his purse out and his bill before him, discussing these
+points in a confidential tone of voice, as if my happiness in life
+entirely depended on 'em.
+
+I have mentioned our little incomes.  Look at the most unreasonable point
+of all, and the point on which the greatest injustice is done us!  Whether
+it is owing to our always carrying so much change in our right-hand
+trousers-pocket, and so many halfpence in our coat-tails, or whether it
+is human nature (which I were loth to believe), what is meant by the
+everlasting fable that Head Waiters is rich?  How did that fable get into
+circulation?  Who first put it about, and what are the facts to establish
+the unblushing statement?  Come forth, thou slanderer, and refer the
+public to the Waiter's will in Doctors' Commons supporting thy malignant
+hiss!  Yet this is so commonly dwelt upon--especially by the screws who
+give Waiters the least--that denial is vain; and we are obliged, for our
+credit's sake, to carry our heads as if we were going into a business,
+when of the two we are much more likely to go into a union.  There was
+formerly a screw as frequented the Slamjam ere yet the present writer had
+quitted that establishment on a question of tea-ing his assistant staff
+out of his own pocket, which screw carried the taunt to its bitterest
+height.  Never soaring above threepence, and as often as not grovelling
+on the earth a penny lower, he yet represented the present writer as a
+large holder of Consols, a lender of money on mortgage, a Capitalist.  He
+has been overheard to dilate to other customers on the allegation that
+the present writer put out thousands of pounds at interest in
+Distilleries and Breweries.  "Well, Christopher," he would say (having
+grovelled his lowest on the earth, half a moment before), "looking out
+for a House to open, eh?  Can't find a business to be disposed of on a
+scale as is up to your resources, humph?"  To such a dizzy precipice of
+falsehood has this misrepresentation taken wing, that the well-known and
+highly-respected OLD CHARLES, long eminent at the West Country Hotel, and
+by some considered the Father of the Waitering, found himself under the
+obligation to fall into it through so many years that his own wife (for
+he had an unbeknown old lady in that capacity towards himself) believed
+it!  And what was the consequence?  When he was borne to his grave on the
+shoulders of six picked Waiters, with six more for change, six more
+acting as pall-bearers, all keeping step in a pouring shower without a
+dry eye visible, and a concourse only inferior to Royalty, his pantry and
+lodgings was equally ransacked high and low for property, and none was
+found!  How could it be found, when, beyond his last monthly collection
+of walking-sticks, umbrellas, and pocket-handkerchiefs (which happened to
+have been not yet disposed of, though he had ever been through life
+punctual in clearing off his collections by the month), there was no
+property existing?  Such, however, is the force of this universal libel,
+that the widow of Old Charles, at the present hour an inmate of the
+Almshouses of the Cork-Cutters' Company, in Blue Anchor Road (identified
+sitting at the door of one of 'em, in a clean cap and a Windsor
+arm-chair, only last Monday), expects John's hoarded wealth to be found
+hourly!  Nay, ere yet he had succumbed to the grisly dart, and when his
+portrait was painted in oils life-size, by subscription of the
+frequenters of the West Country, to hang over the coffee-room chimney-
+piece, there were not wanting those who contended that what is termed the
+accessories of such a portrait ought to be the Bank of England out of
+window, and a strong-box on the table.  And but for better-regulated
+minds contending for a bottle and screw and the attitude of drawing,--and
+carrying their point,--it would have been so handed down to posterity.
+
+I am now brought to the title of the present remarks.  Having, I hope
+without offence to any quarter, offered such observations as I felt it my
+duty to offer, in a free country which has ever dominated the seas, on
+the general subject, I will now proceed to wait on the particular
+question.
+
+At a momentous period of my life, when I was off, so far as concerned
+notice given, with a House that shall be nameless,--for the question on
+which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge for waiters, and no
+House as commits itself to that eminently Un-English act of more than
+foolishness and baseness shall be advertised by me,--I repeat, at a
+momentous crisis, when I was off with a House too mean for mention, and
+not yet on with that to which I have ever since had the honour of being
+attached in the capacity of Head, {1} I was casting about what to do
+next.  Then it were that proposals were made to me on behalf of my
+present establishment.  Stipulations were necessary on my part,
+emendations were necessary on my part: in the end, ratifications ensued
+on both sides, and I entered on a new career.
+
+We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business.  We are not a general
+dining business, nor do we wish it.  In consequence, when diners drop in,
+we know what to give 'em as will keep 'em away another time.  We are a
+Private Room or Family business also; but Coffee-room principal.  Me and
+the Directory and the Writing Materials and cetrer occupy a place to
+ourselves--a place fended of up a step or two at the end of the Coffee-
+room, in what I call the good old-fashioned style.  The good
+old-fashioned style is, that whatever you want, down to a wafer, you must
+be olely and solely dependent on the Head Waiter for.  You must put
+yourself a new-born Child into his hands.  There is no other way in which
+a business untinged with Continental Vice can be conducted.  (It were
+bootless to add, that if languages is required to be jabbered and English
+is not good enough, both families and gentlemen had better go somewhere
+else.)
+
+When I began to settle down in this right-principled and well-conducted
+House, I noticed, under the bed in No. 24 B (which it is up a angle off
+the staircase, and usually put off upon the lowly-minded), a heap of
+things in a corner.  I asked our Head Chambermaid in the course of the
+day,
+
+"What are them things in 24 B?"
+
+To which she answered with a careless air, "Somebody's Luggage."
+
+Regarding her with a eye not free from severity, I says, "Whose Luggage?"
+
+Evading my eye, she replied,
+
+"Lor!  How should _I_ know!"
+
+--Being, it may be right to mention, a female of some pertness, though
+acquainted with her business.
+
+A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail.  He must be at one extremity
+or the other of the social scale.  He cannot be at the waist of it, or
+anywhere else but the extremities.  It is for him to decide which of the
+extremities.
+
+On the eventful occasion under consideration, I give Mrs. Pratchett so
+distinctly to understand my decision, that I broke her spirit as towards
+myself, then and there, and for good.  Let not inconsistency be suspected
+on account of my mentioning Mrs. Pratchett as "Mrs.," and having formerly
+remarked that a waitress must not be married.  Readers are respectfully
+requested to notice that Mrs. Pratchett was not a waitress, but a
+chambermaid.  Now a chambermaid _may_ be married; if Head, generally is
+married,--or says so.  It comes to the same thing as expressing what is
+customary.  (N.B. Mr. Pratchett is in Australia, and his address there is
+"the Bush.")
+
+Having took Mrs. Pratchett down as many pegs as was essential to the
+future happiness of all parties, I requested her to explain herself.
+
+"For instance," I says, to give her a little encouragement, "who is
+Somebody?"
+
+"I give you my sacred honour, Mr. Christopher," answers Pratchett, "that
+I haven't the faintest notion."
+
+But for the manner in which she settled her cap-strings, I should have
+doubted this; but in respect of positiveness it was hardly to be
+discriminated from an affidavit.
+
+"Then you never saw him?" I followed her up with.
+
+"Nor yet," said Mrs. Pratchett, shutting her eyes and making as if she
+had just took a pill of unusual circumference,--which gave a remarkable
+force to her denial,--"nor yet any servant in this house.  All have been
+changed, Mr. Christopher, within five year, and Somebody left his Luggage
+here before then."
+
+Inquiry of Miss Martin yielded (in the language of the Bard of A.1.)
+"confirmation strong."  So it had really and truly happened.  Miss Martin
+is the young lady at the bar as makes out our bills; and though higher
+than I could wish considering her station, is perfectly well-behaved.
+
+Farther investigations led to the disclosure that there was a bill
+against this Luggage to the amount of two sixteen six.  The Luggage had
+been lying under the bedstead of 24 B over six year.  The bedstead is a
+four-poster, with a deal of old hanging and valance, and is, as I once
+said, probably connected with more than 24 Bs,--which I remember my
+hearers was pleased to laugh at, at the time.
+
+I don't know why,--when DO we know why?--but this Luggage laid heavy on
+my mind.  I fell a wondering about Somebody, and what he had got and been
+up to.  I couldn't satisfy my thoughts why he should leave so much
+Luggage against so small a bill.  For I had the Luggage out within a day
+or two and turned it over, and the following were the items:--A black
+portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a brown-paper parcel,
+a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a walking-stick.  It was all very
+dusty and fluey.  I had our porter up to get under the bed and fetch it
+out; and though he habitually wallows in dust,--swims in it from morning
+to night, and wears a close-fitting waistcoat with black calimanco
+sleeves for the purpose,--it made him sneeze again, and his throat was
+that hot with it that it was obliged to be cooled with a drink of
+Allsopp's draft.
+
+The Luggage so got the better of me, that instead of having it put back
+when it was well dusted and washed with a wet cloth,--previous to which
+it was so covered with feathers that you might have thought it was
+turning into poultry, and would by-and-by begin to Lay,--I say, instead
+of having it put back, I had it carried into one of my places
+down-stairs.  There from time to time I stared at it and stared at it,
+till it seemed to grow big and grow little, and come forward at me and
+retreat again, and go through all manner of performances resembling
+intoxication.  When this had lasted weeks,--I may say months, and not be
+far out,--I one day thought of asking Miss Martin for the particulars of
+the Two sixteen six total.  She was so obliging as to extract it from the
+books,--it dating before her time,--and here follows a true copy:
+
+Coffee-Room.
+1856.            No. 4.       Pounds  s. d.
+Feb. 2d, Pen and Paper             0  0  6
+         Port Negus                0  2  0
+         Ditto                     0  2  0
+         Pen and paper             0  0  6
+         Tumbler broken            0  2  6
+         Brandy                    0  2  0
+         Pen and paper             0  0  6
+         Anchovy toast             0  2  6
+         Pen and paper             0  0  6
+         Bed                       0  3  0
+Feb. 3d, Pen and paper             0  0  6
+         Breakfast                 0  2  6
+            Broiled ham            0  2  0
+            Eggs                   0  1  0
+            Watercresses           0  1  0
+            Shrimps                0  1  0
+         Pen and paper             0  0  6
+         Blotting-paper            0  0  6
+         Messenger to Paternoster
+             Row and back          0  1  6
+         Again, when No Answer     0  1  6
+         Brandy 2s., Devilled
+             Pork chop 2s.         0  4  0
+         Pens and paper            0  1  0
+         Messenger to Albemarle
+             Street and back       0  1  0
+         Again (detained), when
+             No Answer             0  1  6
+         Salt-cellar broken        0  3  6
+         Large Liquour-glass
+             Orange Brandy         0  1  6
+         Dinner, Soup, Fish,
+             Joint, and bird       0  7  6
+         Bottle old East India
+             Brown                 0  8  0
+         Pen and paper             0  0  6
+                           Pounds  2 16  6
+
+Mem.: January 1st, 1857.  He went out after dinner, directing luggage to
+be ready when he called for it.  Never called.
+
+* * * * *
+
+So far from throwing a light upon the subject, this bill appeared to me,
+if I may so express my doubts, to involve it in a yet more lurid halo.
+Speculating it over with the Mistress, she informed me that the luggage
+had been advertised in the Master's time as being to be sold after such
+and such a day to pay expenses, but no farther steps had been taken.  (I
+may here remark, that the Mistress is a widow in her fourth year.  The
+Master was possessed of one of those unfortunate constitutions in which
+Spirits turns to Water, and rises in the ill-starred Victim.)
+
+My speculating it over, not then only, but repeatedly, sometimes with the
+Mistress, sometimes with one, sometimes with another, led up to the
+Mistress's saying to me,--whether at first in joke or in earnest, or half
+joke and half earnest, it matters not:
+
+"Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer."
+
+(If this should meet her eye,--a lovely blue,--may she not take it ill my
+mentioning that if I had been eight or ten year younger, I would have
+done as much by her!  That is, I would have made her a offer.  It is for
+others than me to denominate it a handsome one.)
+
+"Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer."
+
+"Put a name to it, ma'am."
+
+"Look here, Christopher.  Run over the articles of Somebody's Luggage.
+You've got it all by heart, I know."
+
+"A black portmanteau, ma'am, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a
+brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a
+walking-stick."
+
+"All just as they were left.  Nothing opened, nothing tampered with."
+
+"You are right, ma'am.  All locked but the brown-paper parcel, and that
+sealed."
+
+The Mistress was leaning on Miss Martin's desk at the bar-window, and she
+taps the open book that lays upon the desk,--she has a pretty-made hand
+to be sure,--and bobs her head over it and laughs.
+
+"Come," says she, "Christopher.  Pay me Somebody's bill, and you shall
+have Somebody's Luggage."
+
+I rather took to the idea from the first moment; but,
+
+"It mayn't be worth the money," I objected, seeming to hold back.
+
+"That's a Lottery," says the Mistress, folding her arms upon the book,--it
+ain't her hands alone that's pretty made, the observation extends right
+up her arms.  "Won't you venture two pound sixteen shillings and sixpence
+in the Lottery?  Why, there's no blanks!" says the Mistress; laughing and
+bobbing her head again, "you _must_ win.  If you lose, you must win!  All
+prizes in this Lottery!  Draw a blank, and remember, Gentlemen-Sportsmen,
+you'll still be entitled to a black portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a
+dressing-case, a sheet of brown paper, a hat-box, and an umbrella
+strapped to a walking-stick!"
+
+To make short of it, Miss Martin come round me, and Mrs. Pratchett come
+round me, and the Mistress she was completely round me already, and all
+the women in the house come round me, and if it had been Sixteen two
+instead of Two sixteen, I should have thought myself well out of it.  For
+what can you do when they do come round you?
+
+So I paid the money--down--and such a laughing as there was among 'em!
+But I turned the tables on 'em regularly, when I said:
+
+"My family-name is Blue-Beard.  I'm going to open Somebody's Luggage all
+alone in the Secret Chamber, and not a female eye catches sight of the
+contents!"
+
+Whether I thought proper to have the firmness to keep to this, don't
+signify, or whether any female eye, and if any, how many, was really
+present when the opening of the Luggage came off.  Somebody's Luggage is
+the question at present: Nobody's eyes, nor yet noses.
+
+What I still look at most, in connection with that Luggage, is the
+extraordinary quantity of writing-paper, and all written on!  And not our
+paper neither,--not the paper charged in the bill, for we know our
+paper,--so he must have been always at it.  And he had crumpled up this
+writing of his, everywhere, in every part and parcel of his luggage.
+There was writing in his dressing-case, writing in his boots, writing
+among his shaving-tackle, writing in his hat-box, writing folded away
+down among the very whalebones of his umbrella.
+
+His clothes wasn't bad, what there was of 'em.  His dressing-case was
+poor,--not a particle of silver stopper,--bottle apertures with nothing
+in 'em, like empty little dog-kennels,--and a most searching description
+of tooth-powder diffusing itself around, as under a deluded mistake that
+all the chinks in the fittings was divisions in teeth.  His clothes I
+parted with, well enough, to a second-hand dealer not far from St.
+Clement's Danes, in the Strand,--him as the officers in the Army mostly
+dispose of their uniforms to, when hard pressed with debts of honour, if
+I may judge from their coats and epaulets diversifying the window with
+their backs towards the public.  The same party bought in one lot the
+portmanteau, the bag, the desk, the dressing-case, the hat-box, the
+umbrella, strap, and walking-stick.  On my remarking that I should have
+thought those articles not quite in his line, he said: "No more ith a
+man'th grandmother, Mithter Chrithtopher; but if any man will bring hith
+grandmother here, and offer her at a fair trifle below what the'll feth
+with good luck when the'th thcoured and turned--I'll buy her!"
+
+These transactions brought me home, and, indeed, more than home, for they
+left a goodish profit on the original investment.  And now there remained
+the writings; and the writings I particular wish to bring under the
+candid attention of the reader.
+
+I wish to do so without postponement, for this reason.  That is to say,
+namely, viz. i.e., as follows, thus:--Before I proceed to recount the
+mental sufferings of which I became the prey in consequence of the
+writings, and before following up that harrowing tale with a statement of
+the wonderful and impressive catastrophe, as thrilling in its nature as
+unlooked for in any other capacity, which crowned the ole and filled the
+cup of unexpectedness to overflowing, the writings themselves ought to
+stand forth to view.  Therefore it is that they now come next.  One word
+to introduce them, and I lay down my pen (I hope, my unassuming pen)
+until I take it up to trace the gloomy sequel of a mind with something on
+it.
+
+He was a smeary writer, and wrote a dreadful bad hand.  Utterly
+regardless of ink, he lavished it on every undeserving object--on his
+clothes, his desk, his hat, the handle of his tooth-brush, his umbrella.
+Ink was found freely on the coffee-room carpet by No. 4 table, and two
+blots was on his restless couch.  A reference to the document I have
+given entire will show that on the morning of the third of February,
+eighteen fifty-six, he procured his no less than fifth pen and paper.  To
+whatever deplorable act of ungovernable composition he immolated those
+materials obtained from the bar, there is no doubt that the fatal deed
+was committed in bed, and that it left its evidences but too plainly,
+long afterwards, upon the pillow-case.
+
+He had put no Heading to any of his writings.  Alas!  Was he likely to
+have a Heading without a Head, and where was _his_ Head when he took such
+things into it?  In some cases, such as his Boots, he would appear to
+have hid the writings; thereby involving his style in greater obscurity.
+But his Boots was at least pairs,--and no two of his writings can put in
+any claim to be so regarded.  Here follows (not to give more specimens)
+what was found in
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--HIS BOOTS
+
+
+"Eh! well then, Monsieur Mutuel!  What do I know, what can I say?  I
+assure you that he calls himself Monsieur The Englishman."
+
+"Pardon.  But I think it is impossible," said Monsieur Mutuel,--a
+spectacled, snuffy, stooping old gentleman in carpet shoes and a cloth
+cap with a peaked shade, a loose blue frock-coat reaching to his heels, a
+large limp white shirt-frill, and cravat to correspond,--that is to say,
+white was the natural colour of his linen on Sundays, but it toned down
+with the week.
+
+"It is," repeated Monsieur Mutuel, his amiable old walnut-shell
+countenance very walnut-shelly indeed as he smiled and blinked in the
+bright morning sunlight,--"it is, my cherished Madame Bouclet, I think,
+impossible!"
+
+"Hey!" (with a little vexed cry and a great many tosses of her head.)
+"But it is not impossible that you are a Pig!" retorted Madame Bouclet, a
+compact little woman of thirty-five or so.  "See then,--look there,--read!
+'On the second floor Monsieur L'Anglais.'  Is it not so?"
+
+"It is so," said Monsieur Mutuel.
+
+"Good.  Continue your morning walk.  Get out!" Madame Bouclet dismissed
+him with a lively snap of her fingers.
+
+The morning walk of Monsieur Mutuel was in the brightest patch that the
+sun made in the Grande Place of a dull old fortified French town.  The
+manner of his morning walk was with his hands crossed behind him; an
+umbrella, in figure the express image of himself, always in one hand; a
+snuffbox in the other.  Thus, with the shuffling gait of the Elephant
+(who really does deal with the very worst trousers-maker employed by the
+Zoological world, and who appeared to have recommended him to Monsieur
+Mutuel), the old gentleman sunned himself daily when sun was to be had--of
+course, at the same time sunning a red ribbon at his button-hole; for was
+he not an ancient Frenchman?
+
+Being told by one of the angelic sex to continue his morning walk and get
+out, Monsieur Mutuel laughed a walnut-shell laugh, pulled off his cap at
+arm's length with the hand that contained his snuffbox, kept it off for a
+considerable period after he had parted from Madame Bouclet, and
+continued his morning walk and got out, like a man of gallantry as he
+was.
+
+The documentary evidence to which Madame Bouclet had referred Monsieur
+Mutuel was the list of her lodgers, sweetly written forth by her own
+Nephew and Bookkeeper, who held the pen of an Angel, and posted up at the
+side of her gateway, for the information of the Police: "Au second, M.
+L'Anglais, Proprietaire."  On the second floor, Mr. The Englishman, man
+of property.  So it stood; nothing could be plainer.
+
+Madame Bouclet now traced the line with her forefinger, as it were to
+confirm and settle herself in her parting snap at Monsieur Mutuel, and so
+placing her right hand on her hip with a defiant air, as if nothing
+should ever tempt her to unsnap that snap, strolled out into the Place to
+glance up at the windows of Mr. The Englishman.  That worthy happening to
+be looking out of window at the moment, Madame Bouclet gave him a
+graceful salutation with her head, looked to the right and looked to the
+left to account to him for her being there, considered for a moment, like
+one who accounted to herself for somebody she had expected not being
+there, and reentered her own gateway.  Madame Bouclet let all her house
+giving on the Place in furnished flats or floors, and lived up the yard
+behind in company with Monsieur Bouclet her husband (great at billiards),
+an inherited brewing business, several fowls, two carts, a nephew, a
+little dog in a big kennel, a grape-vine, a counting-house, four horses,
+a married sister (with a share in the brewing business), the husband and
+two children of the married sister, a parrot, a drum (performed on by the
+little boy of the married sister), two billeted soldiers, a quantity of
+pigeons, a fife (played by the nephew in a ravishing manner), several
+domestics and supernumeraries, a perpetual flavour of coffee and soup, a
+terrific range of artificial rocks and wooden precipices at least four
+feet high, a small fountain, and half-a-dozen large sunflowers.
+
+Now the Englishman, in taking his Appartement,--or, as one might say on
+our side of the Channel, his set of chambers,--had given his name,
+correct to the letter, LANGLEY.  But as he had a British way of not
+opening his mouth very wide on foreign soil, except at meals, the Brewery
+had been able to make nothing of it but L'Anglais.  So Mr. The Englishman
+he had become and he remained.
+
+"Never saw such a people!" muttered Mr. The Englishman, as he now looked
+out of window.  "Never did, in my life!"
+
+This was true enough, for he had never before been out of his own
+country,--a right little island, a tight little island, a bright little
+island, a show-fight little island, and full of merit of all sorts; but
+not the whole round world.
+
+"These chaps," said Mr. The Englishman to himself, as his eye rolled over
+the Place, sprinkled with military here and there, "are no more like
+soldiers--"  Nothing being sufficiently strong for the end of his
+sentence, he left it unended.
+
+This again (from the point of view of his experience) was strictly
+correct; for though there was a great agglomeration of soldiers in the
+town and neighbouring country, you might have held a grand Review and
+Field-day of them every one, and looked in vain among them all for a
+soldier choking behind his foolish stock, or a soldier lamed by his ill-
+fitting shoes, or a soldier deprived of the use of his limbs by straps
+and buttons, or a soldier elaborately forced to be self-helpless in all
+the small affairs of life.  A swarm of brisk, bright, active, bustling,
+handy, odd, skirmishing fellows, able to turn cleverly at anything, from
+a siege to soup, from great guns to needles and thread, from the
+broadsword exercise to slicing an onion, from making war to making
+omelets, was all you would have found.
+
+What a swarm!  From the Great Place under the eye of Mr. The Englishman,
+where a few awkward squads from the last conscription were doing the
+goose-step--some members of those squads still as to their bodies, in the
+chrysalis peasant-state of Blouse, and only military butterflies as to
+their regimentally-clothed legs--from the Great Place, away outside the
+fortifications, and away for miles along the dusty roads, soldiers
+swarmed.  All day long, upon the grass-grown ramparts of the town,
+practising soldiers trumpeted and bugled; all day long, down in angles of
+dry trenches, practising soldiers drummed and drummed.  Every forenoon,
+soldiers burst out of the great barracks into the sandy gymnasium-ground
+hard by, and flew over the wooden horse, and hung on to flying ropes, and
+dangled upside-down between parallel bars, and shot themselves off wooden
+platforms,--splashes, sparks, coruscations, showers of soldiers.  At
+every corner of the town-wall, every guard-house, every gateway, every
+sentry-box, every drawbridge, every reedy ditch, and rushy dike,
+soldiers, soldiers, soldiers.  And the town being pretty well all wall,
+guard-house, gateway, sentry-box, drawbridge, reedy ditch, and rushy
+dike, the town was pretty well all soldiers.
+
+What would the sleepy old town have been without the soldiers, seeing
+that even with them it had so overslept itself as to have slept its
+echoes hoarse, its defensive bars and locks and bolts and chains all
+rusty, and its ditches stagnant!  From the days when VAUBAN engineered it
+to that perplexing extent that to look at it was like being knocked on
+the head with it, the stranger becoming stunned and stertorous under the
+shock of its incomprehensibility,--from the days when VAUBAN made it the
+express incorporation of every substantive and adjective in the art of
+military engineering, and not only twisted you into it and twisted you
+out of it, to the right, to the left, opposite, under here, over there,
+in the dark, in the dirt, by the gateway, archway, covered way, dry way,
+wet way, fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, squat tower, pierced
+wall, and heavy battery, but likewise took a fortifying dive under the
+neighbouring country, and came to the surface three or four miles off,
+blowing out incomprehensible mounds and batteries among the quiet crops
+of chicory and beet-root,--from those days to these the town had been
+asleep, and dust and rust and must had settled on its drowsy Arsenals and
+Magazines, and grass had grown up in its silent streets.
+
+On market-days alone, its Great Place suddenly leaped out of bed.  On
+market-days, some friendly enchanter struck his staff upon the stones of
+the Great Place, and instantly arose the liveliest booths and stalls, and
+sittings and standings, and a pleasant hum of chaffering and huckstering
+from many hundreds of tongues, and a pleasant, though peculiar, blending
+of colours,--white caps, blue blouses, and green vegetables,--and at last
+the Knight destined for the adventure seemed to have come in earnest, and
+all the Vaubanois sprang up awake.  And now, by long, low-lying avenues
+of trees, jolting in white-hooded donkey-cart, and on donkey-back, and in
+tumbril and wagon, and cart and cabriolet, and afoot with barrow and
+burden,--and along the dikes and ditches and canals, in little
+peak-prowed country boats,--came peasant-men and women in flocks and
+crowds, bringing articles for sale.  And here you had boots and shoes,
+and sweetmeats and stuffs to wear, and here (in the cool shade of the
+Town-hall) you had milk and cream and butter and cheese, and here you had
+fruits and onions and carrots, and all things needful for your soup, and
+here you had poultry and flowers and protesting pigs, and here new
+shovels, axes, spades, and bill-hooks for your farming work, and here
+huge mounds of bread, and here your unground grain in sacks, and here
+your children's dolls, and here the cake-seller, announcing his wares by
+beat and roll of drum.  And hark! fanfaronade of trumpets, and here into
+the Great Place, resplendent in an open carriage, with four gorgeously-
+attired servitors up behind, playing horns, drums, and cymbals, rolled
+"the Daughter of a Physician" in massive golden chains and ear-rings, and
+blue-feathered hat, shaded from the admiring sun by two immense umbrellas
+of artificial roses, to dispense (from motives of philanthropy) that
+small and pleasant dose which had cured so many thousands!  Toothache,
+earache, headache, heartache, stomach-ache, debility, nervousness, fits,
+fainting, fever, ague, all equally cured by the small and pleasant dose
+of the great Physician's great daughter!  The process was this,--she, the
+Daughter of a Physician, proprietress of the superb equipage you now
+admired with its confirmatory blasts of trumpet, drum, and cymbal, told
+you so: On the first day after taking the small and pleasant dose, you
+would feel no particular influence beyond a most harmonious sensation of
+indescribable and irresistible joy; on the second day you would be so
+astonishingly better that you would think yourself changed into somebody
+else; on the third day you would be entirely free from disorder, whatever
+its nature and however long you had had it, and would seek out the
+Physician's Daughter to throw yourself at her feet, kiss the hem of her
+garment, and buy as many more of the small and pleasant doses as by the
+sale of all your few effects you could obtain; but she would be
+inaccessible,--gone for herbs to the Pyramids of Egypt,--and you would be
+(though cured) reduced to despair!  Thus would the Physician's Daughter
+drive her trade (and briskly too), and thus would the buying and selling
+and mingling of tongues and colours continue, until the changing
+sunlight, leaving the Physician's Daughter in the shadow of high roofs,
+admonished her to jolt out westward, with a departing effect of gleam and
+glitter on the splendid equipage and brazen blast.  And now the enchanter
+struck his staff upon the stones of the Great Place once more, and down
+went the booths, the sittings and standings, and vanished the
+merchandise, and with it the barrows, donkeys, donkey-carts, and
+tumbrils, and all other things on wheels and feet, except the slow
+scavengers with unwieldy carts and meagre horses clearing up the rubbish,
+assisted by the sleek town pigeons, better plumped out than on non-market
+days.  While there was yet an hour or two to wane before the autumn
+sunset, the loiterer outside town-gate and drawbridge, and postern and
+double-ditch, would see the last white-hooded cart lessening in the
+avenue of lengthening shadows of trees, or the last country boat, paddled
+by the last market-woman on her way home, showing black upon the
+reddening, long, low, narrow dike between him and the mill; and as the
+paddle-parted scum and weed closed over the boat's track, he might be
+comfortably sure that its sluggish rest would be troubled no more until
+next market-day.
+
+As it was not one of the Great Place's days for getting out of bed, when
+Mr. The Englishman looked down at the young soldiers practising the goose-
+step there, his mind was left at liberty to take a military turn.
+
+"These fellows are billeted everywhere about," said he; "and to see them
+lighting the people's fires, boiling the people's pots, minding the
+people's babies, rocking the people's cradles, washing the people's
+greens, and making themselves generally useful, in every sort of
+unmilitary way, is most ridiculous!  Never saw such a set of
+fellows,--never did in my life!"
+
+All perfectly true again.  Was there not Private Valentine in that very
+house, acting as sole housemaid, valet, cook, steward, and nurse, in the
+family of his captain, Monsieur le Capitaine de la Cour,--cleaning the
+floors, making the beds, doing the marketing, dressing the captain,
+dressing the dinners, dressing the salads, and dressing the baby, all
+with equal readiness?  Or, to put him aside, he being in loyal attendance
+on his Chief, was there not Private Hyppolite, billeted at the Perfumer's
+two hundred yards off, who, when not on duty, volunteered to keep shop
+while the fair Perfumeress stepped out to speak to a neighbour or so, and
+laughingly sold soap with his war-sword girded on him?  Was there not
+Emile, billeted at the Clock-maker's, perpetually turning to of an
+evening, with his coat off, winding up the stock?  Was there not Eugene,
+billeted at the Tinman's, cultivating, pipe in mouth, a garden four feet
+square, for the Tinman, in the little court, behind the shop, and
+extorting the fruits of the earth from the same, on his knees, with the
+sweat of his brow?  Not to multiply examples, was there not Baptiste,
+billeted on the poor Water-carrier, at that very instant sitting on the
+pavement in the sunlight, with his martial legs asunder, and one of the
+Water-carrier's spare pails between them, which (to the delight and glory
+of the heart of the Water-carrier coming across the Place from the
+fountain, yoked and burdened) he was painting bright-green outside and
+bright-red within?  Or, to go no farther than the Barber's at the very
+next door, was there not Corporal Theophile--
+
+"No," said Mr. The Englishman, glancing down at the Barber's, "he is not
+there at present.  There's the child, though."
+
+A mere mite of a girl stood on the steps of the Barber's shop, looking
+across the Place.  A mere baby, one might call her, dressed in the close
+white linen cap which small French country children wear (like the
+children in Dutch pictures), and in a frock of homespun blue, that had no
+shape except where it was tied round her little fat throat.  So that,
+being naturally short and round all over, she looked, behind, as if she
+had been cut off at her natural waist, and had had her head neatly fitted
+on it.
+
+"There's the child, though."
+
+To judge from the way in which the dimpled hand was rubbing the eyes, the
+eyes had been closed in a nap, and were newly opened.  But they seemed to
+be looking so intently across the Place, that the Englishman looked in
+the same direction.
+
+"O!" said he presently.  "I thought as much.  The Corporal's there."
+
+The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of thirty, perhaps a thought under
+the middle size, but very neatly made,--a sunburnt Corporal with a brown
+peaked beard,--faced about at the moment, addressing voluble words of
+instruction to the squad in hand.  Nothing was amiss or awry about the
+Corporal.  A lithe and nimble Corporal, quite complete, from the
+sparkling dark eyes under his knowing uniform cap to his sparkling white
+gaiters.  The very image and presentment of a Corporal of his country's
+army, in the line of his shoulders, the line of his waist, the broadest
+line of his Bloomer trousers, and their narrowest line at the calf of his
+leg.
+
+Mr. The Englishman looked on, and the child looked on, and the Corporal
+looked on (but the last-named at his men), until the drill ended a few
+minutes afterwards, and the military sprinkling dried up directly, and
+was gone.  Then said Mr. The Englishman to himself, "Look here!  By
+George!"  And the Corporal, dancing towards the Barber's with his arms
+wide open, caught up the child, held her over his head in a flying
+attitude, caught her down again, kissed her, and made off with her into
+the Barber's house.
+
+Now Mr. The Englishman had had a quarrel with his erring and disobedient
+and disowned daughter, and there was a child in that case too.  Had not
+his daughter been a child, and had she not taken angel-flights above his
+head as this child had flown above the Corporal's?
+
+"He's a "--National Participled--"fool!" said the Englishman, and shut
+his window.
+
+But the windows of the house of Memory, and the windows of the house of
+Mercy, are not so easily closed as windows of glass and wood.  They fly
+open unexpectedly; they rattle in the night; they must be nailed up.  Mr.
+The Englishman had tried nailing them, but had not driven the nails quite
+home.  So he passed but a disturbed evening and a worse night.
+
+By nature a good-tempered man?  No; very little gentleness, confounding
+the quality with weakness.  Fierce and wrathful when crossed?  Very, and
+stupendously unreasonable.  Moody?  Exceedingly so.  Vindictive?  Well;
+he had had scowling thoughts that he would formally curse his daughter,
+as he had seen it done on the stage.  But remembering that the real
+Heaven is some paces removed from the mock one in the great chandelier of
+the Theatre, he had given that up.
+
+And he had come abroad to be rid of his repudiated daughter for the rest
+of his life.  And here he was.
+
+At bottom, it was for this reason, more than for any other, that Mr. The
+Englishman took it extremely ill that Corporal Theophile should be so
+devoted to little Bebelle, the child at the Barber's shop.  In an unlucky
+moment he had chanced to say to himself, "Why, confound the fellow, he is
+not her father!"  There was a sharp sting in the speech which ran into
+him suddenly, and put him in a worse mood.  So he had National
+Participled the unconscious Corporal with most hearty emphasis, and had
+made up his mind to think no more about such a mountebank.
+
+But it came to pass that the Corporal was not to be dismissed.  If he had
+known the most delicate fibres of the Englishman's mind, instead of
+knowing nothing on earth about him, and if he had been the most obstinate
+Corporal in the Grand Army of France, instead of being the most obliging,
+he could not have planted himself with more determined immovability plump
+in the midst of all the Englishman's thoughts.  Not only so, but he
+seemed to be always in his view.  Mr. The Englishman had but to look out
+of window, to look upon the Corporal with little Bebelle.  He had but to
+go for a walk, and there was the Corporal walking with Bebelle.  He had
+but to come home again, disgusted, and the Corporal and Bebelle were at
+home before him.  If he looked out at his back windows early in the
+morning, the Corporal was in the Barber's back yard, washing and dressing
+and brushing Bebelle.  If he took refuge at his front windows, the
+Corporal brought his breakfast out into the Place, and shared it there
+with Bebelle.  Always Corporal and always Bebelle.  Never Corporal
+without Bebelle.  Never Bebelle without Corporal.
+
+Mr. The Englishman was not particularly strong in the French language as
+a means of oral communication, though he read it very well.  It is with
+languages as with people,--when you only know them by sight, you are apt
+to mistake them; you must be on speaking terms before you can be said to
+have established an acquaintance.
+
+For this reason, Mr. The Englishman had to gird up his loins considerably
+before he could bring himself to the point of exchanging ideas with
+Madame Bouclet on the subject of this Corporal and this Bebelle.  But
+Madame Bouclet looking in apologetically one morning to remark, that, O
+Heaven! she was in a state of desolation because the lamp-maker had not
+sent home that lamp confided to him to repair, but that truly he was a
+lamp-maker against whom the whole world shrieked out, Mr. The Englishman
+seized the occasion.
+
+"Madame, that baby--"
+
+"Pardon, monsieur.  That lamp."
+
+"No, no, that little girl."
+
+"But, pardon!" said Madame Bonclet, angling for a clew, "one cannot light
+a little girl, or send her to be repaired?"
+
+"The little girl--at the house of the barber."
+
+"Ah-h-h!" cried Madame Bouclet, suddenly catching the idea with her
+delicate little line and rod.  "Little Bebelle?  Yes, yes, yes!  And her
+friend the Corporal?  Yes, yes, yes, yes!  So genteel of him,--is it
+not?"
+
+"He is not--?"
+
+"Not at all; not at all!  He is not one of her relations.  Not at all!"
+
+"Why, then, he--"
+
+"Perfectly!" cried Madame Bouclet, "you are right, monsieur.  It is so
+genteel of him.  The less relation, the more genteel.  As you say."
+
+"Is she--?"
+
+"The child of the barber?" Madame Bouclet whisked up her skilful little
+line and rod again.  "Not at all, not at all!  She is the child of--in a
+word, of no one."
+
+"The wife of the barber, then--?"
+
+"Indubitably.  As you say.  The wife of the barber receives a small
+stipend to take care of her.  So much by the month.  Eh, then!  It is
+without doubt very little, for we are all poor here."
+
+"You are not poor, madame."
+
+"As to my lodgers," replied Madame Bouclet, with a smiling and a gracious
+bend of her head, "no.  As to all things else, so-so."
+
+"You flatter me, madame."
+
+"Monsieur, it is you who flatter me in living here."
+
+Certain fishy gasps on Mr. The Englishman's part, denoting that he was
+about to resume his subject under difficulties, Madame Bouclet observed
+him closely, and whisked up her delicate line and rod again with
+triumphant success.
+
+"O no, monsieur, certainly not.  The wife of the barber is not cruel to
+the poor child, but she is careless.  Her health is delicate, and she
+sits all day, looking out at window.  Consequently, when the Corporal
+first came, the poor little Bebelle was much neglected."
+
+"It is a curious--" began Mr. The Englishman.
+
+"Name?  That Bebelle?  Again you are right, monsieur.  But it is a
+playful name for Gabrielle."
+
+"And so the child is a mere fancy of the Corporal's?" said Mr. The
+Englishman, in a gruffly disparaging tone of voice.
+
+"Eh, well!" returned Madame Bouclet, with a pleading shrug: "one must
+love something.  Human nature is weak."
+
+("Devilish weak," muttered the Englishman, in his own language.)
+
+"And the Corporal," pursued Madame Bouclet, "being billeted at the
+barber's,--where he will probably remain a long time, for he is attached
+to the General,--and finding the poor unowned child in need of being
+loved, and finding himself in need of loving,--why, there you have it
+all, you see!"
+
+Mr. The Englishman accepted this interpretation of the matter with an
+indifferent grace, and observed to himself, in an injured manner, when he
+was again alone: "I shouldn't mind it so much, if these people were not
+such a"--National Participled--"sentimental people!"
+
+There was a Cemetery outside the town, and it happened ill for the
+reputation of the Vaubanois, in this sentimental connection, that he took
+a walk there that same afternoon.  To be sure there were some wonderful
+things in it (from the Englishman's point of view), and of a certainty in
+all Britain you would have found nothing like it.  Not to mention the
+fanciful flourishes of hearts and crosses in wood and iron, that were
+planted all over the place, making it look very like a Firework-ground,
+where a most splendid pyrotechnic display might be expected after dark,
+there were so many wreaths upon the graves, embroidered, as it might be,
+"To my mother," "To my daughter," "To my father," "To my brother," "To my
+sister," "To my friend," and those many wreaths were in so many stages of
+elaboration and decay, from the wreath of yesterday, all fresh colour and
+bright beads, to the wreath of last year, a poor mouldering wisp of
+straw!  There were so many little gardens and grottos made upon graves,
+in so many tastes, with plants and shells and plaster figures and
+porcelain pitchers, and so many odds and ends!  There were so many
+tributes of remembrance hanging up, not to be discriminated by the
+closest inspection from little round waiters, whereon were depicted in
+glowing lines either a lady or a gentleman with a white
+pocket-handkerchief out of all proportion, leaning, in a state of the
+most faultless mourning and most profound affliction, on the most
+architectural and gorgeous urn!  There were so many surviving wives who
+had put their names on the tombs of their deceased husbands, with a blank
+for the date of their own departure from this weary world; and there were
+so many surviving husbands who had rendered the same homage to their
+deceased wives; and out of the number there must have been so many who
+had long ago married again!  In fine, there was so much in the place that
+would have seemed more frippery to a stranger, save for the consideration
+that the lightest paper flower that lay upon the poorest heap of earth
+was never touched by a rude hand, but perished there, a sacred thing!
+
+"Nothing of the solemnity of Death here," Mr. The Englishman had been
+going to say, when this last consideration touched him with a mild
+appeal, and on the whole he walked out without saying it.  "But these
+people are," he insisted, by way of compensation, when he was well
+outside the gate, "they are so"--Participled--"sentimental!"
+
+His way back lay by the military gymnasium-ground.  And there he passed
+the Corporal glibly instructing young soldiers how to swing themselves
+over rapid and deep watercourses on their way to Glory, by means of a
+rope, and himself deftly plunging off a platform, and flying a hundred
+feet or two, as an encouragement to them to begin.  And there he also
+passed, perched on a crowning eminence (probably the Corporal's careful
+hands), the small Bebelle, with her round eyes wide open, surveying the
+proceeding like a wondering sort of blue and white bird.
+
+"If that child was to die," this was his reflection as he turned his back
+and went his way,--"and it would almost serve the fellow right for making
+such a fool of himself,--I suppose we should have him sticking up a
+wreath and a waiter in that fantastic burying-ground."
+
+Nevertheless, after another early morning or two of looking out of
+window, he strolled down into the Place, when the Corporal and Bebelle
+were walking there, and touching his hat to the Corporal (an immense
+achievement), wished him Good-day.
+
+"Good-day, monsieur."
+
+"This is a rather pretty child you have here," said Mr. The Englishman,
+taking her chin in his hand, and looking down into her astonished blue
+eyes.
+
+"Monsieur, she is a very pretty child," returned the Corporal, with a
+stress on his polite correction of the phrase.
+
+"And good?" said the Englishman.
+
+"And very good.  Poor little thing!"
+
+"Hah!"  The Englishman stooped down and patted her cheek, not without
+awkwardness, as if he were going too far in his conciliation.  "And what
+is this medal round your neck, my little one?"
+
+Bebelle having no other reply on her lips than her chubby right fist, the
+Corporal offered his services as interpreter.
+
+"Monsieur demands, what is this, Bebelle?"
+
+"It is the Holy Virgin," said Bebelle.
+
+"And who gave it you?" asked the Englishman.
+
+"Theophile."
+
+"And who is Theophile?"
+
+Bebelle broke into a laugh, laughed merrily and heartily, clapped her
+chubby hands, and beat her little feet on the stone pavement of the
+Place.
+
+"He doesn't know Theophile!  Why, he doesn't know any one!  He doesn't
+know anything!"  Then, sensible of a small solecism in her manners,
+Bebelle twisted her right hand in a leg of the Corporal's Bloomer
+trousers, and, laying her cheek against the place, kissed it.
+
+"Monsieur Theophile, I believe?" said the Englishman to the Corporal.
+
+"It is I, monsieur."
+
+"Permit me."  Mr. The Englishman shook him heartily by the hand and
+turned away.  But he took it mighty ill that old Monsieur Mutuel in his
+patch of sunlight, upon whom he came as he turned, should pull off his
+cap to him with a look of pleased approval.  And he muttered, in his own
+tongue, as he returned the salutation, "Well, walnut-shell!  And what
+business is it of _yours_?"
+
+Mr. The Englishman went on for many weeks passing but disturbed evenings
+and worse nights, and constantly experiencing that those aforesaid
+windows in the houses of Memory and Mercy rattled after dark, and that he
+had very imperfectly nailed them up.  Likewise, he went on for many weeks
+daily improving the acquaintance of the Corporal and Bebelle.  That is to
+say, he took Bebelle by the chin, and the Corporal by the hand, and
+offered Bebelle sous and the Corporal cigars, and even got the length of
+changing pipes with the Corporal and kissing Bebelle.  But he did it all
+in a shamefaced way, and always took it extremely ill that Monsieur
+Mutuel in his patch of sunlight should note what he did.  Whenever that
+seemed to be the case, he always growled in his own tongue, "There you
+are again, walnut-shell!  What business is it of yours?"
+
+In a word, it had become the occupation of Mr. The Englishman's life to
+look after the Corporal and little Bebelle, and to resent old Monsieur
+Mutuel's looking after _him_.  An occupation only varied by a fire in the
+town one windy night, and much passing of water-buckets from hand to hand
+(in which the Englishman rendered good service), and much beating of
+drums,--when all of a sudden the Corporal disappeared.
+
+Next, all of a sudden, Bebelle disappeared.
+
+She had been visible a few days later than the Corporal,--sadly
+deteriorated as to washing and brushing,--but she had not spoken when
+addressed by Mr. The Englishman, and had looked scared and had run away.
+And now it would seem that she had run away for good.  And there lay the
+Great Place under the windows, bare and barren.
+
+In his shamefaced and constrained way, Mr. The Englishman asked no
+question of any one, but watched from his front windows and watched from
+his back windows, and lingered about the Place, and peeped in at the
+Barber's shop, and did all this and much more with a whistling and tune-
+humming pretence of not missing anything, until one afternoon when
+Monsieur Mutuel's patch of sunlight was in shadow, and when, according to
+all rule and precedent, he had no right whatever to bring his red ribbon
+out of doors, behold here he was, advancing with his cap already in his
+hand twelve paces off!
+
+Mr. The Englishman had got as far into his usual objurgation as, "What bu-
+si--" when he checked himself.
+
+"Ah, it is sad, it is sad!  Helas, it is unhappy, it is sad!"  Thus old
+Monsieur Mutuel, shaking his gray head.
+
+"What busin--at least, I would say, what do you mean, Monsieur Mutuel?"
+
+"Our Corporal.  Helas, our dear Corporal!"
+
+"What has happened to him?"
+
+"You have not heard?"
+
+"No."
+
+"At the fire.  But he was so brave, so ready.  Ah, too brave, too ready!"
+
+"May the Devil carry you away!" the Englishman broke in impatiently; "I
+beg your pardon,--I mean me,--I am not accustomed to speak French,--go
+on, will you?"
+
+"And a falling beam--"
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed the Englishman.  "It was a private soldier who was
+killed?"
+
+"No.  A Corporal, the same Corporal, our dear Corporal.  Beloved by all
+his comrades.  The funeral ceremony was touching,--penetrating.  Monsieur
+The Englishman, your eyes fill with tears."
+
+"What bu-si--"
+
+"Monsieur The Englishman, I honour those emotions.  I salute you with
+profound respect.  I will not obtrude myself upon your noble heart."
+
+Monsieur Mutuel,--a gentleman in every thread of his cloudy linen, under
+whose wrinkled hand every grain in the quarter of an ounce of poor snuff
+in his poor little tin box became a gentleman's property,--Monsieur
+Mutuel passed on, with his cap in his hand.
+
+"I little thought," said the Englishman, after walking for several
+minutes, and more than once blowing his nose, "when I was looking round
+that cemetery--I'll go there!"
+
+Straight he went there, and when he came within the gate he paused,
+considering whether he should ask at the lodge for some direction to the
+grave.  But he was less than ever in a mood for asking questions, and he
+thought, "I shall see something on it to know it by."
+
+In search of the Corporal's grave he went softly on, up this walk and
+down that, peering in, among the crosses and hearts and columns and
+obelisks and tombstones, for a recently disturbed spot.  It troubled him
+now to think how many dead there were in the cemetery,--he had not
+thought them a tenth part so numerous before,--and after he had walked
+and sought for some time, he said to himself, as he struck down a new
+vista of tombs, "I might suppose that every one was dead but I."
+
+Not every one.  A live child was lying on the ground asleep.  Truly he
+had found something on the Corporal's grave to know it by, and the
+something was Bebelle.
+
+With such a loving will had the dead soldier's comrades worked at his
+resting-place, that it was already a neat garden.  On the green turf of
+the garden Bebelle lay sleeping, with her cheek touching it.  A plain,
+unpainted little wooden Cross was planted in the turf, and her short arm
+embraced this little Cross, as it had many a time embraced the Corporal's
+neck.  They had put a tiny flag (the flag of France) at his head, and a
+laurel garland.
+
+Mr. The Englishman took off his hat, and stood for a while silent.  Then,
+covering his head again, he bent down on one knee, and softly roused the
+child.
+
+"Bebelle!  My little one!"
+
+Opening her eyes, on which the tears were still wet, Bebelle was at first
+frightened; but seeing who it was, she suffered him to take her in his
+arms, looking steadfastly at him.
+
+"You must not lie here, my little one.  You must come with me."
+
+"No, no.  I can't leave Theophile.  I want the good dear Theophile."
+
+"We will go and seek him, Bebelle.  We will go and look for him in
+England.  We will go and look for him at my daughter's, Bebelle."
+
+"Shall we find him there?"
+
+"We shall find the best part of him there.  Come with me, poor forlorn
+little one.  Heaven is my witness," said the Englishman, in a low voice,
+as, before he rose, he touched the turf above the gentle Corporal's
+breast, "that I thankfully accept this trust!"
+
+It was a long way for the child to have come unaided.  She was soon
+asleep again, with her embrace transferred to the Englishman's neck.  He
+looked at her worn shoes, and her galled feet, and her tired face, and
+believed that she had come there every day.
+
+He was leaving the grave with the slumbering Bebelle in his arms, when he
+stopped, looked wistfully down at it, and looked wistfully at the other
+graves around.  "It is the innocent custom of the people," said Mr. The
+Englishman, with hesitation.  "I think I should like to do it.  No one
+sees."
+
+Careful not to wake Bebelle as he went, he repaired to the lodge where
+such little tokens of remembrance were sold, and bought two wreaths.  One,
+blue and white and glistening silver, "To my friend;" one of a soberer
+red and black and yellow, "To my friend."  With these he went back to the
+grave, and so down on one knee again.  Touching the child's lips with the
+brighter wreath, he guided her hand to hang it on the Cross; then hung
+his own wreath there.  After all, the wreaths were not far out of keeping
+with the little garden.  To my friend.  To my friend.
+
+Mr. The Englishman took it very ill when he looked round a street corner
+into the Great Place, carrying Bebelle in his arms, that old Mutuel
+should be there airing his red ribbon.  He took a world of pains to dodge
+the worthy Mutuel, and devoted a surprising amount of time and trouble to
+skulking into his own lodging like a man pursued by Justice.  Safely
+arrived there at last, he made Bebelle's toilet with as accurate a
+remembrance as he could bring to bear upon that work of the way in which
+he had often seen the poor Corporal make it, and having given her to eat
+and drink, laid her down on his own bed.  Then he slipped out into the
+barber's shop, and after a brief interview with the barber's wife, and a
+brief recourse to his purse and card-case, came back again with the whole
+of Bebelle's personal property in such a very little bundle that it was
+quite lost under his arm.
+
+As it was irreconcilable with his whole course and character that he
+should carry Bebelle off in state, or receive any compliments or
+congratulations on that feat, he devoted the next day to getting his two
+portmanteaus out of the house by artfulness and stealth, and to
+comporting himself in every particular as if he were going to run
+away,--except, indeed, that he paid his few debts in the town, and
+prepared a letter to leave for Madame Bouclet, enclosing a sufficient sum
+of money in lieu of notice.  A railway train would come through at
+midnight, and by that train he would take away Bebelle to look for
+Theophile in England and at his forgiven daughter's.
+
+At midnight, on a moonlight night, Mr. The Englishman came creeping forth
+like a harmless assassin, with Bebelle on his breast instead of a dagger.
+Quiet the Great Place, and quiet the never-stirring streets; closed the
+cafes; huddled together motionless their billiard-balls; drowsy the guard
+or sentinel on duty here and there; lulled for the time, by sleep, even
+the insatiate appetite of the Office of Town-dues.
+
+Mr. The Englishman left the Place behind, and left the streets behind,
+and left the civilian-inhabited town behind, and descended down among the
+military works of Vauban, hemming all in.  As the shadow of the first
+heavy arch and postern fell upon him and was left behind, as the shadow
+of the second heavy arch and postern fell upon him and was left behind,
+as his hollow tramp over the first drawbridge was succeeded by a gentler
+sound, as his hollow tramp over the second drawbridge was succeeded by a
+gentler sound, as he overcame the stagnant ditches one by one, and passed
+out where the flowing waters were and where the moonlight, so the dark
+shades and the hollow sounds and the unwholesomely locked currents of his
+soul were vanquished and set free.  See to it, Vaubans of your own
+hearts, who gird them in with triple walls and ditches, and with bolt and
+chain and bar and lifted bridge,--raze those fortifications, and lay them
+level with the all-absorbing dust, before the night cometh when no hand
+can work!
+
+All went prosperously, and he got into an empty carriage in the train,
+where he could lay Bebelle on the seat over against him, as on a couch,
+and cover her from head to foot with his mantle.  He had just drawn
+himself up from perfecting this arrangement, and had just leaned back in
+his own seat contemplating it with great satisfaction, when he became
+aware of a curious appearance at the open carriage window,--a ghostly
+little tin box floating up in the moonlight, and hovering there.
+
+He leaned forward, and put out his head.  Down among the rails and wheels
+and ashes, Monsieur Mutuel, red ribbon and all!
+
+"Excuse me, Monsieur The Englishman," said Monsieur Mutuel, holding up
+his box at arm's length, the carriage being so high and he so low; "but I
+shall reverence the little box for ever, if your so generous hand will
+take a pinch from it at parting."
+
+Mr. The Englishman reached out of the window before complying,
+and--without asking the old fellow what business it was of his--shook
+hands and said, "Adieu!  God bless you!"
+
+"And, Mr. The Englishman, God bless _you_!" cried Madame Bouclet, who was
+also there among the rails and wheels and ashes.  "And God will bless you
+in the happiness of the protected child now with you.  And God will bless
+you in your own child at home.  And God will bless you in your own
+remembrances.  And this from me!"
+
+He had barely time to catch a bouquet from her hand, when the train was
+flying through the night.  Round the paper that enfolded it was bravely
+written (doubtless by the nephew who held the pen of an Angel), "Homage
+to the friend of the friendless."
+
+"Not bad people, Bebelle!" said Mr. The Englishman, softly drawing the
+mantle a little from her sleeping face, that he might kiss it, "though
+they are so--"
+
+Too "sentimental" himself at the moment to be able to get out that word,
+he added nothing but a sob, and travelled for some miles, through the
+moonlight, with his hand before his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--HIS BROWN-PAPER PARCEL
+
+
+My works are well known.  I am a young man in the Art line.  You have
+seen my works many a time, though it's fifty thousand to one if you have
+seen me.  You say you don't want to see me?  You say your interest is in
+my works, and not in me?  Don't be too sure about that.  Stop a bit.
+
+Let us have it down in black and white at the first go off, so that there
+may be no unpleasantness or wrangling afterwards.  And this is looked
+over by a friend of mine, a ticket writer, that is up to literature.  I
+am a young man in the Art line--in the Fine-Art line.  You have seen my
+works over and over again, and you have been curious about me, and you
+think you have seen me.  Now, as a safe rule, you never have seen me, and
+you never do see me, and you never will see me.  I think that's plainly
+put--and it's what knocks me over.
+
+If there's a blighted public character going, I am the party.
+
+It has been remarked by a certain (or an uncertain,) philosopher, that
+the world knows nothing of its greatest men.  He might have put it
+plainer if he had thrown his eye in my direction.  He might have put it,
+that while the world knows something of them that apparently go in and
+win, it knows nothing of them that really go in and don't win.  There it
+is again in another form--and that's what knocks me over.
+
+Not that it's only myself that suffers from injustice, but that I am more
+alive to my own injuries than to any other man's.  Being, as I have
+mentioned, in the Fine-Art line, and not the Philanthropic line, I openly
+admit it.  As to company in injury, I have company enough.  Who are you
+passing every day at your Competitive Excruciations?  The fortunate
+candidates whose heads and livers you have turned upside down for life?
+Not you.  You are really passing the Crammers and Coaches.  If your
+principle is right, why don't you turn out to-morrow morning with the
+keys of your cities on velvet cushions, your musicians playing, and your
+flags flying, and read addresses to the Crammers and Coaches on your
+bended knees, beseeching them to come out and govern you?  Then, again,
+as to your public business of all sorts, your Financial statements and
+your Budgets; the Public knows much, truly, about the real doers of all
+that!  Your Nobles and Right Honourables are first-rate men?  Yes, and so
+is a goose a first-rate bird.  But I'll tell you this about the
+goose;--you'll find his natural flavour disappointing, without stuffing.
+
+Perhaps I am soured by not being popular?  But suppose I AM popular.
+Suppose my works never fail to attract.  Suppose that, whether they are
+exhibited by natural light or by artificial, they invariably draw the
+public.  Then no doubt they are preserved in some Collection?  No, they
+are not; they are not preserved in any Collection.  Copyright?  No, nor
+yet copyright.  Anyhow they must be somewhere?  Wrong again, for they are
+often nowhere.
+
+Says you, "At all events, you are in a moody state of mind, my friend."
+My answer is, I have described myself as a public character with a blight
+upon him--which fully accounts for the curdling of the milk in _that_
+cocoa-nut.
+
+Those that are acquainted with London are aware of a locality on the
+Surrey side of the river Thames, called the Obelisk, or, more generally,
+the Obstacle.  Those that are not acquainted with London will also be
+aware of it, now that I have named it.  My lodging is not far from that
+locality.  I am a young man of that easy disposition, that I lie abed
+till it's absolutely necessary to get up and earn something, and then I
+lie abed again till I have spent it.
+
+It was on an occasion when I had had to turn to with a view to victuals,
+that I found myself walking along the Waterloo Road, one evening after
+dark, accompanied by an acquaintance and fellow-lodger in the gas-fitting
+way of life.  He is very good company, having worked at the theatres,
+and, indeed, he has a theatrical turn himself, and wishes to be brought
+out in the character of Othello; but whether on account of his regular
+work always blacking his face and hands more or less, I cannot say.
+
+"Tom," he says, "what a mystery hangs over you!"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Click"--the rest of the house generally give him his name, as
+being first, front, carpeted all over, his own furniture, and if not
+mahogany, an out-and-out imitation--"yes, Mr. Click, a mystery does hang
+over me."
+
+"Makes you low, you see, don't it?" says he, eyeing me sideways.
+
+"Why, yes, Mr. Click, there are circumstances connected with it that
+have," I yielded to a sigh, "a lowering effect."
+
+"Gives you a touch of the misanthrope too, don't it?" says he.  "Well,
+I'll tell you what.  If I was you, I'd shake it of."
+
+"If I was you, I would, Mr. Click; but, if you was me, you wouldn't."
+
+"Ah!" says he, "there's something in that."
+
+When we had walked a little further, he took it up again by touching me
+on the chest.
+
+"You see, Tom, it seems to me as if, in the words of the poet who wrote
+the domestic drama of The Stranger, you had a silent sorrow there."
+
+"I have, Mr. Click."
+
+"I hope, Tom," lowering his voice in a friendly way, "it isn't coining,
+or smashing?"
+
+"No, Mr. Click.  Don't be uneasy."
+
+"Nor yet forg--"  Mr. Click checked himself, and added, "counterfeiting
+anything, for instance?"
+
+"No, Mr. Click.  I am lawfully in the Art line--Fine-Art line--but I can
+say no more."
+
+"Ah!  Under a species of star?  A kind of malignant spell?  A sort of a
+gloomy destiny?  A cankerworm pegging away at your vitals in secret, as
+well as I make it out?" said Mr. Click, eyeing me with some admiration.
+
+I told Mr. Click that was about it, if we came to particulars; and I
+thought he appeared rather proud of me.
+
+Our conversation had brought us to a crowd of people, the greater part
+struggling for a front place from which to see something on the pavement,
+which proved to be various designs executed in coloured chalks on the
+pavement stones, lighted by two candles stuck in mud sconces.  The
+subjects consisted of a fine fresh salmon's head and shoulders, supposed
+to have been recently sent home from the fishmonger's; a moonlight night
+at sea (in a circle); dead game; scroll-work; the head of a hoary hermit
+engaged in devout contemplation; the head of a pointer smoking a pipe;
+and a cherubim, his flesh creased as in infancy, going on a horizontal
+errand against the wind.  All these subjects appeared to me to be
+exquisitely done.
+
+On his knees on one side of this gallery, a shabby person of modest
+appearance who shivered dreadfully (though it wasn't at all cold), was
+engaged in blowing the chalk-dust off the moon, toning the outline of the
+back of the hermit's head with a bit of leather, and fattening the down-
+stroke of a letter or two in the writing.  I have forgotten to mention
+that writing formed a part of the composition, and that it also--as it
+appeared to me--was exquisitely done.  It ran as follows, in fine round
+characters: "An honest man is the noblest work of God.  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
+0.  Pounds s. d.  Employment in an office is humbly requested.  Honour
+the Queen.  Hunger is a 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 sharp thorn.  Chip chop,
+cherry chop, fol de rol de ri do.  Astronomy and mathematics.  I do this
+to support my family."
+
+Murmurs of admiration at the exceeding beauty of this performance went
+about among the crowd.  The artist, having finished his touching (and
+having spoilt those places), took his seat on the pavement, with his
+knees crouched up very nigh his chin; and halfpence began to rattle in.
+
+"A pity to see a man of that talent brought so low; ain't it?" said one
+of the crowd to me.
+
+"What he might have done in the coach-painting, or house-decorating!"
+said another man, who took up the first speaker because I did not.
+
+"Why, he writes--alone--like the Lord Chancellor!" said another man.
+
+"Better," said another.  "I know his writing.  He couldn't support his
+family this way."
+
+Then, a woman noticed the natural fluffiness of the hermit's hair, and
+another woman, her friend, mentioned of the salmon's gills that you could
+almost see him gasp.  Then, an elderly country gentleman stepped forward
+and asked the modest man how he executed his work?  And the modest man
+took some scraps of brown paper with colours in 'em out of his pockets,
+and showed them.  Then a fair-complexioned donkey, with sandy hair and
+spectacles, asked if the hermit was a portrait?  To which the modest man,
+casting a sorrowful glance upon it, replied that it was, to a certain
+extent, a recollection of his father.  This caused a boy to yelp out, "Is
+the Pinter a smoking the pipe your mother?" who was immediately shoved
+out of view by a sympathetic carpenter with his basket of tools at his
+back.
+
+At every fresh question or remark the crowd leaned forward more eagerly,
+and dropped the halfpence more freely, and the modest man gathered them
+up more meekly.  At last, another elderly gentleman came to the front,
+and gave the artist his card, to come to his office to-morrow, and get
+some copying to do.  The card was accompanied by sixpence, and the artist
+was profoundly grateful, and, before he put the card in his hat, read it
+several times by the light of his candles to fix the address well in his
+mind, in case he should lose it.  The crowd was deeply interested by this
+last incident, and a man in the second row with a gruff voice growled to
+the artist, "You've got a chance in life now, ain't you?"  The artist
+answered (sniffing in a very low-spirited way, however), "I'm thankful to
+hope so."  Upon which there was a general chorus of "You are all right,"
+and the halfpence slackened very decidedly.
+
+I felt myself pulled away by the arm, and Mr. Click and I stood alone at
+the corner of the next crossing.
+
+"Why, Tom," said Mr. Click, "what a horrid expression of face you've
+got!"
+
+"Have I?" says I.
+
+"Have you?" says Mr. Click.  "Why, you looked as if you would have his
+blood."
+
+"Whose blood?"
+
+"The artist's."
+
+"The artist's?" I repeated.  And I laughed, frantically, wildly,
+gloomily, incoherently, disagreeably.  I am sensible that I did.  I know
+I did.
+
+Mr. Click stared at me in a scared sort of a way, but said nothing until
+we had walked a street's length.  He then stopped short, and said, with
+excitement on the part of his forefinger:
+
+"Thomas, I find it necessary to be plain with you.  I don't like the
+envious man.  I have identified the cankerworm that's pegging away at
+_your_ vitals, and it's envy, Thomas."
+
+"Is it?" says I.
+
+"Yes, it is," says be.  "Thomas, beware of envy.  It is the green-eyed
+monster which never did and never will improve each shining hour, but
+quite the reverse.  I dread the envious man, Thomas.  I confess that I am
+afraid of the envious man, when he is so envious as you are.  Whilst you
+contemplated the works of a gifted rival, and whilst you heard that
+rival's praises, and especially whilst you met his humble glance as he
+put that card away, your countenance was so malevolent as to be terrific.
+Thomas, I have heard of the envy of them that follows the Fine-Art line,
+but I never believed it could be what yours is.  I wish you well, but I
+take my leave of you.  And if you should ever got into trouble through
+knifeing--or say, garotting--a brother artist, as I believe you will,
+don't call me to character, Thomas, or I shall be forced to injure your
+case."
+
+Mr. Click parted from me with those words, and we broke off our
+acquaintance.
+
+I became enamoured.  Her name was Henrietta.  Contending with my easy
+disposition, I frequently got up to go after her.  She also dwelt in the
+neighbourhood of the Obstacle, and I did fondly hope that no other would
+interpose in the way of our union.
+
+To say that Henrietta was volatile is but to say that she was woman.  To
+say that she was in the bonnet-trimming is feebly to express the taste
+which reigned predominant in her own.
+
+She consented to walk with me.  Let me do her the justice to say that she
+did so upon trial.  "I am not," said Henrietta, "as yet prepared to
+regard you, Thomas, in any other light than as a friend; but as a friend
+I am willing to walk with you, on the understanding that softer
+sentiments may flow."
+
+We walked.
+
+Under the influence of Henrietta's beguilements, I now got out of bed
+daily.  I pursued my calling with an industry before unknown, and it
+cannot fail to have been observed at that period, by those most familiar
+with the streets of London, that there was a larger supply.  But hold!
+The time is not yet come!
+
+One evening in October I was walking with Henrietta, enjoying the cool
+breezes wafted over Vauxhall Bridge.  After several slow turns, Henrietta
+gaped frequently (so inseparable from woman is the love of excitement),
+and said, "Let's go home by Grosvenor Place, Piccadilly, and
+Waterloo"--localities, I may state for the information of the stranger
+and the foreigner, well known in London, and the last a Bridge.
+
+"No.  Not by Piccadilly, Henrietta," said I.
+
+"And why not Piccadilly, for goodness' sake?" said Henrietta.
+
+Could I tell her?  Could I confess to the gloomy presentiment that
+overshadowed me?  Could I make myself intelligible to her?  No.
+
+"I don't like Piccadilly, Henrietta."
+
+"But I do," said she.  "It's dark now, and the long rows of lamps in
+Piccadilly after dark are beautiful.  I _will_ go to Piccadilly!"
+
+Of course we went.  It was a pleasant night, and there were numbers of
+people in the streets.  It was a brisk night, but not too cold, and not
+damp.  Let me darkly observe, it was the best of all nights--FOR THE
+PURPOSE.
+
+As we passed the garden wall of the Royal Palace, going up Grosvenor
+Place, Henrietta murmured:
+
+"I wish I was a Queen!"
+
+"Why so, Henrietta?"
+
+"I would make _you_ Something," said she, and crossed her two hands on my
+arm, and turned away her head.
+
+Judging from this that the softer sentiments alluded to above had begun
+to flow, I adapted my conduct to that belief.  Thus happily we passed on
+into the detested thoroughfare of Piccadilly.  On the right of that
+thoroughfare is a row of trees, the railing of the Green Park, and a fine
+broad eligible piece of pavement.
+
+"Oh my!" cried Henrietta presently.  "There's been an accident!"
+
+I looked to the left, and said, "Where, Henrietta?"
+
+"Not there, stupid!" said she.  "Over by the Park railings.  Where the
+crowd is.  Oh no, it's not an accident, it's something else to look at!
+What's them lights?"
+
+She referred to two lights twinkling low amongst the legs of the
+assemblage: two candles on the pavement.
+
+"Oh, do come along!" cried Henrietta, skipping across the road with me.  I
+hung back, but in vain.  "Do let's look!"
+
+Again, designs upon the pavement.  Centre compartment, Mount Vesuvius
+going it (in a circle), supported by four oval compartments, severally
+representing a ship in heavy weather, a shoulder of mutton attended by
+two cucumbers, a golden harvest with distant cottage of proprietor, and a
+knife and fork after nature; above the centre compartment a bunch of
+grapes, and over the whole a rainbow.  The whole, as it appeared to me,
+exquisitely done.
+
+The person in attendance on these works of art was in all respects,
+shabbiness excepted, unlike the former personage.  His whole appearance
+and manner denoted briskness.  Though threadbare, he expressed to the
+crowd that poverty had not subdued his spirit, or tinged with any sense
+of shame this honest effort to turn his talents to some account.  The
+writing which formed a part of his composition was conceived in a
+similarly cheerful tone.  It breathed the following sentiments: "The
+writer is poor, but not despondent.  To a British 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
+Public he Pounds s. d. appeals.  Honour to our brave Army!  And also 0 9
+8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 to our gallant Navy.  BRITONS STRIKE the A B C D E F G
+writer in common chalks would be grateful for any suitable employment
+HOME!  HURRAH!"  The whole of this writing appeared to me to be
+exquisitely done.
+
+But this man, in one respect like the last, though seemingly hard at it
+with a great show of brown paper and rubbers, was only really fattening
+the down-stroke of a letter here and there, or blowing the loose chalk
+off the rainbow, or toning the outside edge of the shoulder of mutton.
+Though he did this with the greatest confidence, he did it (as it struck
+me) in so ignorant a manner, and so spoilt everything he touched, that
+when he began upon the purple smoke from the chimney of the distant
+cottage of the proprietor of the golden harvest (which smoke was
+beautifully soft), I found myself saying aloud, without considering of
+it:
+
+"Let that alone, will you?"
+
+"Halloa!" said the man next me in the crowd, jerking me roughly from him
+with his elbow, "why didn't you send a telegram?  If we had known you was
+coming, we'd have provided something better for you.  You understand the
+man's work better than he does himself, don't you?  Have you made your
+will?  You're too clever to live long."
+
+"Don't be hard upon the gentleman, sir," said the person in attendance on
+the works of art, with a twinkle in his eye as he looked at me; "he may
+chance to be an artist himself.  If so, sir, he will have a
+fellow-feeling with me, sir, when I"--he adapted his action to his words
+as he went on, and gave a smart slap of his hands between each touch,
+working himself all the time about and about the composition--"when I
+lighten the bloom of my grapes--shade off the orange in my rainbow--dot
+the i of my Britons--throw a yellow light into my cow-cum-_ber_--insinuate
+another morsel of fat into my shoulder of mutton--dart another zigzag
+flash of lightning at my ship in distress!"
+
+He seemed to do this so neatly, and was so nimble about it, that the
+halfpence came flying in.
+
+"Thanks, generous public, thanks!" said the professor.  "You will
+stimulate me to further exertions.  My name will be found in the list of
+British Painters yet.  I shall do better than this, with encouragement.  I
+shall indeed."
+
+"You never can do better than that bunch of grapes," said Henrietta.  "Oh,
+Thomas, them grapes!"
+
+"Not better than _that_, lady?  I hope for the time when I shall paint
+anything but your own bright eyes and lips equal to life."
+
+"(Thomas, did you ever?)  But it must take a long time, sir," said
+Henrietta, blushing, "to paint equal to that."
+
+"I was prenticed to it, miss," said the young man, smartly touching up
+the composition--"prenticed to it in the caves of Spain and Portingale,
+ever so long and two year over."
+
+There was a laugh from the crowd; and a new man who had worked himself in
+next me, said, "He's a smart chap, too; ain't he?"
+
+"And what a eye!" exclaimed Henrietta softly.
+
+"Ah!  He need have a eye," said the man.
+
+"Ah!  He just need," was murmured among the crowd.
+
+"He couldn't come that 'ere burning mountain without a eye," said the
+man.  He had got himself accepted as an authority, somehow, and everybody
+looked at his finger as it pointed out Vesuvius.  "To come that effect in
+a general illumination would require a eye; but to come it with two
+dips--why, it's enough to blind him!"
+
+That impostor, pretending not to have heard what was said, now winked to
+any extent with both eyes at once, as if the strain upon his sight was
+too much, and threw back his long hair--it was very long--as if to cool
+his fevered brow.  I was watching him doing it, when Henrietta suddenly
+whispered, "Oh, Thomas, how horrid you look!" and pulled me out by the
+arm.
+
+Remembering Mr. Click's words, I was confused when I retorted, "What do
+you mean by horrid?"
+
+"Oh gracious!  Why, you looked," said Henrietta, "as if you would have
+his blood."
+
+I was going to answer, "So I would, for twopence--from his nose," when I
+checked myself and remained silent.
+
+We returned home in silence.  Every step of the way, the softer
+sentiments that had flowed, ebbed twenty mile an hour.  Adapting my
+conduct to the ebbing, as I had done to the flowing, I let my arm drop
+limp, so as she could scarcely keep hold of it, and I wished her such a
+cold good-night at parting, that I keep within the bounds of truth when I
+characterise it as a Rasper.
+
+In the course of the next day I received the following document:
+
+   "Henrietta informs Thomas that my eyes are open to you.  I must ever
+   wish you well, but walking and us is separated by an unfarmable abyss.
+   One so malignant to superiority--Oh that look at him!--can never never
+   conduct
+
+   HENRIETTA
+
+   P.S.--To the altar."
+
+Yielding to the easiness of my disposition, I went to bed for a week,
+after receiving this letter.  During the whole of such time, London was
+bereft of the usual fruits of my labour.  When I resumed it, I found that
+Henrietta was married to the artist of Piccadilly.
+
+Did I say to the artist?  What fell words were those, expressive of what
+a galling hollowness, of what a bitter mockery!  I--I--I--am the artist.
+I was the real artist of Piccadilly, I was the real artist of the
+Waterloo Road, I am the only artist of all those pavement-subjects which
+daily and nightly arouse your admiration.  I do 'em, and I let 'em out.
+The man you behold with the papers of chalks and the rubbers, touching up
+the down-strokes of the writing and shading off the salmon, the man you
+give the credit to, the man you give the money to, hires--yes! and I live
+to tell it!--hires those works of art of me, and brings nothing to 'em
+but the candles.
+
+Such is genius in a commercial country.  I am not up to the shivering, I
+am not up to the liveliness, I am not up to the wanting-employment-in-an-
+office move; I am only up to originating and executing the work.  In
+consequence of which you never see me; you think you see me when you see
+somebody else, and that somebody else is a mere Commercial character.  The
+one seen by self and Mr. Click in the Waterloo Road can only write a
+single word, and that I taught him, and it's MULTIPLICATION--which you
+may see him execute upside down, because he can't do it the natural way.
+The one seen by self and Henrietta by the Green Park railings can just
+smear into existence the two ends of a rainbow, with his cuff and a
+rubber--if very hard put upon making a show--but he could no more come
+the arch of the rainbow, to save his life, than he could come the
+moonlight, fish, volcano, shipwreck, mutton, hermit, or any of my most
+celebrated effects.
+
+To conclude as I began: if there's a blighted public character going, I
+am the party.  And often as you have seen, do see, and will see, my
+Works, it's fifty thousand to one if you'll ever see me, unless, when the
+candles are burnt down and the Commercial character is gone, you should
+happen to notice a neglected young man perseveringly rubbing out the last
+traces of the pictures, so that nobody can renew the same.  That's me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--HIS WONDERFUL END
+
+
+It will have been, ere now, perceived that I sold the foregoing writings.
+From the fact of their being printed in these pages, the inference will,
+ere now, have been drawn by the reader (may I add, the gentle reader?)
+that I sold them to One who never yet--{2}
+
+Having parted with the writings on most satisfactory terms,--for, in
+opening negotiations with the present Journal, was I not placing myself
+in the hands of One of whom it may be said, in the words of Another,
+{2,}--resumed my usual functions.  But I too soon discovered that peace
+of mind had fled from a brow which, up to that time, Time had merely took
+the hair off, leaving an unruffled expanse within.
+
+It were superfluous to veil it,--the brow to which I allude is my own.
+
+Yes, over that brow uneasiness gathered like the sable wing of the fabled
+bird, as--as no doubt will be easily identified by all right-minded
+individuals.  If not, I am unable, on the spur of the moment, to enter
+into particulars of him.  The reflection that the writings must now
+inevitably get into print, and that He might yet live and meet with them,
+sat like the Hag of Night upon my jaded form.  The elasticity of my
+spirits departed.  Fruitless was the Bottle, whether Wine or Medicine.  I
+had recourse to both, and the effect of both upon my system was
+witheringly lowering.
+
+In this state of depression, into which I subsided when I first began to
+revolve what could I ever say if He--the unknown--was to appear in the
+Coffee-room and demand reparation, I one forenoon in this last November
+received a turn that appeared to be given me by the finger of Fate and
+Conscience, hand in hand.  I was alone in the Coffee-room, and had just
+poked the fire into a blaze, and was standing with my back to it, trying
+whether heat would penetrate with soothing influence to the Voice within,
+when a young man in a cap, of an intelligent countenance, though
+requiring his hair cut, stood before me.
+
+"Mr. Christopher, the Head Waiter?"
+
+"The same."
+
+The young man shook his hair out of his vision,--which it impeded,--to a
+packet from his breast, and handing it over to me, said, with his eye (or
+did I dream?) fixed with a lambent meaning on me, "THE PROOFS."
+
+Although I smelt my coat-tails singeing at the fire, I had not the power
+to withdraw them.  The young man put the packet in my faltering grasp,
+and repeated,--let me do him the justice to add, with civility:
+
+"THE PROOFS.  A. Y. R."
+
+With those words he departed.
+
+A. Y. R.?  And You Remember.  Was that his meaning?  At Your Risk.  Were
+the letters short for _that_ reminder?  Anticipate Your Retribution.  Did
+they stand for _that_ warning?  Out-dacious Youth Repent?  But no; for
+that, a O was happily wanting, and the vowel here was a A.
+
+I opened the packet, and found that its contents were the foregoing
+writings printed just as the reader (may I add the discerning reader?)
+peruses them.  In vain was the reassuring whisper,--A.Y.R., All the Year
+Round,--it could not cancel the Proofs.  Too appropriate name.  The
+Proofs of my having sold the Writings.
+
+My wretchedness daily increased.  I had not thought of the risk I ran,
+and the defying publicity I put my head into, until all was done, and all
+was in print.  Give up the money to be off the bargain and prevent the
+publication, I could not.  My family was down in the world, Christmas was
+coming on, a brother in the hospital and a sister in the rheumatics could
+not be entirely neglected.  And it was not only ins in the family that
+had told on the resources of one unaided Waitering; outs were not
+wanting.  A brother out of a situation, and another brother out of money
+to meet an acceptance, and another brother out of his mind, and another
+brother out at New York (not the same, though it might appear so), had
+really and truly brought me to a stand till I could turn myself round.  I
+got worse and worse in my meditations, constantly reflecting "The
+Proofs," and reflecting that when Christmas drew nearer, and the Proofs
+were published, there could be no safety from hour to hour but that He
+might confront me in the Coffee-room, and in the face of day and his
+country demand his rights.
+
+The impressive and unlooked-for catastrophe towards which I dimly pointed
+the reader (shall I add, the highly intellectual reader?) in my first
+remarks now rapidly approaches.
+
+It was November still, but the last echoes of the Guy Foxes had long
+ceased to reverberate.  We was slack,--several joints under our average
+mark, and wine, of course, proportionate.  So slack had we become at
+last, that Beds Nos. 26, 27, 28, and 31, having took their six o'clock
+dinners, and dozed over their respective pints, had drove away in their
+respective Hansoms for their respective Night Mail-trains and left us
+empty.
+
+I had took the evening paper to No. 6 table,--which is warm and most to
+be preferred,--and, lost in the all-absorbing topics of the day, had
+dropped into a slumber.  I was recalled to consciousness by the
+well-known intimation, "Waiter!" and replying, "Sir!" found a gentleman
+standing at No. 4 table.  The reader (shall I add, the observant reader?)
+will please to notice the locality of the gentleman,--_at No. 4 table_.
+
+He had one of the newfangled uncollapsable bags in his hand (which I am
+against, for I don't see why you shouldn't collapse, while you are about
+it, as your fathers collapsed before you), and he said:
+
+"I want to dine, waiter.  I shall sleep here to-night."
+
+"Very good, sir.  What will you take for dinner, sir?"
+
+"Soup, bit of codfish, oyster sauce, and the joint."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+I rang the chambermaid's bell; and Mrs. Pratchett marched in, according
+to custom, demurely carrying a lighted flat candle before her, as if she
+was one of a long public procession, all the other members of which was
+invisible.
+
+In the meanwhile the gentleman had gone up to the mantelpiece, right in
+front of the fire, and had laid his forehead against the mantelpiece
+(which it is a low one, and brought him into the attitude of leap-frog),
+and had heaved a tremenjous sigh.  His hair was long and lightish; and
+when he laid his forehead against the mantelpiece, his hair all fell in a
+dusty fluff together over his eyes; and when he now turned round and
+lifted up his head again, it all fell in a dusty fluff together over his
+ears.  This give him a wild appearance, similar to a blasted heath.
+
+"O!  The chambermaid.  Ah!"  He was turning something in his mind.  "To
+be sure.  Yes.  I won't go up-stairs now, if you will take my bag.  It
+will be enough for the present to know my number.--Can you give me 24 B?"
+
+(O Conscience, what a Adder art thou!)
+
+Mrs. Pratchett allotted him the room, and took his bag to it.  He then
+went back before the fire, and fell a biting his nails.
+
+"Waiter!" biting between the words, "give me," bite, "pen and paper; and
+in five minutes," bite, "let me have, if you please," bite, "a", bite,
+"Messenger."
+
+Unmindful of his waning soup, he wrote and sent off six notes before he
+touched his dinner.  Three were City; three West-End.  The City letters
+were to Cornhill, Ludgate-hill, and Farringdon Street.  The West-End
+letters were to Great Marlborough Street, New Burlington Street, and
+Piccadilly.  Everybody was systematically denied at every one of the six
+places, and there was not a vestige of any answer.  Our light porter
+whispered to me, when he came back with that report, "All Booksellers."
+
+But before then he had cleared off his dinner, and his bottle of wine.  He
+now--mark the concurrence with the document formerly given in
+full!--knocked a plate of biscuits off the table with his agitated elber
+(but without breakage), and demanded boiling brandy-and-water.
+
+Now fully convinced that it was Himself, I perspired with the utmost
+freedom.  When he became flushed with the heated stimulant referred to,
+he again demanded pen and paper, and passed the succeeding two hours in
+producing a manuscript which he put in the fire when completed.  He then
+went up to bed, attended by Mrs. Pratchett.  Mrs. Pratchett (who was
+aware of my emotions) told me, on coming down, that she had noticed his
+eye rolling into every corner of the passages and staircase, as if in
+search of his Luggage, and that, looking back as she shut the door of 24
+B, she perceived him with his coat already thrown off immersing himself
+bodily under the bedstead, like a chimley-sweep before the application of
+machinery.
+
+The next day--I forbear the horrors of that night--was a very foggy day
+in our part of London, insomuch that it was necessary to light the Coffee-
+room gas.  We was still alone, and no feverish words of mine can do
+justice to the fitfulness of his appearance as he sat at No. 4 table,
+increased by there being something wrong with the meter.
+
+Having again ordered his dinner, he went out, and was out for the best
+part of two hours.  Inquiring on his return whether any of the answers
+had arrived, and receiving an unqualified negative, his instant call was
+for mulligatawny, the cayenne pepper, and orange brandy.
+
+Feeling that the mortal struggle was now at hand, I also felt that I must
+be equal to him, and with that view resolved that whatever he took I
+would take.  Behind my partition, but keeping my eye on him over the
+curtain, I therefore operated on Mulligatawny, Cayenne Pepper, and Orange
+Brandy.  And at a later period of the day, when he again said, "Orange
+Brandy," I said so too, in a lower tone, to George, my Second Lieutenant
+(my First was absent on leave), who acts between me and the bar.
+
+Throughout that awful day he walked about the Coffee-room continually.
+Often he came close up to my partition, and then his eye rolled within,
+too evidently in search of any signs of his Luggage.  Half-past six came,
+and I laid his cloth.  He ordered a bottle of old Brown.  I likewise
+ordered a bottle of old Brown.  He drank his.  I drank mine (as nearly as
+my duties would permit) glass for glass against his.  He topped with
+coffee and a small glass.  I topped with coffee and a small glass.  He
+dozed.  I dozed.  At last, "Waiter!"--and he ordered his bill.  The
+moment was now at hand when we two must be locked in the deadly grapple.
+
+Swift as the arrow from the bow, I had formed my resolution; in other
+words, I had hammered it out between nine and nine.  It was, that I would
+be the first to open up the subject with a full acknowledgment, and would
+offer any gradual settlement within my power.  He paid his bill (doing
+what was right by attendance) with his eye rolling about him to the last
+for any tokens of his Luggage.  One only time our gaze then met, with the
+lustrous fixedness (I believe I am correct in imputing that character to
+it?) of the well-known Basilisk.  The decisive moment had arrived.
+
+With a tolerable steady hand, though with humility, I laid The Proofs
+before him.
+
+"Gracious Heavens!" he cries out, leaping up, and catching hold of his
+hair.  "What's this?  Print!"
+
+"Sir," I replied, in a calming voice, and bending forward, "I humbly
+acknowledge to being the unfortunate cause of it.  But I hope, sir, that
+when you have heard the circumstances explained, and the innocence of my
+intentions--"
+
+To my amazement, I was stopped short by his catching me in both his arms,
+and pressing me to his breast-bone; where I must confess to my face (and
+particular, nose) having undergone some temporary vexation from his
+wearing his coat buttoned high up, and his buttons being uncommon hard.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" he cries, releasing me with a wild laugh, and grasping my
+hand.  "What is your name, my Benefactor?"
+
+"My name, sir" (I was crumpled, and puzzled to make him out), "is
+Christopher; and I hope, sir, that, as such, when you've heard my ex--"
+
+"In print!" he exclaims again, dashing the proofs over and over as if he
+was bathing in them.--"In print!!  O Christopher!  Philanthropist!
+Nothing can recompense you,--but what sum of money would be acceptable to
+you?"
+
+I had drawn a step back from him, or I should have suffered from his
+buttons again.
+
+"Sir, I assure you, I have been already well paid, and--"
+
+"No, no, Christopher!  Don't talk like that!  What sum of money would be
+acceptable to you, Christopher?  Would you find twenty pounds acceptable,
+Christopher?"
+
+However great my surprise, I naturally found words to say, "Sir, I am not
+aware that the man was ever yet born without more than the average amount
+of water on the brain as would not find twenty pounds acceptable.
+But--extremely obliged to you, sir, I'm sure;" for he had tumbled it out
+of his purse and crammed it in my hand in two bank-notes; "but I could
+wish to know, sir, if not intruding, how I have merited this liberality?"
+
+"Know then, my Christopher," he says, "that from boyhood's hour I have
+unremittingly and unavailingly endeavoured to get into print.  Know,
+Christopher, that all the Booksellers alive--and several dead--have
+refused to put me into print.  Know, Christopher, that I have written
+unprinted Reams.  But they shall be read to you, my friend and brother.
+You sometimes have a holiday?"
+
+Seeing the great danger I was in, I had the presence of mind to answer,
+"Never!"  To make it more final, I added, "Never!  Not from the cradle to
+the grave."
+
+"Well," says he, thinking no more about that, and chuckling at his proofs
+again.  "But I am in print!  The first flight of ambition emanating from
+my father's lowly cot is realised at length!  The golden bow"--he was
+getting on,--"struck by the magic hand, has emitted a complete and
+perfect sound!  When did this happen, my Christopher?"
+
+"Which happen, sir?"
+
+"This," he held it out at arms length to admire it,--"this Per-rint."
+
+When I had given him my detailed account of it, he grasped me by the hand
+again, and said:
+
+"Dear Christopher, it should be gratifying to you to know that you are an
+instrument in the hands of Destiny.  Because you _are_."
+
+A passing Something of a melancholy cast put it into my head to shake it,
+and to say, "Perhaps we all are."
+
+"I don't mean that," he answered; "I don't take that wide range; I
+confine myself to the special case.  Observe me well, my Christopher!
+Hopeless of getting rid, through any effort of my own, of any of the
+manuscripts among my Luggage,--all of which, send them where I would,
+were always coming back to me,--it is now some seven years since I left
+that Luggage here, on the desperate chance, either that the too, too
+faithful manuscripts would come back to me no more, or that some one less
+accursed than I might give them to the world.  You follow me, my
+Christopher?"
+
+"Pretty well, sir."  I followed him so far as to judge that he had a weak
+head, and that the Orange, the Boiling, and Old Brown combined was
+beginning to tell.  (The Old Brown, being heady, is best adapted to
+seasoned cases.)
+
+"Years elapsed, and those compositions slumbered in dust.  At length,
+Destiny, choosing her agent from all mankind, sent You here, Christopher,
+and lo! the Casket was burst asunder, and the Giant was free!"
+
+He made hay of his hair after he said this, and he stood a-tiptoe.
+
+"But," he reminded himself in a state of excitement, "we must sit up all
+night, my Christopher.  I must correct these Proofs for the press.  Fill
+all the inkstands, and bring me several new pens."
+
+He smeared himself and he smeared the Proofs, the night through, to that
+degree that when Sol gave him warning to depart (in a four-wheeler), few
+could have said which was them, and which was him, and which was blots.
+His last instructions was, that I should instantly run and take his
+corrections to the office of the present Journal.  I did so.  They most
+likely will not appear in print, for I noticed a message being brought
+round from Beauford Printing House, while I was a throwing this
+concluding statement on paper, that the ole resources of that
+establishment was unable to make out what they meant.  Upon which a
+certain gentleman in company, as I will not more particularly name,--but
+of whom it will be sufficient to remark, standing on the broad basis of a
+wave-girt isle, that whether we regard him in the light of,--{3} laughed,
+and put the corrections in the fire.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+{1}  Its name and address at length, with other full particulars, all
+editorially struck out.
+
+{2}  The remainder of this complimentary sentence editorially struck out.
+
+{3}  The remainder of this complimentary parenthesis editorially struck
+out.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE***
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